Well, welcome to 2018! I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas and New Year festivities and have now settled back into the swing of daily life.

While I had a restful Christmas, the New Year has been quite chaotic since the new bus timetables were announced on January 2 and came into effect on Sunday, 14 January.

My staff returned to work to find over 400 emails in the inbox and almost 100 messages left on the answering service 90% of which were complaints about the so-called new and improved public transport system.

The phones have been running hot with constituents stories about longer journey times, changing buses two or three times, increased costs, reduced or no service availability, lack of connectivity and a complete lack of consideration for people with disabilities.

A community protest meeting was held on Monday, February 19 at Belmont 16 Footers and was attended by over 1,000 people. At that meeting I, along with my Hunter colleagues from Swansea, Wallsend and Newcastle, and the Leader of the Opposition, Luke Foley, committed to campaigning for an urgent independent review of the new system and we will not give up until the Premier and Transport Minister agree to a review and there is a better outcome for the community.

The meeting also unanimously supported the following motion that was moved by Tim Crakanthorp:

This community rejects the changes to the Newcastle Transport network which were implemented in January 2018 because it has led to:


Longer journey times
Poor connectivity
Cuts to services
Reduced operating hours; and
A more inconvenient service
We therefore demand the Minister for Transport intervene and conduct a full and thorough review of the timetable and routing, which is transparent and consultative and restores essential bus services to our community.

For more information on more actions being taken to fix Newcastle Buses contact my office or look for #FixNewcastleBuses on social media.