The Liberal minority government’s failure to deliver safety upgrades promised over a year ago continues to put bus drivers at risk.

Just this weekend we saw another horrific incident involving an attack on a Metro driver. If Metro buses had safety screens and transit officers, their drivers would be protected from potential harm and incidents like we saw on Friday night.

The Liberal minority government announced funding for the safety measures over 12 months ago, but we still haven’t seen them and drivers continue to be subjected to dangerous conditions at work.

Former Transport Minister Michael Ferguson said at the time that “Phase two of our transit officer deployment will now be accelerated, which will see individual officers authorised by the Transport Commissioner to have new, tougher powers including issuing infringement notices and removing disorderly passengers.”

Transit officer deployment has moved at a snail’s pace and every day they’re further delayed puts more bus drivers at risk, which is completely unacceptable. Minister Abetz should move heaven and earth to have the screens installed and officers deployed for the start of 2025 so that our Metro drivers can be kept safe on the job.  

Labor stands for safe, secure, well-paid jobs and that means backing in our hard-working Metro drivers with better conditions.

Meg Brown MP
Shadow Minister for Transport