Politicians trying to win votes before an election? You don’t say

A six-month trial of 50¢ public transport fares in the months before a major state election?

An attempt to win votes, definitely. But so are most things – and it doesn’t by default make them bad.

Premier Steven Miles was upfront at his Sunday media conference with deputy Cameron Dick (left), and Transport Minister Bart Mellish (right): we will be seeing a “big campaign” pushing the 50-cent fares.Credit: Steven Miles / LinkedIn

The already heavily promoted push by the third-term government now under Premier Steven Miles has drawn such jabs from commentators and critics – explained away by Miles as a pet project.

“I moved a motion about this at [a] Young Labor Conference when I was in my teens,” he chuckled in response to questions from journalists on Monday about why it was only getting green-lit now.

“I wasn’t the transport minister, I was never in a role where bringing something like this forward was my job. But now that I am the premier, it turns out, I get a chance to make some calls.”

It’s one thing being premier. It’s another thing to find yourself heading towards an election from which you yourself have suggested you may not emerge as the premier.

Potential political defeat can be a serious motivator, like any milestone, to tick things off the bucket list.

Miles and his colleagues will also be hoping like hell the trains, buses, ferries and trams across the south-east, and key regional cities, can cope with a rapid return to pre-pandemic patronage.

This is already a problem on some services and routes, and Miles has promised to “respond” to the “more crowded services” he expects to see if the (Green-tinted) $150 million trial is to be a success.

What that response might be is unsaid, but the comments appear to be an early effort to get ahead of likely LNP “chaos and crisis” criticism if such images emerge after August 5.

In March 2019, before COVID further reduced low reliance on public transport in Brisbane, 18.3 million trips were taken on services in the south-east. The March just gone? About 14.7 million.

Miles’ suggestions on Sunday that he would like to see usage back to 2019 levels, plus population growth (about 5.5 per cent since 2020), means many more bums on seats – or feet in aisles.

And, Labor hopes, fewer cars on the M1, Bruce Highway or Ipswich Motorway, even if not everyone can easily shift travel habits onto a public transport network also largely funnelling into Brisbane.

While experts have pointed out these issues since Sunday’s announcement, they note that it will genuinely help some travellers. Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has said similar.

The state LNP opposition has offered backhanded support for the move but has put forward little else in this space.

A promise to build the Sunshine Coast Direct Rail to Maroochydore, further than Labor’s interim Caloundra endpoint, before 2032 is one step. Renaming Cross River Rail the “Elizabeth Line” in honour of the late monarch is another. “Public transport” rates one lonely mention in the LNP’s Right Priorities document.

But to reiterate a question we posed when entering the election year last October: What else should political parties and candidates be talking about as they vie for your vote?

That is, after all, what an election campaign is all about.