Family First’s Jane Foreman says the Auditor-General’s finding that Labor has been charging a secret levy on every public transport fare in Victoria since January 2025 (The Age and Herald Sun, 26 August) is the latest in a run of confirmed cover-ups, and asks how Victorians are meant to believe Premier Ben Carroll will be different when he sat in the cabinet that approved this one and agreed to keep it quiet.
Mrs Foreman says the charge, called the “rail improvement charge”, adds 1 per cent to every metropolitan and regional fare each year on top of the usual inflation increase, and has been collected from commuters since 1 January 2025. Sixty per cent of the money, an estimated $4.8 billion, is earmarked for the Suburban Rail Loop. In twenty months, not one fare rise announcement mentioned it.
Ben Carroll was Minister for Public Transport when the levy was first approved in August 2021. He was Deputy Premier when it was confirmed in December 2023, and he had joined the four-person budget and finance committee by the time it was confirmed again in November 2024. His deputy, Gabrielle Williams, was the public transport minister who put it on the fares. Treasurer Colin Brooks claims the charge does not fund the Suburban Rail Loop, and says he does not know who approved it.
The levy falls hardest on the families furthest from the tunnel it helps pay for. Commuters in Dandenong, Cranbourne, Narre Warren and Berwick have paid it on every fare since January last year, to help build 26 kilometres of track between Cheltenham and Box Hill.
“They charged every fare in Victoria for twenty months and told nobody,” said Mrs Foreman. “That is not an oversight. Somebody decided to levy it, and then somebody decided not to tell you.”
“Ben Carroll was in the room. He was the public transport minister who oversaw its approval, and he was at the cabinet table every time it was confirmed. He now says he leads a government that levels with Victorians.”
“Families in Dandenong and Cranbourne are paying a tax nobody told them about, for a train they will never catch,” said Mrs Foreman.
“And Victorians are being asked to take the Premier’s royal commission on trust. It does not report until August 2027, nine months after they vote, and the Premier who called it sat in the cabinet that hid this tax. Labor gets to spend the entire campaign saying wait for the commission.”
Family First is calling on Premier Ben Carroll and Treasurer Colin Brooks to scrap the rail improvement charge from public transport fares immediately, to name every minister who approved it and every minister who agreed to hide it, and to confirm that the royal commission’s terms of reference reach the concealment of taxes and costs by government, not only the conduct of contractors.
Mrs Foreman says the secret levy is further proof Victoria needs Family First’s genuinely independent voice holding this government to account in the Legislative Council after November, because a government that can hide a tax for twenty months will never be the one that finds the next one.
