Victoria drive leaves NSW swinging in the wind

YOU don't have to know a wedge from a woodie to be aware that golfing superhero Tiger Woods won the Australian Masters in Melbourne at the weekend. Melbourne, that is, not Sydney, where Premier Nathan Rees appeared before an easily pleased audience of ALP members and went through an act designed to distract attention from the failures of the past 14 years of Labor Party state government.

Woods easily won the eyeballs, as they say in the television industry. Only those with a penchant for self-flagellation would have tuned into Rees' painful performance. Over the past week, the NSW Premier has embarked on yet another attempt to relaunch himself as an acceptable product as the 2011 election draws slowly closer. Because Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will go to the polls before Rees, he has had to make some effort to bolster Rees' standing and duly appeared with Rees in a two-hander publicity stunt to show his solidarity. That charade was followed by a group photo session with Rees and former Labor Premiers Barrie Unsworth, Neville Wran, Bob Carr and Morris Iemma. Such gatherings should be preceded by public warnings and loser alerts. It was a painful reminder of how many Labor people have done so little for NSW in recent memory. Down in Tiger territory, Victorians were looking forward, not backward. Having hosted yet another great week of spring racing and then having seamlessly moved on to capture the global golf market's attention with Woods' winning performance and stellar endorsement of Victoria's golf courses, our southern cousins were drawing up blueprints for their state's future. The Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) gave Sunday Herald-Sun readers a sneak preview of the plan it will reveal at a Victoria Summit at the State Parliament today. Unlike the NSW Government's plan-recycling scheme, which sees 40-year-old drafts dusted off and refloated whenever Hawker-Britton, the ALP's strategists, decides Labor needs a headline, Victorians are presented with proposals that have some grounding in reality. Thus the VECCI plan calls for a number of short-term projects to be under way by 2011 including a new hospital at Box Hill, revamps of the Supreme Court and police headquarters, extensions to the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and a new ferry service. Forward thinking. Like the thinking behind Project Eagle, the successful plan that brought Woods to Melbourne to play golf. Of course, NSW Premier Rees did have his own counter-attack, bringing international musician Brian Eno to curate the Luminous art festival, which was part of Vivid Sydney, a little-remembered event that was, according to Rees, "a better spend of taxpayer dollars". That was more garbage from the former garbo as Woods' $3 million week-long visit to Victoria is estimated to have generated well in excess of $20 million. Figures for Eno's exercise do not seem to have been calculated - one embarrassment Rees has been spared. Rees sacked finance minister Joe Tripodi and primary industries Ian Macdonald, replacing them with Paul McLeay (son of former federal MP Leo McLeay) and MLC Peter Primrose. Taxpayers will pay for changes to letterheads, but no one can expect any improvement in performance from the dysfunctional NSW Government. Until then, Labor will continue to play political games in the vain hope some people will mistake the never-ending Cabinet merry-go-round for signs of achievement. The disparity in performance between the states is a stark reminder of NSW Labor's failure. As stark as the differences between the performances of Woods and Eno.