“It’s straightforward, easy to administer and it’s worthwhile,” Opposition Leader Matthew Guy told reporters on Sunday, just over 100 days out from election day.

The Coalition will need to win 18 seats on November 8 if it is to defeat the Andrews government, which has been in power since 2017.

Mr Guy has lost two senior staff members in recent weeks. His chief of staff, Mitch Catlin, resigned in early August after he asked a billionaire donor to pay more than $100,000 to his private business, followed by media manager Lee Anderson, who resigned for “personal reasons”.

Both major parties are also facing competition from teal candidates after Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court confirmed candidates are being sought to contest up to a dozen key Melbourne seats.

The free transport policy is estimated to cost roughly $110 million and could save a daily user travelling across zone one and two in metro Melbourne up to $1800 a year, or $7200 over the four-year period.

It is designed to ease cost-of-living pressures and support frontline health workers, who have worked longer hours and more shifts to keep the health system afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Thousands of healthcare workers have been leaving the system over the last few years. They’re exhausted, they’re overworked,” Mr Guy said.

“We need to incentivise them to stay. We need to get more people into our healthcare network.”

Meanwhile, the Victorian government confirmed nearly 700 overseas health workers have arrived in the state in the past year as it pushes to hire 2000 extra from abroad by mid-2023 to make up for a shortfall of 7000 staff.

Almost 200 of the new arrivals have had relocation costs of up to $10,000, if moving to Melbourne, or $13,000 for regional Victoria, covered under the state’s travel allowance scheme.

The first of two winter retention and surge payments of up to $1500 for Victorian public health workers will be made on Monday as part of a $353 million state government package announced in June.

Premier Daniel Andrews declined to say whether his government would match the opposition’s public transport pledge, or if the retention payments would be extended.

“Let’s get this winter retention bonus paid out first, then I’ll very confidently predict that there will be many other good ideas,” he told reporters at Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

AAP