Mr Pallas (Tarneit)  — It gives me great  pleasure to speak in support of the matter of public importance.

The government  only  gave its business  case to Infrastructure  Victoria  seven weeks after it had announced it was going to proceed with  this project, so when it  comes  to  thinking,  this government did the  walking  before  it  did  the thinking; effectively it put  the project before  the methodology, the thinking, the  rationale.  That  is the  basic  problem. This  is  a cart-before-the-horse government. This  is  a  project-before-priority-and-principles  government. The Premier  has  said  that if only  Kevin  Rudd  stood at the  end  of the Eastern Freeway, he would get out his cheque book. I doubt he would, because if  you had to decide how to spend,  in a consolidated sense, up to $8 billion of  taxpayers money, would this be the project you would spend it on?

It turned out that Tony Abbott, who never met a  road he did not like,  but does not care one jot for  public transport — the man  about whom the Premier  said, ‘Do not  worry  about Tony, he will be  right’ — put him back  in his place and told  him  exactly  what  he could do about improving public transport  under  a future federal Liberal government. The  Premier  can  say all he wants about his great love and affection  for public transport and how  he is going to go  about implementing Labor’s  strategy  for a  Melbourne  Metro  rail tunnel  and  other critically important public transport projects, but words matter not.

This government must be judged on  its  actions,  and its actions reveal nothing but boorish, unsophisticated thinking. That is the sort of thing we have come to expect from this  government and from  this  Treasurer, who today  described the opposition as producing ‘kindergarten economics’.

This  came  from the Peter  Pan  of Treasury, the  boy  who  never grew up,  the Melbourne  University Liberal Club  debating society chair, the  man who tripled state debt under this government’s watch and who has effectively seen state debt grow from $8  billion to $25 billion in projected out years. What an outrage! At the same time all the opportunities and costs of the future of  Victoria are put into this one misguided project that will  not  ultimately  do  the  things  the government says it will.

How do we know that? We listen to the experts. Those opposite do not, but we do. When the government was told not to  prioritise this project, it did not listen. When the  Linking  Melbourne  Authority  went  to the minister in early 2011 and said,  ‘Do  not  build from the  east,  build from the west,  that  is where the priority lies’,  the government did not listen. When Sir Rod Eddington said, ‘Do not build from the east,  build from the west, that is where the priority lies’, it did not listen. Who were government members listening to?

When the chief modeller of transport at VicRoads basically said, ‘I am not going down for this. I  am not going to  be  held accountable in court  when  somebody loses their money on this flawed project’, what did  they  say?  They  basically said, ‘We are not listening to you either’.

This is a government of kindergarten economics and schoolboy politics. This is a government that is  not planning  for the  future; it  is planning  for the next election. Victorians will hold it to  account.  There  is a process for deciding what large projects deserve to be funded and this  government has shown absolute contempt for that process. The Premier did not submit the business case for this $8 billion project until  June, seven  weeks after he had announced he was going to build  it. When he did submit the business  case he  included wider  economic benefits   against  the  advice  of  Infrastructure   Australia.  Infrastructure Australia is  not  convinced  that this  project  will, in its  words,  ‘deliver benefits exceeding the costs incurred’.

The Premier stood on the footpath at the end of the  Eastern Freeway and said he is  going  to  fix the congestion. Who, apart from  the  opposition,  says  this project will  not fix it? VicRoads  says  it will not fix  it.  Earlier today we heard  the Minister for Roads in this place saying that  there is  a discredited Hoddle  Street  study. He did not read it. Like everything else this  government goes about, it has gone about this project  in a half-baked fashion. It  did not read  the  study. What  did  the preliminary Hoddle  Street  study, the redacted access to information study that this government makes available to people, say? In the terms of  that report  it said  that the  Eastern Freeway  to Tullamarine Freeway tunnel connection will not fix congestion on Hoddle Street. That is what the report said  —  that it will not  fix congestion on the Eastern  Freeway at Hoddle Street.

All of  those people  sitting in  their cars  and waiting  for relief while this government prances around telling them it  has a solution for congestion need to know that this game-changing, congestion-busting, boondoggle the  government is  advocating will  not do  it.

Who  said those  words?  It was VicRoads.  Essentially  this  is  a  concept  from a  government  that  does not understand the opportunity cost of what it is doing. On this side of the chamber we  can  walk, we can  chew  gum  and  we  can think as well.  Members  of  this government might be able  to walk and chew gum, chew cud or  whatever it is they do, but they  do not think about the  consequences of their actions. We  need an integrated transport system where planning comes ahead of project commitment.

The  spending of $8 billion on one dud  tunnel is  a pretty  serious opportunity cost loss.  No amount  of inane  bleating and sloganising  about how  this is  a game-changer can obscure the fact that infrastructure planning is not a game and that  the vast  majority of  Victorians are  going to miss  out because  of this decision.  Last month the  Auditor-General alerted Victorians to the urgent need to provide adequate transport infrastructure to the outer suburbs.

There is a $6.2 billion backlog in rail infrastructure and a  $5 billion backlog in road infrastructure, and this dud tunnel  will do  nothing to fix that. Worse than  that, this  tunnel will  suck away the opportunity to address the needs of the transport poor.  We are told there could be as many  as 3200 jobs created in this up to $8 billion project. If we do the maths, that is $2.5 million per job. To put it another way, it is 33 times the  average wage of an Australian worker. What a  brilliant job-generating  project that  is. It would have to be the most expensive ever job-generating infrastructure project in the world.

When this government came to office it  promised no  secrecy and  no spin.  What have we seen? We have basically seen government members wander around pretending that there is some unanimous view supporting this tunnel. I know of at least one member  of the  government who  has a contrary view to the government. Mr Andrew Elsbury, a member for Western Metropolitan  Region in the Council, was quoted in the Brimbank Leader as saying:

  … I hope that the minister –that is the Minister for Roads —  and those planning this vital project –the east-west link —  recognise the benefits that starting in the west can bring to the project …

That  man should be the Premier.  He  is a genius. He  is  the Uncle Tom of  the Liberal  Party.  The  Liberal  Party put him into the western suburbs to pretend that it has even the  scantest  bit of concern for people in the  west.  It does not. It uses them up, it chews them up and it disregards them.

Let us talk a  little about  mandates. Before  the last election the now Premier said that  in effect talk of a mandate in  regard to  constitutional reform  was rubbish. Although it was  part of the Labor Party’s policy before that election, he said it was not on the coalition’s  political agenda. What do we say about  a government  that when it was in opposition came to the  election and  said, ‘You can’t drive yourself out of problems. We have no plans for an east-west policy’? Even when its  members were in government they  said they had no  plans for that tunnel. This  is a government that lied to the  Victorian people  and cannot  be trusted, and it will be held to account for this boondoggle.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.