End of the line for Kosky

Booming patronage numbers in public transport, pushed on by massive population growth and rising petrol prices, combined to make her portfolio more challenging than ever before.

In 2007, there were 414 million trips made by Melburnians on a train, tram or bus. By last year, it had risen to 491 million and growing.

While more buses were put on in some of the city's least-serviced areas, the growth in the number of train and tram trips remained relatively static — leading to serious overcrowding at peak times on most lines.

Yesterday, after three years and immense pressure in what Premier John Brumby deemed the Government's toughest portfolio, Kosky resigned from Parliament to deal with serious family issues.

She told a packed press conference she had never shied away from the tough jobs and that "hopefully it has made a big difference to public transport in this state".

Brumby said the pressure of life as transport minister was immense. "It is a very challenging portfolio. In the history of the state I can't think of a public transport minister that has had an easy run. It's probably the most demanding portfolio."

Adding to the pressure and difficulty, the Premier said, were patronage numbers — particularly on Melbourne's trains.

In her three years as public transport minister, Lynne Kosky has ensured that Melbourne's trains and trams are run by overseas companies: in Metro Trains, it is a company majority owned by the Chinese Government, and in Yarra Trams' case it is a company majority owned by French national rail operator SNCF.

She has overseen the disastrous partial roll-out of the myki smartcard, and was there for three summers when commuters faced meltdown, once because of braking issues on the trains and twice because the infrastructure simply failed to stand up in severe heat.

Asked yesterday to name her successes in the portfolio, Kosky said the Victorian Transport Plan — an ambitious but largely unfunded $38 billion wish-list for Victoria's roads and public transport networks released in December 2008.

She pointed to $6 billion worth of new projects under way, including a fleet of new trains that will indeed address serious overcrowding problems once they start arriving this year.

And she named the Regional Rail Link — a $4.3 billion rail line from Southern Cross Station to Werribee that will slow down V/Line services to Geelong slightly but open up new stations in Melbourne's growing west — as close to her heart.

"It will significantly improve our rail network and deliver to the growing west the improved connections that they have long deserved."

She also named the revitalisation of the state's freight network — which is still in a seriously degraded condition — and upgrades to the state's level crossings as her major achievements.

Kosky said yesterday that criticism as a politician was simply something you had to bear. "You cop the criticisms and the bouquets as part of public life," she said. "It is a fantastic portfolio. I hope the next minister enjoys the job as much as I have."

For Melbourne's commuters, the differences she made haven't yet started to be too apparent: last week during the summer's first seriously hot day, a virtually identical number of trains were cancelled as during the first hot day of 2009.

Thousands of tram passengers continue to experience serious overcrowding and unpleasant conditions on searing hot days in trams without cooling.

And the myki ticket system descended into near farce at the end of 2009, with the smartcard introduced — poorly — on trains but not trams and buses, despite hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds being thrown at it.

Kosky was regarded as one of the high-flyers of the Bracks government. The former finance minister and long-serving education minister was once considered the woman most likely to be premier.

Praise was thrust upon her as education minister, a portfolio in which she was regarded as a serious reformer and as a success. However, any praise quickly dried up when she took over the transport portfolio. (For Brumby, Kosky's resignation is an opportunity to renew the public transport "brand" with a fresh voice.)

In a generally stellar political career, the first serious downward turn was the leaking of an email to her colleagues in April 2007.

An email in her name bluntly asked fellow MPs to send commuters' complaints about public transport services to somebody else. While the email was poorly phrased and stand-offish, a fair reading suggests it was intended to help MPs direct constituents with minor complaints to the right place. But the perception remained in commuters' minds — here was a minister who did not wish to hear their complaints.

Her time as public transport minister brought up several similar instances that could have been avoided. Kosky's political antennae in the portfolio was at times off. She failed to recognise that the travelling public experiencing severe delays or overcrowding may find her words insensitive. (She later conceded the transport complaints email sent under her name could have been worded "more gently".)

In 2007, questioned by this newspaper about bringing the public transport system back into state hands, she said: "Do I want to run a train system? I don't think so." It is a quote that would haunt her for her remaining time in the job.

Similarly, in an interview with The Age three months ago about the meltdown of the train system last year in severe heat, Kosky relayed a tale of being on the way to the movies when she started getting texts from bureaucrats that the train system was starting to fail.

"I was in Yarraville, it was about 6.30 in the evening, and I was about to go to the movies — which were cancelled because the electricity was all down. Then I got the call [that the network was out]. I was getting text messages to tell me which parts of the network were out."

Most train commuters would have hoped Kosky would have been in a train control centre, shouting at someone to sort it out, not on the way to the movies.

Over the course of her three years, problems in public transport mounted, as decades of under-investment and a decade of privatised operators creaming off profits while spending as little as possible on upkeep began to show.

The buying back of Hitachi train carriages — the oldest on the system that the Department of Transport had phased out and sold off — were also emblematic of an erratically run bureaucracy that had complete control of the spin but little control of the system it had privatised.

All combined with myki to give a sense of chaos around public transport in Victoria, despite improvements in some areas — including particularly buses — being made steadily.

Myki has perhaps cruelled Kosky's time as public transport minister the most — and she has taken the blame. But the same public servants who ran the myki tender — which saw the company that advised on how the tender should be set up, bidding and ultimately winning the contract — are still making decisions.

Despite shortcomings in the bureaucracy, one consultant who worked on major transport projects within the department during Kosky's time described her as "ineffectual and a lightweight in terms of portfolio management in transport — someone who wanted to be really left alone.

"A whole range of folk were feeding her information that was . . . too optimistic about what the real situation was. All ministers suffer from poor advice from bureaucrats, but [former transport minister Peter] Batchelor knew enough about his portfolio that he would know when to really focus on something and drill down on it. She came in brand new, and was fed a lot of crap, and was never discerning in terms of what information was being fed through to her."

Others are equally damning.

"Effectively, she couldn't make a decision on her own," said another consultant who worked on the re-contracting of Melbourne's trains and trams.

"She didn't have a handle on the portfolio. People threw stones at Peter Batchelor, but he knew his portfolio back to front."

Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder would not talk yesterday about Kosky's role as minister, instead wanting to focus on the Premier's role in big transport decisions. "It was Brumby and not her who said last year that we wouldn't have the same problems with the trains this year; he made the predictions about myki working; he made the prediction that we would have new trains on the line by Christmas. She is now a private person who departs the scene."

But he said Brumby would now be desperate to find the "best possible spin doctor" to try to get through to November's state election.

Mulder said the next minister had to focus on the basics of running a public transport system. "It gets back to . . . the rails, the points, the crossings, the signals, the trains, the air-conditioning, the overhead wires; you have to make sure you have the infrastructure that brings about reliability. Instead we have got a $38 billion transport plan, mostly unfunded, and a whole host of advertising."

The Public Transport Users Association, which wants to see the public transport and roads portfolios once again merged into the one ministry, were conciliatory about the minister's performance yesterday. President Daniel Bowen said that "for all the criticisms Lynne Kosky has faced, behind the scenes she has secured unprecedented investment in the train network".

"In 12 to 18 months we will see a lot of the problems we are seeing now start to disappear as improved maintenance and better infrastructure comes online," he said. "Behind the scenes there has been a lot of work to upgrade the train network. She has worked quite hard at improving things."

And he pointed out that myki was a "dud project" handed to Kosky by former transport minister Peter Batchelor.

"She hasn't been as bad a minister as people probably think."

KOSKY'S TRAIN OF THOUGHTS

"Do I want to run a train system? I don't think so. My advice to cabinet will be that I don't think it (the train and tram system) should be brought back into public hands." - February 26, 2007

"There are different layers of responsibility, obviously, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with me, and it stops with the Government." - January 27, 2009

"As commuters start to use the myki system, they will start to see how good it is, how easy it is, and (that) it is much cheaper." - December 29, 2009

"I know $1.3 billion sounds like a lot of money. Public transport costs a lot of money." - January 2, 2010

"I don't have any regrets. I have a fantastic portfolio and was able to achieve an incredible amount along with other people."

LYNNE KOSKY A LIFE IN AND OUT OF POLITICS

BORN: September 2, 1958, in Melbourne

EDUCATION: Wembley Primary School 1964-70; Footscray High School 1971-76; BSocW 1980, University of Melbourne

CAREER:

1981: Social worker, Education Department

1982-86: Community education officer

1987-89: Policy adviser, youth affairs, Department of Labour

1989-90: Community liaison officer, Melbourne Olympic committee

1990-92: Ministerial adviser, Community Services Victoria.

1991-92: Member, Coode Island Review Panel

1993: Executive officer, Westgate Community Initiatives Group

1995: Lecturer (part time), RMIT

POLITICS

1985: Becomes member of ALP

1986-90: Councillor, Footscray City Council

1988-89: Mayor

1993-96: ALP conference delegate

1996: Elected MLA for Altona (reelected 1999, 2002, 2006)

1996-99: Opposition spokeswoman for housing; youth affairs

1999: Opposition spokeswoman for employment, tertiary education and training

1999-2002: Minister for post compulsory education, training and employment

2000-02: Minister for finance

2002-06: Minister for education and training

2006-10: Minister for public transport and minister for the arts