The list looks depressing

John Cain Senior ALP Premier closed 15 regional railway lines in one day on December 8 , 1956

Cain/Kirner Government ALP 1982 - 1992 closed 34

regional rail lines closed on October 4, 1982

Henry Bolte LNP during 17 years of government closed 31 regional rail lines.

By the time Dick Hamer come to be premier and during the 9 years of his LNP government oversaw 100 station closures and 14 Line closures. By this time there was not much left to close. Hamer had been beaten to it.

The atrocious Lonie Report which advocated the closure of an extreme number of rail lines even closing the line between Melbourne and Geelong and replacing the passenger service with buses.

The Lonie Report was later to influence the Kennett Government policies of rail sell off and privatisation of the network. Which was in actual fact a sell out of the electorate.

John McEwen Country Party closed 6 regional rail lines

Jeff Kennett LNP 1992 - 1996 closed 4 regional rail lines and sold off the network and privatised the network from which it has never recovered.

TALLY

ALP closures 49

LNP closures 49

Country Party 6
Total 104

The ALP and LNP and the Country Party have all perpetrated policies that have targeted people living in regional Victoria with the closure of their means of transport and in the words of Jacinta Allen Minister for Public Transport their CONNECTIVITY with the stroke of a pen causing isolation and being disconnected from the rest of the state.

The ALP initiated the start of the rail line catastrophe with the first party to close a rail line in 1947 with the Benalla to Tatonga line.

However, in The VR Timeline reveals that closures reached saturation levels of 117 closures up until 2014.

Since the election of 2014 the RRAV has been at the fore front of making passenger and freight rail transport front and centre of the Victorian Election and will continue to do so for each subsequent election.

The ALP and LNP have both been derelict and negligent in abandoning regional people's access to passenger and freight rail services and what the electorate has seen since 2014 is both the ALP and LNP grovelling to win back the hearts and minds of the regional and country electorate.

The 2018 election is no different with financially extravagant rail policies many of the policies are dominantly Melbourne focused, rather than policies that are practical and realistic to fix up the mess they have created.

To replace passenger rail services with cramped coaches is not providing a service, but a disservice to the people of regional Victoria.

The ALP and LNP have not served or represented the people of regional Victoria with any sense of confidence and trust, which has been regularly betrayed by the ALP and LNP, yet they resort to blaming each other, when in actual fact the statistics reveal that the ALP and LNP are both perpetrators of regional rail line and station closures.