| Kosky stands by privatised trains |
 RETURNING Melbourne's beleaguered public transport system to full government ownership would not cost taxpayers one extra cent, Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky says.
Questioned yesterday about the merits of a privatised system, Ms Kosky said: "It's no cheaper. We have had to put a lot more money into the system."
But she defended Melbourne's complicated "franchise" system, saying it would continue to bring innovation and international expertise to public transport.
"We get that innovation, we get that international experience, not only in running the system but in responding much more quickly to problems," she said.
Melbourne's train system has been plagued by problems for the past fortnight. Operator Connex — owned by French transport giant Veolia — cancelled more than 250 trains this week alone, scores of them during peak hours.
Air-conditioning faults and infrastructure failures were among the reasons for the cancellations, Ms Kosky said.
She stood by her decision to advise the cabinet in 2007 to keep public transport in Melbourne in the hands of private operators. Melbourne's trains and trams were first privatised in 1999.
This year the Government will spend $31 million on legal and administrative expenses in retendering the lucrative, 15-year contracts to run the system.
A new operator will be chosen out of Connex, another French transport giant, Keolis, and Hong Kong's MTR. The winning bidder will run the system from December 1.
The Government also has the option of taking public transport back into public control on December 1.
Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder, whose party privatised trains and trams in Melbourne, says they should stay in private hands, but he said public transport "has gone backwards" under Labor.
Victoria's most powerful transport bureaucrat, Transport Department secretary Jim Betts, told The Age the Government had not ducked responsibility for running the train system.
"If there were any concept of blame-shifting then clearly it is not working because the Government is being very substantially held to account at the moment," said Mr Betts, an architect in 1999 of the privatisation of Melbourne's public transport system.
He said people cared only about a good service, not whether it was privatised or publicly run.
"The public primarily cares about whether the train or the tram turns up on time, whether it's affordable, whether it's clean and efficient," Mr Betts said.
"Privatisation … is not a panacea, but nor is restored public-sector operation."
Peter Spyker, the last Labor transport minister to run the system when it was in public hands, said this week that public operation of trains and trams was preferable to privatisation. "I was opposed to privatisation," he said.
The Age
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