James O’Doherty: Transport minister Jo Haylen’s service could be terminated by train stoppage

Sydney’s train strike has not come as any surprise. The transport minister had weeks to plan for this but instead basked in the glory of a Metro she did nothing to build, writes James O’Doherty.

Sydney is staring down the barrel of the worst rail shutdown in living memory, and transport minister Jo Haylen only has herself to blame.

The looming chaos that is set to leave millions of commuters stranded on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning is a direct result of the Minns government’s public sector wage policy.

The rail tram and bus union is holding the government, and commuters, to ransom over its claim for a 32 per cent pay rise over four years.

RTBU NSW secretary Toby Warnes admitted as much on ABC radio on Wednesday morning.

He said the action which has sparked Haylen to shut down the network this weekend is “part of enterprise bargaining negotiations,” conceding it would all go away if the government coughs up the cash.

The impact cannot be overstated. Commuters, concert-goers, and sports fans will be left in the lurch by a rail network that will, as of now, grind completely to a halt.

Held to ransom.... NSW Transport minister Jo Haylen. Picture: NewsWire / John Appleyard

This strike action has not come as any surprise. Haylen has had weeks to plan for this; last week she ran trains 24 hours a day over the weekend without any problems.

Now, she says that running extra services in the middle of the night would be impossible because the network needs to shut down for maintenance.

NSW Premier Chris Minns with Transport Minister Joe Haylen and former Premiers Mike Baird and Dominic Perrottet mark the Sydney Metro opening. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard.

Rather than basking in the reflected glory of a Metro system she had no part in designing or implementing, she could have spent the past six months doing some actual work.

It is hard to see how Haylen gets out of this mess.

It all comes back to Premier Chris Minns removing the wages cap on public sector unions allowing them to campaign for increasingly generous pay rises.

The entire debacle, unless resolved, will be worse than when Sydneysiders woke up to discover that the entire rail network had been shut down in the middle of the night due to the threat of industrial action.

At the time, Minns - then Opposition leader - accused then Minister David Elliott of “total incompetence” after leaving “over a million people stranded” and overseeing a “train network in chaos”.

“The NSW Transport Minister has got to go,” he said.

If trains are terminated for more than 48 hours this weekend, Jo Haylen could face termination herself.