General News
23 July, 2026
Outage highlights mismanagement, MP says
SOUTH West Coast MP Roma Britnell has hit out at the mismanagement of Victoria’s rail network following the recent Telstra outage.
Ms Britnell said passengers paid the price for the government’s failure to have a contingency plan after a nation-wide Telstra outage derailed the National Train Communications System, forcing a halt in V/Line services.
She said the collapse of V/Line’s communications network demonstrated a fundamental failure of governance and risk management.
“Any competent risk management assessment would identify that you should never rely on a single communications system without a robust backup,” Ms Britnell said.
“The government’s failure to adequately assess and manage critical risks has caused widespread disruption across the V/Line network, resulting in regional Victorian rail transport being ground to a halt.
“This is another example of a government that simply cannot manage essential public infrastructure.”
Ms Britnell said the outage was just the latest example of a rail service which continues to fail south west passengers.
“Since January, more than 26 per cent of Warrnambool Line services have been replaced by buses, meaning passengers are not receiving the train service they booked and expected,” she said.
“I’ve even had community members contact me after waiting at Sherwood Park Station last week, only for the train not to arrive at all.
“We had planned bus replacements, the state-wide communications failure, ongoing disruptions and more planned replacement services over the weekend.”
Ms Britnell said regional residents continued to face disruptions stemming from government failures to bolster rail services.
“Passengers are also still dealing with overcrowding because the government has failed to provide the additional carriages our community has been calling for, despite previous claims they couldn’t be operated proving unfounded,” she said.
“Regional Victorians deserve a reliable rail service, not one where disruption has become the norm.
“The system failure simply reinforces that regional communities are not this government’s priority.”