The inquiry has provided a number of public transport and peak-oil advocates the opportunity to make worthwhile contributions. While each of the transcripts is long, its worth looking at James Buckee, Peter Newman and Bruce Robinson from the Perth session and Paul Mees and Graham Currie from the Melbourne session. Paul Mees is a perennial critic of the privatised model of public transport in Melbourne. For example, discussing Melbourne's transport woes, Mees says

"No-one is in charge. Whose job is it to make the bus connect with the train in Melbourne? It is kind of everyone’s and therefore it is nobody’s. Secondly, you have an organisation that does not have a culture that thinks that that is important. When we set up our franchised system of public transport the job of the department was to monitor things. They hired—and do not get me wrong; I used to be a lawyer myself—lawyers, accountants and people like that. They did not
hire transport planners. If you are monitoring KPIs rather than running the show, you hire a different class of person."

Some of the main points to come out of the enquiry have been that public transport needs one over-arching authority in charge including co-ordination of time-tables, greater priority given to public transport versus roads funding, better town planning to ensure access to facilities and public transport, and improved management of existing services.

It's been linked here on TOD:ANZ before, but Matt Mushaliks' submission is certainly as 'epic' as described (his submission to the Senate Select Comittee on Climate Policy was somewhat briefer :p ;) )!

And when even motoring advocate groups like the RACQ suggest more and better PT, you know The System is broken:

While much of the RACQ’s focus is on roads,
our policy recognises that growing congestion requires the operation of safe, convenient
and reliable walking, cycling and public transport facilities and services. These need to
be accessible and attractive to potential users in order to compete effectively with
private motor vehicles.