The state government has left the door open to privatising the Illawarra rail line.
A Fairfax Media report speculated on such a move, saying the independence of the line from the rest of the network had “long made the line an attractive target for those keen on injecting more of the private sector into the state's historically public-run railways”.
A spokesman for Transport Minister Andrew Constance said, “NSW has a dynamic mix of public transport services offered through a range of different models, which has been long standing practice”.
“There are currently no changes to the way services are to be operated,” he said.
The statement gave no explanation for why about 100 documents had been withheld from release under freedom of information laws.
Fairfax Media said “there is a drumbeat of speculation that Premier Mike Baird's government may have major changes to do with public transport privatisation on the agenda.
“Suspicions were fuelled this week when Treasury bureaucrats refused to release nearly 100 documents relating to the privatisation of transport assets,” the report said.
“They declared the documents cabinet in confidence.”
The report quoted former CityRail general manager Dick Day as saying, "By and large, the reason people always get excited about the Illawarra Line – and I can assure you that they were getting excited about the Illawarra line in the early 1990s – is that it's basically self-contained.”