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Sent: Friday, 7 January 2022, 05:14:34 pm AEDT
Subject: Tues.28.9.21 daily digest

Roderick

 "210928Tu-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-LaunchingPlace-HomeHotel-d-ss.jpg" with ATN & v-n

commuter rails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DhJ53apQRY ;

A good folio, and for once the captions aren't outrageous https://www.escape.com.au/top-lists/the-funniest-maps-you-will-ever-see/news-story/2852771b1e9e047929b748aadd807afa

Tues.28.9.21 Metro Twitter
Aircraft: No ramp access to platforms until late 2021 (pedestrian-underpass works).
Flinders St: still with a lane closed for tunnel works.
Mooroolbark: Station closed until late 2021 (level-crossing removal). A shuttle bus will operate Croydon - Mooroolbark - Lilydale, connecting with trains. There will be no access to station platforms or facilities during this time.
Edithvale/Chelsea/Bonbeach: Stations closed until late 2021 (level-crossing removal). A shuttle bus will operate Mordialloc - Carrum, connecting with trains. There will be no access to station platforms or facilities during this time.
The level crossings at Argyle Avenue, Bondi Road and Edithvale Road are closed until early-October.  Chelsea Road is closed permanently. See http://levelcrossings.vic.gov.au/projects/chelsea-road-chelsea
Buses replace trains on sections of the Frankston/Stony Point lines until the last train of Sun 31 Oct (level-crossing works).
Buses replace trains between Newport and Williamstown until the last train of Friday 12 November (level-crossing removal).
Maroondah Highway, Lilydale closed in both directions at the train line for one month, as level-crossing work ramps up on Friday night. John Street will also be closed at this time. See http://levelcrossings.vic.gov.au/disruptions/maroondah-highway-and-john-street-lilydale-road-closure. ; Buses will replace trains for 6 weeks.
Buses replace trains Ringwood - Lilydale until the last train of Sun 24 Oct (level-crossing works).  Opening the new Mooroolbark and Lilydale stations on Monday 25 October
10.00 Hurstbridge line: Buses will replace trains Heidelberg - Greensborough (an equipment fault between Heidelberg and Greensborough). Buses ordered, ETA over 60min. 
- 10.10 Consider Rt 513 for local trips.
- 10.22 Buses ETA over 30min. 
- 10.30 Buses ETA over 20min.
- 10.40  Buses ETA over 10min.
- 10.52 Trains are resuming.  First trains: 10.19 Flinders St - Eltham; 9.46 ex Hurstbridge.
Transport staff are out on network every day to keep public transport moving. Thank you for being patient and kind to all our staff and passengers, and for knowing it's never okay to abuse staff or others.  Because public transport should be safe for all of us.
Buses replace trains Clifton Hill - Mernda from 20.10 until the last train (maintenance works).
Pakenham/Cranbournelines: Buses replace trains Caulfield - Westall from 20.40 until the last train (works).

As it happened: Port Macquarie, Muswellbrook LGAs to enter lockdown as COVID-19 cases grow in NSW; Victoria records 867 new cases, Queensland records three new cases. Broede Carmody and Megan Gorrey September 28, 2021
* 20.02 new tier-1 sites in Victoria. A separate exposure was added on Tuesday for a bus trip on the Shepparton line between Broadmeadows and Nagambie on September 22, with an exposure time listed from 9.15am to 11.45am.
<www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-nsw-and-victoria-look-to-lockdown-exit-strategies-brisbane-on-high-alert-after-confirmed-covid-case-20210927-p58v62.html>

Advice to drop slave labour-linked supplier from billion-dollar Metronet deal never given to minister Marta Pascual Juanola September 28, 2021
Western Australia’s Public Transport Authority recommended dropping a Chinese supplier from the government's billion-dollar train contract amid concerns it used Uighur slave labour in its supply chain.
However, that advice never made it to Transport Minister Rita Saffioti’s desk as it was deemed “too preliminary” by department staff.
WA Premier Mark McGowan and Planning and Transport Minister Rita Saffioti on a TransPerth train. CREDIT:HAMISH HASTIE
The PTA ultimately allowed the French multinational company in charge of the project to make the call, which deemed it too costly to find alternative suppliers.
KTK Group – a major supplier of train fittings headquartered in Changzhou, near Shanghai –was contracted by manufacturing giant Alstom to supply parts for WA’s new fleet of Metronet C-Series railcars as part of a $1.3 billion contract.
The company, which was blacklisted by the US Commerce Department last year, has been hit with accusations it uses slave labour after it was revealed it sourced workers through Beijing’s controversial re-education program Xinjiang Aid.
KTK has denied the allegations and claimed the workers had voluntarily signed contracts that complied with China’s labour laws.
But the PTA was concerned enough about the accusations to send a draft briefing note to Ms Saffioti’s office in November 2020 recommending the government replace KTK with local suppliers.
In the note, obtained by WAtoday under Freedom of Information laws, the authority argued the change would benefit businesses in WA and recommended increasing funding for the project to cover the difference in cost.
In an internal email chain between the PTA and Ms Saffioti’s office a month later, authority staff said they had received assurances from Alstom the change wouldn’t cause major delays as the company already had a list of potential suppliers.
But Ms Saffioti’s staff found the solution “relatively unattractive” as KTK was planning to open a facility in Perth and alternative suppliers were unlikely to boost the percentage of locally produced components.
Ultimately, the idea was scrapped after Alstom deemed alternative suppliers too expensive.
Ms Saffioti’s office would not reveal how much more it would have cost to use local suppliers, arguing it was commercial in confidence, but a spokeswoman said it was a substantial increase.
“Alstom investigated alternate suppliers but ultimately decided the cost and the limited local content made them unviable and did not pursue this further with the state government,” she said.
The briefing note was emailed to staff at Ms Saffioti’s office, but it was never put to the minister because it wasn’t formally approved by PTA managing director Mark Burgess.
An authority spokeswoman conceded it wasn’t common practice to submit briefing notes informally, but staff regularly provided advice to the minister’s office on emerging issues.
She said the final decision to move forward with KTK as a supplier was made by Alstom, and, as such, no final recommendation was sent to Ms Saffioti for consideration.
“No other briefing note on this topic was submitted, and the minister was not involved in the decision process,” she said.
KTK has previously confirmed it employed almost 80 workers from Nilka county, a Kazakh-majority area, between 2018 and 2019 for its factory 4000 kilometres away in Jiangsu, through Xinjiang Aid.
Researchers estimate about 80,000 members of persecuted minorities have been moved out of their homes or detention camps in Xinjiang to work at factories under the program, which has been marketed as a “poverty alleviation” initiative for re-educated Uighurs.
PTA said Alstom was confident in the integrity of its supply chain and the conduct of its suppliers – including KTK – which were contractually bound by the Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018.
Alstom audited the KTK facilities blacklisted by the US in 2020 and found no evidence of human rights violations. However, China experts have previously questioned the ability of companies to appropriately determine the veracity of KTK’s claims given the lack of transparency in Xinjiang.
Alstom directed all queries to the PTA.
RELATED ARTICLE A farmer harvests cotton in a field in Hami, Xinjiang, China. Ban Xinjiang cotton and other slave labour products, Senate committee urges
RELATED ARTICLE Xinjiang, Perth trains, Transperth, Metronet, Uighur workers. WAtoday Perth’s billion-dollar train deal linked to exploited Uighur workers in China
<www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/advice-to-drop-slave-labour-linked-supplier-from-billion-dollar-metronet-deal-never-given-to-minister-20210819-p58kb5.html>
* So what I'm reading is the PTA will go ahead with sourcing the components from a company headquartered in Changzhou that operates a black listed site in a region known to engage in modern slavery... Poor form PTA... just shows that the Modern Slavery legislation has not or will not make any tangible impact what so ever, it just results in more paper based "tick and flick" compliance activities to shift the corporate blame in the event someone asks too many questions..
* A prime example of the tail wagging the donkey !!! Who runs the government the public service or the Minister ?????
* Western Australian prices generally and alternative suppliers are far too expensive. Slave labor in China, (And Vietnam, and Indonesia) is why this is attractive for cost. For Western Australia to match China.(and other mentioned countries). They would have to recruit local people to earn very low wages and be exempt from certain regulations and duties of care. Even at that level of unattraction to employees, you still wouldn't match China's pricing.
* French multinational? Chinese owned supply company? I thought Metronets big promise was local local local? And another example of Ministers throwing out the “I know nothing” card to save their own jobs while blaming the staff in their offices!
* Imagine what Minister Safioti would be saying about this if she was still in opposition. By the way, are we ever going to get a true figure on what are no doubt the most expensive rail cars in the world, and what the alternatives would have cost. Where are the media questions?
* Did the advice really not get to Saffioti or is this just another cover-up for yet another one of her blunders?
* It’s utterly naive to believe that this advice didn’t go all the way to the minister’s desk, but then it’s normal practice for ministers in this state government to play dumb and pretend that the fault lies with someone else - this time it’s the civil servants getting thrown under the bus.
* You're a government agency. You've already awarded the contract. There is no more "commercial in confidence"; you've lost confidence. This is the same as the Huawei infrastructure debacle. How can a department and its lead be so willingly negligent.