Get it up to speed

ANDREW MATHIESON
BY ANDREW MATHIESON
A TRANSPORT lobby group has called on State Government to meet demand for improved public services on the Bellarine Penin-sula.
Public Transport Users Assoc-iation’s Tim Petersen was responding to a report in last week’s Independent about Centrelink’s refusal to open an office on the peninsula.
Centrelink area manager Kate Hay told the Independent that Geelong’s two customer service centres were “easily accessible” for peninsula residents.
But a community survey as part of a submission for the Centrelink office had found transport was a major stumbling block to peninsula residents accessing the city offices.
More than a quarter of the peninsula’s 42,000 residents are on Commonwealth benefits.
“I think this underlines the poor quality of public transport services on the Bellarine Peninsula,” Mr Petersen said
“During the election campaign we saw a reduction of fares that will help people on borderline incomes but the quality of the service is still much lower in the towns on the Bellarine Peninsula.
“Going by the size of the towns, the service is not what they should expect.”
Mr Petersen called for a restructure of the peninsula’s public transport, including introduction of buses between Geelong and peninsula towns on half-hourly services.
He believed the existing indirect routes only added to the “inconvenience” of long queues at Centrelink offices.
Mr Petersen said subsidising private operators to provide public transport had failed.
“We were very disappointed during the recent election campaign that no service improvements were announced at all by the incoming Labor Government,” he said.
“The basic issue is that transport is of fundamental importance for people.”
Labor Member for Bellarine Lisa Neville defended the Government’s transport policy.
She said it had improved bus services.
“Some of those have commenced already in Bellarine but additional services will be rolled out over the next couple of years in other communities,” she said.
She vowed to write to federal Human Services Minister Joe Hockey about the Centrelink rejection.
Ms Neville said she had written a letter in support of the community application on the grounds the peninsula was a “growing community”.