Ms Patten (Northern Metropolitan) — My question is for the Minister for Agriculture, Ms Pulford, representing the Minister for Public Transport. Today the Federation of Community Legal Centres, together with Julian Burnside, QC, launched the Fare Go — Myki, Transport Poverty and Access to Education in Melbourne’s West. The report examined experiences of public transport travel, fares and infringements for young people between the ages of 14 and 17 travelling to and from school. The report found that school travel on the Victorian public transport system is too expensive for many students. For young people between 14 and 17 in particular, public transport is proving at times to be a prohibitively costly exercise. In order to protect the right to education of every young person, will the minister make public transport free for students up to the age of 18?
I thank the minister for her response, and it leads nicely into my supplementary question. The report also identified that expensive public transport, or ‘transport poverty’ as the report coins it, is especially significant for young people and that this has resulted, as the minister mentioned, in contact with the infringement system. It noted that it is a complex, ineffective system that contributes to social hardship. The outcomes of this include missing school, homelessness and financial distress. In order to alleviate transport poverty and its negative outcomes, will the minister abolish public transport fines, including outstanding fines, incurred by students under 18 years?
