Today is the sixth anniversary of the Andrews government cancelling the East West Link contract.
The decision to tear up that lawfully binding contract cost Victorian taxpayers $1.3bn, despite Daniel Andrews’ 2014 election pledge that the contract could be ripped up at no cost to taxpayers because, as he said at the time “there is nothing to walk away from, be very clear about this, the contracts are not worth the paper they’re written on”.
“This is not a legally binding contract,” he asserted. We now know this was a blatant lie.
The fact is that Melbourne desperately needs the EWL.
The frustration we all experience queuing up for hours when the Eastern Freeway abruptly ends in a T-intersection at Hoddle Street is palpable.
For so many commuters, particularly from the eastern suburbs, the extreme irritation experienced by many is the knowledge that had Andrews not torn up the contract, the proposed 6km road connecting the Eastern Freeway at Hoddle Street to CityLink would have been built by now.
Andrews’ obstinence on this road is bordering on the pathological. Scott Morrison’s government has $4bn on the table to fund this vital piece of infrastructure. Has anyone ever heard of a state government saying no to a free road, largely paid for by Canberra that generates thousands of jobs?
An Eastern Freeway to CityLink connection is rated as a high priority by Infrastructure Australia, identifying “the east – west corridor to the north of Melbourne’s CBD as one of Melbourne’s major congestion challenges.”
The 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit found that vehicles travelling between the Eastern Freeway and CityLink had “the highest road congestion delay cost in Melbourne in 2016.” The EWL would bypass 23 sets of traffic lights and cut travel time from the Eastern Freeway to CityLink by 20 minutes.
Given the lies Victorians were told by Andrews in lead up to the 2014 election, that it wouldn’t cost a dollar to tear up a legally binding contract, in hindsight does it really surprise anyone that when the state was confronted with its greatest crisis since the Second World War, COVID-19, Victorians were spun lie after lie?
At the largely useless Coate Inquiry, ministers constantly lied about who was ultimately responsible for that terrible decision to use untrained private security guards to manage hotel quarantine, resulting in a four month long lockdown, 801 deaths and 250,000 job losses.
Does it surprise anyone that a week before the third lockdown in February this year, again caused by infection control failures in hotel quarantine, the Premier lied again to Victorians, asserting our state’s hotel quarantine regime is “worthy of being copied by others, and it is, and if it was anything other than leading, this is not about boasting, this is just a fact, if it was anything other than one of the best systems ... then I doubt very much that other first ministers across the country would have agreed to copy it.”
It’s almost unheard of for large-scale infrastructure projects to be cancelled by governments in first-world countries. It’s even rarer in jurisdictions where the rule of law exists for a contract to be torn up, like Andrews did with the EWL. It is what you would expect to find in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.
So, looking back to this day six years ago does it really surprise anyone that during a pandemic, however unforeseen, Daniel Andrews would force an 8pm curfew on Victorians, suspend parliament, and normal cabinet government — saying it was all based on medical advice, which we are yet to see?
Does it surprise anyone that we would still be living under a state of emergency a year after the pandemic started, and for the rest of 2021?
Does it surprise anyone that despite being offered the use of the Australian Defence Force for free, to guard quarantine hotels, that Andrews refused?
Does it surprise anyone that under the immense pressure of a pandemic the machinery of our state government completely failed Victorians, resulting in the greatest public administration failure in the nation’s history?
The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. When Daniel Andrews lied to the Victorian people before the 2014 election and said that it wouldn’t cost anything to tear up the EWL contract, then tore it up, costing taxpayers $1.3bn, we got an early insight into the culture of this state government.
Six years on, we now know what that culture can do to confidence Victorians have in the own state government. Victorians are leaving our state at a rate not seen in decades.
The Liberals will build the EWL, and we will also bring back honest government to Victoria. By God, we need it.