Jodie Harrison MP gave evidence at the Inquiry into the Privatisation of Bus Services on Tuesday, May 3.

Ms Harrison spoke on the impact the move has had in the Lake Macquarie/Newcastle region since privatisation in 2017. This is her opening statement to the inquiry:

"I certainly welcome the opportunity to give evidence to the Committee today on behalf of the hundreds and thousands of people who have contacted my office over the past five years in relation to the privatisation of the bus service and the reduction in service they have received.

My office has certainly been inundated with complaints, both before they were implemented and in the aftermath, from people concerned about how they were going to get to work, particularly people with disabilities, but generally people who just want to get to work and provide for their family, parents worried about how their kids are going to get to school, and elderly people and people with disabilities, as the member for Swansea and the member for Newcastle have suggested.

Certainly the public transport was not without need of change at the time, but it should have been a well-thought-out, well-calibrated review and that certainly did not happen.

That is why there are a number of people who have just walked away from being able to use public transport in the area. Certainly it is evidenced by the more than 20,000 people from across the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie areas that have signed the petition calling on the Government to fix the buses in the Newcastle area.

To be honest, it is clear that a private provider being given control of a service like public transport actually creates perverse incentive. The provider needs to attract more customers in order to improve their profits, but they also need to keep costs low.

They can, and they have, achieved that here by sacrificing services to a smaller but more vulnerable contingent of people travelling on public transport, in order to cut their costs but also to appeal to a wider base. In the lead-up to this inquiry I reached out to the constituents who contacted me back in 2017, 2018 and 2019 about how they were going.

For some, their experience had moved on. For some of the school students who were at school at the time and families who had school students, the students are no longer at school. But I heard at the time about 25 families who signed a petition in the suburbs of Redhead, Dudley and Whitebridge to reinstate a school bus service to St Philip's Christian College.

Fifty students in three suburbs were worse off with the changes to the bus service. Those problems are still being experienced now. Driving back to my electorate office last week, about 10 to four in the afternoon, St Mary's Catholic College is on the Pacific Highway and there would have been at least 50 students waiting outside that school for the school buses to arrive more than half an hour after school had finished.

I am still getting complaints from parents about the loss of that school bus service. Then we have, as the member for Newcastle and Swansea have mentioned, people who have lost bus stops outside their home. A Mount Hutton resident told me that, when they first moved there eight years ago, one of the reasons they bought that house was because there was a bus stop only a short distance away and as they aged they were hoping to be able to use public transport in case they lost their licence. Now they just have to use their car. As they age, they are either going to have to move or rely on family.

Another resident who lives in Charlestown, which is not very far away from the main street, said that he has to travel from Newcastle city and it previously took a maximum of 90 minutes and now, occasionally when he wants to leave that city precinct in Newcastle after 5.30 p.m., according to the trip planner it will take 17 hours because there are no buses after 6.30 into his residential area.

There are a number of examples that I can provide and I am happy to go into more with questions. I think basically, at the heart of it, by putting public transport into private hands, this Government has taken what is a community resource away from the community. By putting profit ahead of public service, the privatisation of public transport in my electorate has certainly left a large proportion of the vulnerable community worse off.

You can find the full transcript of the inquiry sitting at Privatisation of bus services (nsw.gov.au)

You can find Jodie Harrison MP’s full submission to the inquiry at: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/78211/065 Ms Jodie Harrison Member for Charlestown MP.pdf