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Six Queensland transport staff spend more than $110,000 on travel
An AAP report says that Six Queensland Transport employees have run up more than $110,000 in overseas travel bills over the past year, with figures released by the state government showing that TransLink staff spent $111,292 travelling to New Zealand, USA, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Germany.
A female staffer racked up the biggest bill for a single trip – $25,970 on an 11-day visit to the US to conduct an audit of “cubic transportation systems”, with another staffer leaving taxpayers with a bill of nearly $28,000 following two separate trips.
TransLink provides a single public transport network covering south-east Queensland.
Opposition transport spokesman Tim Nicholls said TransLink bureaucrats were more interested in “jetting off overseas” than fixing public transport problems at home, adding, “While Premier Peter Beattie’s bureaucratic fat cats were jetting off around the world, south-east Queensland’s public transport system has been plagued by problems,” he said.
“(We’ve seen) new trains that wouldn’t fit through tunnels, more and more commuters being left behind because trains are too full and continuing delays with the smart card system.”
The TransLink smart card is part of a new automatic fare collection system that can be topped up like a prepaid mobile phone for travel on buses, trains and ferries and Mr Nicholls said the government promised the card would be rolled out in 2002, adding, “Five years later and south-east Queensland commuters are still waiting.”
Transport Minister Paul Lucas denied the trips were junkets, saying that staff regularly travelled overseas to investigate transport options which could be used in Queensland and adding, “I want them to go there to make sure, for example, when we’re looking at Gold Coast light rail or guided busways, that we know what is the best (option) to suit us”.
Mr Lucas said the smart card would be fully rolled out by the end of the year, adding, “We’ve said all along that I will not accept things until we are 100 per cent satisfied with them”
“But we’ve had well over $1 million in tickets issued already with the machinery, (and) the equipment is installed in just about all of our railway stations.”
Report by The Mole
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