source : the age
When then-prime minister Scott Morrison had himself secretly sworn into five ministries during the COVID pandemic, behind the backs of even his ministerial colleagues, it seemed to many of us that a new record had been set in shiftiness and contempt for transparent government.
Little did we know just how competitive the Victorian Labor Party would prove itself to be – in this area, at least.
Perhaps we should have realised the extent of the problem when it emerged in 2024 that then-treasurer Tim Pallas had been using the Treasurer’s Advance – a pool of cash meant for urgent and unforeseen contingencies – as a multibillion-dollar “credit card” to deliver policies outside normal budgetary and parliamentary scrutiny.
If not then, the penny should surely have dropped earlier this month, when the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s report on Operation Richmond showed how normal channels of public accountability and negotiation between the Andrews government and the United Firefighters Union could be secretly circumvented in the name of a political “fix”.
But this week it emerged that the Victorian government had reached the bottom of the secrecy barrel and then driven a tunnel-boring machine straight through it.
Consider this: when the US-Israeli war on Iran heaped another layer of price misery on Victorians already struggling with the cost of living, then-premier Jacinta Allan grandly announced that she was “determined to do everything in my control to help [those] who are under pressure” by making public transport free for a month and then half-price to the end of 2026.
Yet, even as she uttered those words, she knew that in December 2023 her government’s four-person budget and finance committee – herself, Pallas and ministers Danny Pearson and Jaclyn Symes – had approved a 1 per cent annual increase on all public transport fares that they would not reveal to the public, nor even the rest of the cabinet.
The purpose of this secret levy – known officially as the “rail improvement charge” and first conceived in 2021 under Daniel Andrews – was to plug the yawning gap in the state’s accounts created by the government’s Suburban Rail Loop plan.
This subterfuge is entirely consistent with the history of the SRL. When it was first proposed, having been cooked up without the knowledge of Development Victoria, the cost of spanning the city was put at “up to $50 billion”. In time, that became the estimate just for construction of the first two eastern stages, connecting Cheltenham to Box Hill. The belated business case for the election-winning promise considered that eastern section of the plan in isolation.
A major part of that case was that station precincts would become suburban hubs and government would capture the value of developing the surrounding land. The rail improvement charge shows that even value capture’s proponents knew this wouldn’t be enough.
Born in secrecy, fragmented in delivery, and relentlessly spiralling in cost, the SRL hit its first major reality check in March last year, when Infrastructure Australia said it had low confidence in the Allan government’s costings and that “exit strategies” should be developed. Yet federal cash for the project continues to flow.
This week’s report by the Victorian Auditor-General Andrew Greaves was a flashing red signal for the SRL’s drivers. It pointed out further likely cost and schedule overruns and a $5.5 billion funding shortfall despite Canberra’s commitments, but above all it highlighted the rail improvement charge as “not fully consistent with the state’s value capture framework”.
After a day of sorry attempts by public servants to defend this underhanded levy, it is welcome news that Premier Ben Carroll will scrap it. But this only adds to the questions surrounding the SRL East. The case for its creation was, from the outset, a political one, rather than being based on a business assessment or public needs. How will it be paid for or justified now? Carroll has moved to save money on the project where he can, but it remains eye-wateringly expensive.
Along with the flow of money from government building sites into the pockets of criminals, this episode is emblematic of the Andrews and Allan Labor governments’ disregard for public funds. That Carroll has to repeatedly state his respect for taxpayers’ contributions is, as our state political editor Chip Le Grand noted, a sign of just how far the rot has spread.
The legacy of this approach to spending is likely to be felt for decades to come, not only in terms of the state’s finances but also in lost funding for our schools and hospitals.
But it is the approach to open government that the rail improvement charge revealed that is truly chilling. And this could be the tip of the iceberg. The royal commission into what successive Labor governments knew, and when, on building sites run by the CFMEU hasn’t even begun.
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