The Queensland government has defended rolling out new trains with no disability access, saying it's cleaning up a mess left by its LNP predecessors.
Queensland's anti-discrimination commissioner Kevin Cocks labelled the move "reprehensible" in a submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
"That the Queensland government would in 2013 commission a fleet of trains that do not fully comply with the transport standards, and in other respects are likely to discriminate against people with disabilities, is reprehensible," Mr Cocks said in his submission.
"And in further defiance and disregard for the law, the NGR trains have been put in use without any rectification work and without the benefit of an exemption granted by the Commission,"
Transport Minister Mark Bailey on Monday put the blame on the previous Newman LNP government, which was in power when the trains were ordered.
"The problem that we've had is that the Newman government ordered cheap trains from overseas that didn't comply with disability standards. In fact they deleted specifications out of the contract," he told reporters in Brisbane.
The minister defended not waiting until the trains had been fixed before putting them into service, saying the network needed extra capacity to deal with demand from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April.
"It is essential we have every bit of rolling stock, every staff member that we have out on the system transporting people to games venues, and that's a reality we just have to do."
But Opposition Transport Spokesman Steve Minnikin said Labor has had three years to fix the issue.
"We also know the transport minister at the time Jackie Trad pandered to union demands to have some of the new generation rolling stock modified with cabs for guards," Mr Minnikin told reporters.
"If the trains were off the rails for that period of time, why didn't the Labor government actually do something about disability access?"
Mr Minnikin also called on the government and QR to release the final transport plan for the Games, saying people needed to be able to plan their lives during the event.
Mr Bailey on Monday announced 13 new drivers have started training to work at Queensland Rail, as the public transport operator works to rebuild its staff in the wake of cascading rostering failures.
Of those, 12 have prior driving experience with QR while the thirteenth transferred from Emerald.
Since October 2016, a total of 145 trainee drivers and 262 trainee guards have been selected, with 51 drivers and 158 guards now fully qualified and working on the SEQ network.
