Public Transport in Victoria

Public Transport in Victoria should be totally re-organised.  The current strikes of trams and trains reveal the out-dated state of this vital service.  The Australian Colonies had no history of change, but had institutions set up from afar which were assumed to be permanent and inviolate.  We persist with these dinosaurs of public activity.

The practice of decisions over people’s lives being made by others is Feudal.  That “managers” still decide issues of rostering, hours, training and so on, without discussion with the “workers” themselves is counter to the egalitarian principles crucial to Australia.  These disputes are not about the details of the claim, but about the power of wage-earners over their own lives.  It is a classic example of Marxist ‘alienation’.  Instead of the Green-Left and  the Red Left  preaching against “capitalism” they should direct their energies towards systems like Public Transport, but also Health and Education, where these feudal divisions into classes persists and holds back the modernisation and efficient operation of these systems.

Of all countries, Australian society is strongest in our belief in equality.  This may have been sourced in the Aboriginal Cultures that were more influential in many aspects of the Australian character than have so far been acknowledged.  The Australian Army has been noted for the relationship between Officers and Personnel that was different from the Aristocratic traditions that persisted in most Armies into last century, and still survives. 

In the private, corporate world, the problem is not the Economic structure of Free Enterprise but the persistence of the artificial class divisions into managers and workers.  This vaguely corresponds to the academic an Associative division of occupations into Professions and Trades.   This same distinction has persisted in Government and semi-Government bureaucracies and throughout the Public Service including the privatised parts of it.  This shows that the problem is Social and endemic and not the consequence of the Political structures called Capitalism.  It is because it survives in areas like Public Transport that we have the problems leading to these strikes.  Nationalising all industry, the aim of the Left, would result in everything being run like Public Transport.

If ever “Worker Control” was applicable, it is surely in the Government owned, if no longer Government run, systems like Public Transport.  Whether it is through the existing Unions or via new forms of Corporate Governance, we need to bring the people who do the work into the decisions about the work.  The same holds for the important but maligned Professions of Teaching and Nursing.   

The shake-up needs to go much further than employee-relations.  The balance between public and private transport also need to be addressed.  Australia cannot remain a car-based society for ever.  In cities on other continents, most private journeys are by public transport, but in Melbourne, probably the worst of the Australian Capital Cities, it is less than a quarter.  This can only be changed with a clear lead from Government.  Except that Spring Street is stuck in the Colonial past.  While small improvements to the train and tram network are important, including eventually removing all the suburban level crossings, they will only make a slight difference. 

Busses are the obvious solution.  Not just greater frequency on existing routes, but creating a network of new bus routes that can replace at least half of the cars that choke our roads and clog our freeways.  It would be a major manufacturing industry.  It would also replace the petrol motors of cars with the non-polluting fuel cells of modern busses.   This should all be done by an Authority that includes the people who will make and operate the busses.   Having just installed the outrageously expensive Miki system in Melbourne, it would need to stay till it has recouped its investment,  perhaps a decade, but then, as should have happened before, Public Transport should be made free.  The costs of selling tickets exceed the revenue.  The public subsidy for public transport would be less if it were free, per capita use, though usage would greatly increase, and free transport is a good incentive for people to switch from driving their own car to going by bus, tram or train. 

Foolishly, many of these same people that persist with the colonial bureaucracies want a Republic.  They naively thing such a symbolic change will have a top-down effect and correct all our social ills.  This is obviously absurd, but they presumably know it because they usually preach a minimalist change to a republic, pretending such a transformation were possible, and ignoring the unforeseen but certain major ramifications that would follow removing the Crown from the Constitution.