Steve Price: Premier Jacinta Allan a clone of Dan Andrew minus the jacket
Jacinta Allan’s decision to throw more money into the Suburban Rail Loop instead of backing airport rail is an act of pure arrogant bastardry bordering on the narcissism shown by her predecessor Dan Andrews.
Opinion
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On Monday while the boss of Tullamarine Airport was doing the media rounds to announce progress on building a rail link to the terminals another media conference was taking place across Melbourne.
In an act of pure arrogant bastardry Premier Jacinta Allan threw on some high-vis gear and tipped more of your money into the bottomless pit of the Suburban Rail Loop.
Ignoring the experts, trying to shame her critics and being completely tone deaf to the needs of Victorians, Allan tried to argue that airport rail was four years behind schedule, and it was all the airport management’s fault.
She had the hide to stand in front of microphones and utter these words; “My government is powering ahead with the first stage of the Suburban Rail Loop.”
This is a project Victoria can’t afford, transporting people to places no-one wants to go to, costing billions of dollars we don’t have.
Allan is a politician so out of touch with the state she governs to be bordering on the copycat narcissism of her predecessor Daniel Andrews.
This Premier is simply a weaker clone of Andrews minus the North Face puffer jacket.
Premier Allan on Monday, to make matters worse, announced a global consortium calling itself Terra Verde will tunnel the 10km northern twin tunnels between Glen Waverley and Box Hill.
We can’t have an airport train to move millions including tourists ploughing money into the economy but can dig a tunnel to nowhere.
What a joke.
One member of Premier Allan’s consortium is an Italian firm called Webuild best known in Australia – as the Financial Review reported this week – for work on the Snowy 2.0 project. Webuild started that work on a fixed-price $5 billion contract that the Federal Government was forced to renegotiate. Up of course, to a nose bleeding $12 billion.
Our great leader didn’t mention that under her hard hat helmet on Monday. She also forgot perhaps, to mention Webuild was already on her books for work on the North East Link road project that’s doubled in cost following a $10 billion cost blowout late last year.
Clearly having an arts degree from Latrobe University doesn’t help when planning a multi-billion- dollar road and rail deals. Also, that degree didn’t help much when the Premier under Dan was the Minister for delivering the Commonwealth Games. That went well.
She is making such a mess of a job of running the state you’d almost wish for the bad old days under Andrews to come back. At least he sounded like he knew what he was doing, and I did say almost, wish for him to come back. Almost.
I travelled through Melbourne Airport at about the same time Premier Allan was consigning the rail link to the dustbin of cancelled Melbourne infrastructure programs. Remember the East West Link and the billion-dollar bin fire that was?
I decided to drive to Tullamarine because I was spending a week up north in Sydney hosting for Sky TV and planned to park at the randomly named Value 24- hour car park formerly known as the long-term carpark.
Standing at the entrance off the freeway was a man holding a glow stick who asked if I had pre-booked a parking spot. No, I had not, and he told me I could try and find a vacant spot, but he thought it was full, and of course I had forgotten it was school holidays. After a 15- minute search I gave up and exited costing me eleven dollars for the experience.
My only option then was to park in the terminal car park at the eye bleeding charge of $49 a day or $343 for the week. And the Premier says, well the train station standoff means a train connection, if its ever to be built is now four years delayed. Talk about a shortsighted payback with the victim’s all the people wanting to use an airport that is supposed to be able to service a city of five million people heading to a population of eight million.
Arriving in Sydney I tapped my credit card on the entry gate to Sydney’s airport rail link waited six minutes and was in the Sydney CBD in 10 minutes. Melbourne’s stalled train link if ever built is going to drop passengers not in Spencer or Flinders streets but in Sunshine where you will need to manhandle your bags onto a connecting train of your choice.
Apparently, there is a serious split at the top of the Allan government about this project.
Deputy Premier Ben Carroll is a big fan, but his boss is obsessed with her vanity project the Suburban Rail Link.
It could be argued that the 49th Premier of Victoria just doesn’t understand the city she is governing. Premier Allan her former CFMEU husband Yorick Piper and their two children live in the Bendigo region. Jacinta has been the local member there for 25 years and the soon to turn 51-year-old has lived in the area her whole life.
Her grandfather William Allan was President of the Bendigo Trades Hall Council, and she joined the ALP at 19. One of her first local campaigns in Bendigo was preventing the establishment of a lap dancing club in town.
That’s one hell of a CV for running a state and you must ask how many 50-year-olds live in the town they were born in and spend all their adult life in a political party.
Not many I suggest – aren’t we lucky!
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Originally published as Steve Price: Premier Jacinta Allan a clone of Dan Andrew minus the jacket
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