Success requires work
Government ministers are pretty much forced to put in a certain minimum amount of effort. In government there is a department to run, bucket loads of correspondence, decisions to make and questions to answer. There's a lot of structure and if you don't perform there's others who want your job.
Whereas if you are an opposition shadow minister how (or how much) you do your job is more up to you. Especially if you have enough seniority or party standing to guarantee your position.
Either you just coast along or, lacking the staff and departmental resources of government, work harder than your opponent minister to develop policy, expose mismanagement and generally hold them to account. Maintaining such energy may be harder if party morale is low, although the best people are driven internally or consider it their mission.
Measuring the productivity of individual politicians is difficult. Some policies are team affairs so to attribute credit (or blame) on one person may be unfair. You can use quantitative measures like questions asked but that doesn't necessarily imply quality or impact. Still, scale is important; if you don't do the quantity then quality has little impact if the matter is narrow or trifling.
Questions asked
Earlier this year I analysed who asked the most questions on transport matters in parliament. As expected opposition members asked more on average than government members. There were also differences between the houses, possibly as the Legislative Council is a house of review and in which governments rarely hold a majority.
If you use questions asked as a criteria the Coalition's best performers sit in the Legislative Council. Some of their Legislative Assembly colleagues pull their weight but not all. Matthew Guy has been a particular disappointment in this term, asking just seven questions on transport, despite this being one of his shadow portfolios.
Does being an active parliamentary questioner help promotion prospects in Brad Battin's Coalition team? It seemed to help. The three new October 2025 entrants to the Shadow Cabinet (Nicole Werner, Richard Welch and Nick McGowan) were all above average question askers.
Media releases
Asking questions isn't the only thing an opposition member can do to hold the government to account, especially if they are shadow minister. Media releases is another. The Liberals have all theirs (and some from their Nationals coalition partners) from 2023 here.
The number of releases per year for transport and planning related topics is graphed below. Coalition interest in public transport (if measured by media releases) has crashed, with just 5 issued in 2025 to date compared to 20 in 2023. Interest in roads is also less than in 2023. Release volumes in Planning and Housing peaked in 2024 while 2025 has been a top year for releases on major projects.
The topicality of issues as well as the shadow minister involved likely affects the volume of releases (noting that we are only measuring output, not whether the media runs with it).
I used Parliament's website as a source of portfolios held and tabulated them below. Click for a better view.
I used Parliament's website as a source of portfolios held and tabulated them below. Click for a better view.
Not all releases in a portfolio are from that shadow minister - other senior members may also issue releases on a topic. Radio interviews or social media posts may not be captured. Still, one can discern clear links between people and media release output. For example Richard Riordan in Public Transport, James Newbury in Planning and Evan Mulholland in Major Projects rank amongst the more active.
Conversely Matthew Guy, public transport's recent shadow, has been associated with a diminishing and now low level of media release activity. Which (unhelpfully for the Coalition's profile in transport) matches inactivity in Question Time mentioned before.
Opportunities to roast the government on areas where it is vulnerable (such as inadequate public transport services including for major events, abandoned bus reform, continual rail shutdowns and rolling bus strikes) have conspicuously gone unexploited, much to the minister's joy.
Others on public transport
Mr Guy has not been the sole or even dominant voice from the Coalition side on public transport.
Liberal MLCs in areas that are almost entirely represented by Labor in the lower house have a particular opportunity. This has been exploited by Evan Mulholland in Northern Metropolitan and Moira Deeming in Western Metropolitan. Some regional MPs have also been prominent.
Trung Luu in Western Metropolitan is less publicly known but had a major recent success in getting numerous internal DTP documents tabled, thus exposing the government's ditching of promised bus plan network reform. Such bus reform could have increased patronage by about 80 million passenger trips per year by 2030, making it bigger than what we think of as being major projects such as North-East Link, West Gate Tunnel and the Suburban Rail Loop East.
I should also mention others supporting bus upgrades in the underserved Dandenong area before the government latched on. That includes the 2022 state and 2023 Mulgrave by-election plus more recent supportive speeches from Ann-Marie Hermans.
The consistent pattern is that a backbencher may say or get something something in parliament but without weight, support and persistence from the shadow minister the matter just dies. Or, at best, such as happened in the 2022 state election campaign the Coalition had a significant bus service policy but it didn't get the promotion it deserved.
The new shadow
Others on public transport
Mr Guy has not been the sole or even dominant voice from the Coalition side on public transport.
Liberal MLCs in areas that are almost entirely represented by Labor in the lower house have a particular opportunity. This has been exploited by Evan Mulholland in Northern Metropolitan and Moira Deeming in Western Metropolitan. Some regional MPs have also been prominent.
Trung Luu in Western Metropolitan is less publicly known but had a major recent success in getting numerous internal DTP documents tabled, thus exposing the government's ditching of promised bus plan network reform. Such bus reform could have increased patronage by about 80 million passenger trips per year by 2030, making it bigger than what we think of as being major projects such as North-East Link, West Gate Tunnel and the Suburban Rail Loop East.
I should also mention others supporting bus upgrades in the underserved Dandenong area before the government latched on. That includes the 2022 state and 2023 Mulgrave by-election plus more recent supportive speeches from Ann-Marie Hermans.
The consistent pattern is that a backbencher may say or get something something in parliament but without weight, support and persistence from the shadow minister the matter just dies. Or, at best, such as happened in the 2022 state election campaign the Coalition had a significant bus service policy but it didn't get the promotion it deserved.
The new shadow
On 11 October 2025 incoming shadow Public Transport Minister Sam Groth issued a statement on his Facebook page welcoming his appointment to the role. That statement included mention of the lack of public transport options in his seat of Nepean that he wanted to address as a priority.
His prior record includes asking 11 questions on transport matters. Not the most active but not the least active either. And more questions than then public transport's shadow minister.
From December 2022 to October 2025 Mr Groth held a range of shadow tourism, sport and recreation portfolios. This matched his sporting background and his seat of Nepean. While normally a junior portfolio sport has been particularly prominent given the government's bungling of the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid. This contributed to a high amount of media release activity from him.
From December 2022 to October 2025 Mr Groth held a range of shadow tourism, sport and recreation portfolios. This matched his sporting background and his seat of Nepean. While normally a junior portfolio sport has been particularly prominent given the government's bungling of the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid. This contributed to a high amount of media release activity from him.
His prior question and media release activity give some hope that we might hear more from the Coalition on public transport in the next year than we have in the last two.
Also Mr Groth can take heart from the fact that despite the political fashion to declare oneself a gunzel, this is not a pre-requisite for success and could even be a hindrance. Instead, as he may have already learned in sport, there is no substitute for the will to work and win for success in public transport politics.
Also Mr Groth can take heart from the fact that despite the political fashion to declare oneself a gunzel, this is not a pre-requisite for success and could even be a hindrance. Instead, as he may have already learned in sport, there is no substitute for the will to work and win for success in public transport politics.
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