The New South Wales government had made plans for a two-week shutdown of the state’s train system as early as last week, casting doubt on the timeline provided by the transport minister, David Elliott, about when he first knew of Monday’s network closure.
Documents obtained through the Fair Work Commission reveal senior officials in the state’s transport department believed as early as Thursday last week that the state’s rail system would need to be shuttered for a fortnight if industrial action proposed by the Rail, Tram and Bus Union went ahead.
Ahead of the planned action, a risk assessment conducted by Sydney Trains finalised on 16 February concluded that the “risks associated” with the union’s planned action meant the rail system would need to be shut down.
“On 17 February 2022, in view of the finalised risk assessment, the executive leadership team made the decision that the rail network could not be operated for the two-week period commencing 21 February 2022,” Sydney Trains acting chief customer officer, Jasbir Tumber, said in a statement to the FWC.
The assessment was carried out before the RTBU agreed to amend its planned industrial action at the FWC on Saturday night, but it makes clear Sydney Trains did not believe the rail network would be able to operate without “altered working conditions”, which the union was committed to not undertaking.
The existence of the document raises questions about the timeline previously provided by Elliott about when he first knew of the shutdown risk.
Elliott on Wednesday blamed a communication breakdown for not alerting the premier, saying: “My office remained of the view until approximately 1.30[am Monday] that there would be a significant disruption to services but not a total network shutdown.”
In question time on Thursday, Labor pushed both Elliott and the premier, Dominic Perrottet, on previous statements in which they insisted they were not aware of the shutdown despite the information having been circulated to various government departments.
Asked during question time on Thursday whether the decision to close the network had been made on 17 February, Perrottet replied: “Not to my knowledge”.
Elliott dodged questions on his knowledge of the shutdown, describing the submissions made by the department as “a contingency plan, an assessment”.
“Assessments are done to assure that any potential contingency is addressed,” he said.
“Assessments are done by government. Every time a department faces a dilemma, whether it be industrial action, whether it be a police operation, whether it be natural disaster, they do assessments to address all contingencies.
“This isn’t rocket science. This is government 101.”
While Elliott has previously told reporters he had an “inkling” of what might have occurred, he has defended not informing Perrottet of the shutdown because it was not a certainty.
“I had no confirmation and I didn’t know exactly what action Transport for NSW would be taking,” he said this week.
But the thousands of pages of transcripts and affidavits released by the commission on Thursday afternoon reveal the possibility of a shutdown had been widely shared within various government departments.
NSW Treasury chief economist, Stephen Walters, conducted modelling forecasting the cost of a shutdown as $33.3m a day, and $370m for the full two weeks.
“I have been informed and verily believe that the cumulative effect of the notified industrial action is that there will be a complete stoppage of train services for the period of the notified action,” he stated.
The Department of Communities and Justice, the Department of Education and the Department of Health also provided affidavits to the commission on the impacts of industrial action, including a possible two-week shutdown.
The documents also reveal for the first time the cause of a breakdown between the government and union after an agreement between the parties had been struck on Saturday night.
While the government has accused the union of “walking away” from the agreement, the transcript reveals the union’s barrister, Lucy Saunders, had read out the terms of the deal between both parties on Saturday night.
However emails between officials from the department of transport and the union late on Sunday afternoon reveal a “disagreement” on the details of the rostering arrangements agreed to by the parties.
During negotiations before the FWC over the weekend, the RTBU agreed to drop both a ban on overtime and alterations to rostering arrangements.
It planned to push ahead with a ban on altered working, meaning staff only would perform shifts they were set without any changes.
The documents submitted to the FWC show Sydney Trains did not believe the rail network would be able to operate without altered working conditions.
However the government’s lawyer, Maurice Baroni, was unable to tell the commission on Sunday night whether the misunderstanding would lead to the network shutting down on Monday because of the dropped claims.
“We are undertaking a risk assessment to see what the impact of this is,” he said in the hearing.
“The affidavit of Mr Tumber doesn’t specifically deal with this because what he was dealing with was something different to what arose out of the discussions yesterday.”
On Thursday, NSW Labor leader, Chris Minns, called for Elliott to be sacked from the ministry.
“David Elliot has to go,” he said.
“All of these people all over the NSW government knew about a two week stoppage, but the transport minister himself had absolutely no idea.
“At the very least, he’s an incompetent minister, not in charge of his portfolio.”
He also questioned how it was possible that Perrottet did not know of the looming shutdown.
The minister has previously offered conflicting versions of when he became aware of the shutdown, but insisted the decision was made after he went to bed between 11pm and midnight on Sunday night. On Tuesday he told parliament during question time that he knew about the closure early on Monday.
Perrottet insisted on Wednesday that he retained confidence in Elliott as transport minister, while rebuking his decision to go to bed as transport scrambled to find a solution on Sunday night.
