Transport minister defends Sydney Metro opening delay 04:30

Minister Jo Halen's on the line for us. Minister, thanks for your time. Good afternoon, Chris. Touch embarrassing. Look, it's not embarrassing when you talk about safety. And look, I appreciate people will be disappointed that they can't jump on board on the weekend. I'm disappointed too. I was really looking forward to it. The excitement has been building. But unfortunately, people will have to wait.

a little longer but safety's got to come first and ultimately as we said Chris this was a target date and we needed the sign off of the national independent safety regulator as soon as we found out that look we weren't going to meet their requirements yet for that date I want

I wanted to make sure that the travelling public knew that it wasn't going to be this weekend. But look, it is, I appreciate that's disappointing, but it is not far off. It's not far off. So if you sell a house and you settle with someone and you name a date and you don't hit that date, you don't settle it, you're probably better off not naming the date, right?

Look, I appreciate the analogy, but this was a target date, not like a settlement where your bank's there and your lawyer's there. It's a bit different. We announced this date at the time. Well, the customers of New South Wales were there.

Well, we announced this date as a target date because when you open any big piece of infrastructure like a railway or a road or indeed when you're planning for any big complicated event, you've got to have a timeline to plan to and this is pretty complicated. Look, I appreciate in your opening you said it was just cutting a ribbon. It's a long way away from that. We've got to make sure all the bus rosters and timetables are changed. We've got to make sure that the trains connect. We've got thousands of people that work across transport. So

Look, I'm not trying to make excuses here, but it is a complicated process and you do have to have a timeline for these things. And that's why we announced the target date. So it's important to have a date. Yeah, I understand that. So when is it going to open? If it's so important to have a date, what's the opening date?

Well, today I announced that it won't be this weekend and I'm disappointed about that too. So what is it? Well, as soon as we have the information from the regulator... But isn't it important to have a date? ..and from Fire and Rescue, it's absolutely important to have a date. But I want to make sure that we have all the information and as soon as I have that... Chris, in fact, I'm very happy to come on your show and make sure that your listeners and the travelling public...

No, as soon as I know what that date is, it's not far off. The good news is that this railway is 99% ready, but we have to have it 100%. And when we're there, when the regulator gives us the tick of approval, we'll open it very soon after that.

What's the date? You know it. We know you know it. So what is the date? Chris, if I had the date, I'd tell you. Absolutely. And I'd want to tell your listeners because they're the ones that want to get on board this railway. And I want to get on board it too. It's actually going to really transform our city for the better. I want more people to be able to choose public transport. And I know this is disappointing, but this railway is going to run for 100 years. So it's just a little bit longer to wait.

Alright, important to have a timetable, but we don't have an updated date. I understand that. So what was the sticking point? Why couldn't we open it?

Well, there were a few things that happened along the path that we were on. So we were on a critical path that we were working with Fire and Rescue, the regulator and all the different components of transport - the buses, the trains, et cetera. And a few things did happen. Firstly, we did have the incident on the north-west. I'm sure your listeners remember. In fact, several hundred passengers were stuck on that system, and that's not good enough. That did mean that the regulator had to...

have some paperwork to assess that, to work out what happened so it doesn't happen again. They need time to assess that. We also had some industrial action that meant that some of the exercises, the scenarios where we test things like evacuating the train or smoking the train, alarms and drill needed to be redone. Only four of those need to be redone of some 200 exercises, but that has meant that we need a little bit more time. OK.

Minister, I appreciate you showing up. Are we talking weeks? What are we talking? Weeks, months, days? As soon as I know, Chris, I'll tell you and your listeners. Have you got a ballpark, roughly? It's not going to be long. Weeks, not months. I wish it was only just days. It's not going to be long, but I appreciate it's not what we wanted, but we will get there in the end. It's going to be worth it. It's going to be fantastic, Chris. All right. Look forward to it. I won't hold my breath. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chris. Bye-bye. That's Jo Highland, the Minister for Transport.