Edumucation

This was the promise made before the 2006 State election:

Labor will establish two new co-educational select entry year 9 – 12 schools in North Melbourne and the outer eastern growth corridor at a cost of around $20 million each.

The promise was in the "Better Schools, Better Performance" policy document of the Labor party, as well as their "Victorian Schools Plan".

The North Melbourne select entry school was to have been in the disused State School 307 in Queensberry Street North Melbourne. Locals were delighted that there would be another opportunity for students in the inner west of Melbourne.

But on 1st April 2008 the government announced that the school would not be in North Melbourne at all, but in Wyndham Vale, in the outer west of Melbourne. The outer west needs resources, and no one can begrudge them this educational opportunity.

But it shouldn't be a competition between suburbs: inner Melbourne also needs educational resources, with its huge recent developments in Docklands and Kensington, and with people moving into the whole inner city area including the CBD.

According to the Productivity Commission's latest report, Victoria spends less on education per student than any other State, and we would have to spend another $1 billion just to get up to the national average - let alone reach the top of the class.

We are short changing our children's future.

Comparing ourselves to NSW, each year Victoria spends $636 less per pre-school student, $1,148 less per primary school student, and $1,334 less per secondary school student.

The latest Victorian budget had no new educational initiatives.

We also have large class sizes: Australia has average class sizes of 23.8 - the sixth highest in the OECD, and they should be lowered to a maximum of 20 students.

On the site for the select entry school there will instead be established the Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership, designed for those who will take a leadership role in schools and early childhood development. Again, encouraging leadership in education is a good thing - but schools near the inner Melbourne growth areas would be good too, and that's what we were promised.

There is also a real need for a school for Docklands. Many people have been attracted to the area by the promise that they can live there without cars, but if they want to take their children to school, there is no school they can walk to or even reach conveniently by public transport. Some have moved out when their children reached school age.

Time for a recommitment to proper investment in our children's future.

External Links

• Australian Education Union - New Decade, New Commitment, New Investment

Fixing trains

At Kensington Station talking to commuters

This morning I was at Kensington Station speaking to commuters and watching them trying to climb on to overcrowded trains. They'd often have to wait for the next one. Is this the best we can do?

1929 timetable for the Essendon line

It's a little hard to read in the copy posted above, but the 1929 Victorian Railways timetable for the Essendon line makes interesting reading.

No less than 81 years ago, there were 17 trains stopping at Kensington on the way to the city between 7.00 am and 9.00 am on weekdays. That's an average of a train every 7 minutes or so.

Today, between 7.00 am and 9.00 am there are just 12 trains - an average of a train every 10 minutes.

The population of Melbourne in 1929 was less than 1 million. Today it is more than 4 million.

Our public transport system is infrequent, overcrowded and unreliable.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Zurich administers its entire public transport system (which moves more people than Melbourne’s) with just 36 staff (I'm not counting actual drivers). In our “Transport Ticketing Authority” alone – whose only job is to hire someone else to run a ticketing system – we have 104 staff.

A single train moves more people than an entire lane of cars driving past in an hour. Public transport can be efficient – to say nothing of the environmental benefits.

In a recent parliamentary inquiry, Greens MP, Greg Barber, found that Melbourne’s rail managers are guilty of “self-congratulation, complacency and strategic misrepresentation”.

The evidence showed that many ‘reasons’ given for public transport failure were simply excuses for poor planning or justifications for the disastrous adventure of privatisation.

1. Unprecedented summer heat

Melbourne has hot summers. We need to plan for them. The hot weather exposed the fact that we have no effective management of our transport maintenance backlog.

2. Over-crowding: the system is the victim of its own success

The government says that rapid patronage growth causes the crowding that delays trains. This is too convenient. Patronage targets were set almost a decade ago, but new trains are only just arriving. The main cause of over-crowding is poor planning.

3. Connex was bad; Metro will be better

Privatisation has been fraught since its inception due to “aggressive” under-bidding by the operators and the government’s acceptance of demands for extra funding.

4. The system is at capacity

It isn't. As the 1929 timetable shows, we ran far more trains 80 years ago.

Fragmented responsibilities created by privatisation, combined with inadequate planning skills, mean inefficient use of existing tracks and poor design of new projects.

Privatisation complicates and confuses planning for today’s growth in rail patronage. How can it possibly deliver high-quality public transport to meet tomorrow’s challenges?

It's time to fix public transport. We need to:

• end the current franchise arrangements;
• create a metropolitan public transport authority and bring in managers with a track record of success to deliver a ‘network’ that meets the needs of our city.

We need a public transport service we can all enjoy.

External Links

• Select Committee on Train Services
• The People Plan