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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-29 Daily Xml
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TRAM PASSENGERS

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:48): Can the Minister for Transport advise what the dress code is for tram passengers and will tram passengers be instructed to observe the code? Since September last year, the minister has blamed drivers in cases where trams and trains have derailed. At the weekend, he again blamed TransAdelaide staff for the Friday night derailment on the Belair line. Today, the opposition has been advised that it was not the minister's spokesperson but the minister himself who accused passengers, who fainted while travelling on the tram, for being overdressed. No shirt, no shoes, no travelling blues!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (14:49): It is noticeable—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: I would like to do this quietly. It is noticeable that the question was not asked by the Leader of the Opposition, who I am told today went out on a tram with a young woman—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: It was him. I see; it was the member for Morphett with a young woman, who was not his wife, who was most unusually dressed, which I found surprising and even more surprising that he invited the media to come and see such a thing. Can I make it plain to the member for Morphett (and maybe I will deal with his comment about dress code) that yesterday I was in Melbourne. I was doing work in Melbourne—don't you worry—and they contacted me because someone fainted on a tram. I can assure the house that people have fainted on public transport before, including when the opposition was in charge of it. One of the ways to make sure that someone fainting on a tram gets some attention is if they faint when they are sitting next to a journalist—and that occurred. In fact, in October last year (without a question from the other side) four people fainted in the spate of one month on Gawler lines, for a number of different reasons. I was asked for my response, and I said, 'Well, since I am in Melbourne I don't know what happened; why don't you tell them what TransAdelaide thinks happened.'

I note today that the member for Morphett has been running around and saying that I should resign. According to the member for Morphett I should have also resigned on the weekend, because they isolated the wrong switch down at the depot.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: How does it work? The member is asking me how it works. Fortunately, I have some assistance from the member for Morphett about how the switches work, because he told me what should have happened. He said (and, don't forget, this is on media, so he picked out his best grab):

What we've got here is a fast done repair.

Wrong, it wasn't a repair at all; they isolated the wrong switch. But here's how it should work—

The signalling system should have been working and stopped the train or the switch should have been working and stopped the train, or not derail the train.

Now, if anyone can find a meaning in that sentence they are a better person than me, so forgive me if I do not take advice from the member for Morphett on how the switching system should work.

What occurred on the weekend—which he talked about in his explanation and for which I should also apparently resign—was, from memory, that before commencing replacement of some switches people were supposed to isolate switch 66A and 68A. However, in addition, they also isolated switch 67A, which they should not have done. The outcome of that, if I might bore the house with this, was that—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: They did that on a Wednesday; they do this for safety reasons in order to replace the switches. What it means is that when two trains are sent over those switches one after the other, within three minutes of each other, there are likely to be difficulties with the second train. Now, this does not happen in the ordinary course of events but, unfortunately, it does happen when there is a public holiday schedule—which is what occurred with the last train from Belair.

What should have happened, of course, is that switch 67A should not have been isolated. Now, apparently that is me blaming public servants, when I myself should have resigned over it. I would like to say that when switch 66A caused a very minor problem (I do not think it would have been reported in any other jurisdiction), I was actually watching the great South Australian centre half forward from Fremantle, Pavlich, hit the post with a kick in the dying moments of the game—and I would just like to indicate to the member for Morphett that I am not going to resign just because he hit the post, either.

What I said from Melbourne was that TransAdelaide should tell them what it thought happened, and what TransAdelaide said was that, because in the month of April there had been no complaints about ventilation or air conditioning and there had been eight complaints in the month of March (if you remember, Mr Speaker, we had a South Australian record heatwave during March), they could only conclude that people rugged up for the extremely cold weather—and I can tell members that it was very cold in Melbourne—and TransAdelaide thought that perhaps people got hot because they were all rugged up in the trams. I actually think that is rather unremarkable. I would like to make the issue plain. One of the issues—

An honourable member: You bought the wrong tram.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: No, that is not it. Let me tell you what the issue is; it is something they—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Bought the wrong tram, and I should apparently resign for that too. I bought the wrong trams and I should resign for that.

What has occurred since our outstandingly successful tram extension—which the Leader of the Opposition said we should not do; he said it was a tram extension to nowhere, no-one would ride it and it was no good—is that patronage has increased by—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: And he is wrong about that. What has happened is that patronage has increased by at least 15 per cent on the trams.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The house will come to order! The Minister for Transport.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: If we had extended the tramline and there had been no increase in patronage, of course we would have made a mistake and the Leader of the Opposition would have been correct. The bottom line is—

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I warn the member for MacKillop.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: What has happened is that those who criticised the tram extension—not The Advertiser but a whole load of them—have changed their tune. I note that one of them, Matthew Abraham, was honest enough, after criticising the tram extension, to say that it was the best thing that had happened to the city in 150 years. I thought even I would be hard-pressed to make that claim, but I am quite happy to repeat it: the best thing that has happened in 150 years. Can I humbly say that, if we had been here for 300 years, it probably would have been the best thing that happened in 300 years. Rex Jory, who initially opposed it, had the good grace to say, 'We were wrong. It is a success.' All the others—

The Hon. K.O. Foley interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: And it was Mike Rann's idea. I do remember him referring to them as Pat's trams in parliament a while ago, but I am quite happy to say that all along it was Mike Rann's idea. The tram extension has been an outstanding success. It does present us with pressures on patronage, particularly on two tram rides in the morning, and we acknowledge that, but it is not helped by people making up ridiculous stories.

If you listened to the member for Morphett, not only were they the wrong trams, but you could catch Legionnaires' disease if you rode on them—complete utter invention! We hear that the airconditioning is no good, except that there were no complaints about it in the month of April. If you listen to the member for Morphett, you are likely to be kidnapped and taken off for some sort of alien probe if you ride these trams. The man is pathetic and ridiculous. I am not going to resign if someone faints on public transport.

I am reliably informed by my colleague the Minister for Education who is a doctor, that fainting is actually the body's defence mechanism against a number of ills. That is why four people fainted in the month of October on trains, for example, including two people who fainted on empty trains. It is regrettable that they fainted on empty trains, but they did. That is what happened. People fainted on buses and trains when you ran them.

I will say this: I am very frightened by the spectre of something and it had me concerned when we saw the member of Morphett out with a scantily-clad person. I do hope that person was a volunteer. What I do know is that we have seen opposition leaders in New South Wales and then in Victoria coming out of the surf in their budgie snugglers, and I do not want to see that here. I do not want to see the Leader of the Opposition in his budgie snugglers.

An honourable member: Smugglers.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Budgie smugglers. We do have dress standards on our trams and, above all, the dress standard we have is that we do not want to see a member of the opposition in their bathers or underwear under any circumstances at all.

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