Geelong leaders united on public transport need

THE heads of G21, the Committee for Geelong and the City of Greater Geelong council all agree the municipality needs better public transport solutions, and needs them now.

G21 chief executive officer Giulia Baggio, Committee for Geelong chief executive officer Michael Johnston and Geelong mayor Trent Sullivan universally supported the idea while on a panel during the Regions Rising Geelong conference on Tuesday this week.

The five members of the “Regional Partnerships” panel at the conference, staged by the Regional Institute of Australia (RAI) at GMHBA Stadium, were asked what they would hypothetically do if they became premier of Victoria for a day.

In his answer, Cr Sullivan said making advancements on implementing an integrated transport network plan for Geelong would be his priority.

He noted the city presented a proposal for high-speed rail to the state government in 2018, which had influenced what had been rolled out since, but more needed to be done to reduce the reliance on cars.

“Population growth and population movements are dictated by your transport system; how can you get people around?” he said.

“If you make it easy to get people from Winchelsea to Melbourne [for example], then you have population growth.

“In Geelong, we’ve seen we’ve had such intense population growth during COVID and even beforehand, but what we need now is to have an easy way for people to get around to maintain the livability of our area.”

Mr Johnston quipped Cr Sullivan had largely stolen his answer, but said the $2 billion of government funding earmarked for the paused Geelong Fast Rail project “could go a very long way to improving the transport infrastructure in Geelong”.

“I think a lot of people around town would probably see a greater benefit in getting that right within our city than just making it 10 minutes quicker to get to Melbourne.”

Ms Baggio said G21’s public transport strategy, to be released soon, had creating a viable, region-wide public transport as a key finding,

“Because at the moment, we’re one of the most car-reliant regions in Victoria, and we’ve got to get that down.

“We’ve got too many people moving here now for that to be viable, ongoing.”

About 120 people attended Tuesday’s Regions Rising conference – the Victorian leg of a national series – during which RAI chief executive officer Liz Ritchie launched the RAI’s “It’s Your Move” campaign, which aims to encourage metropolitan residents to take up the thousands of well-paid, professional positions on offer now in regional Australia.

Under the RAI’s Regionalisation Ambition for Victoria, the number of people “living prosperously” in Victoria’s regions would increase by 85,000 and the proportion of new migrants would double by 2032, among many other measures.