Evan Mulholland: Australian dream turns to Labor-made nightmare in Melbourne’s growth suburbs

Residents in suburbs such as Kalkallo, Werribee and Wyndham are the forgotten Victorians — Labor gleefully collects their stamp duty and then spends it elsewhere, writes Evan Mulholland.

Last week Victorians were given a disturbing insight into how much our finances have deteriorated under Jacinta Allan.

From our ballooning $178bn debt to the staggering $10bn cost blowout for the North East Link, the news was all bad for Victorian households already experiencing a cost-of-living crisis.

Then there was the reckless decision to sign the first contracts for the Suburban Rail Loop, a project that is likely to cost a whopping $200bn, making it the most expensive in the state’s history.

The biggest tragedy of Labor’s financial mismanagement is its impact on all Victorians, particularly those living in the growth corridors of our outer suburbs.

From afar, Melbourne’s skyline sparkles with the promise of its bustling heart, but beyond our famous tram tracks lie suburbs growing in the shadows of neglect.

Many young families and migrants move to our burgeoning growth areas hoping to realise the Australian dream. Instead, they are left living in Labor’s nightmare.

In many ways, Victorians living in suburbs such as Kalkallo, Werribee, Point Cook, Wyndham and Clyde are the contemporary forgotten people that Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies famously described.

New housing development in Melbourne suburbs

They are neither organised labour nor are they the rich and powerful.

They are the definition of the middle class. In fact, in many of these areas over 50 per cent of people hold jobs for which they are over-qualified.

According to the Department of Planning, growth areas to the northwest and southeast are forecast to be home to an extra 1.1 million people by 2036.

Too often, Victorians are moving into these areas well in advance of the essential infrastructure and services communities need to thrive: roads, public transport, jobs, schools and childcare.

People living here are treated like second-class citizens, lacking the amenities taken for granted in the leafy inner-city suburbs: sporting facilities, parks and walking and cycling trails.

In Kalkallo in Melbourne’s outer north, residents are often forced to spend more than an hour each morning simply to get out of their estate. On the drive home to Werribee in Melbourne’s west, residents frequently face 3km-long queues of cars lining up to get off the Princes Freeway.

The Allan government’s failure to plan to meet the growth of these areas by investing in the necessary infrastructure – whether it’s roads, public transport, hospitals or schools – has many in these communities despairing.

In many growth areas there is a severe shortage of teachers and schools. In the City of Wyndham, the average school has 983 students compared to about 554 across Greater Melbourne.

Evan Mulholland is the Opposition spokesman for outer suburban growth. Picture: Supplied

And, according to SGS Economics and Planning, despite significant growth in outer suburbs, locals have access to fewer jobs within a 30-minute drive than they did in 1996.

All the while, Labor gleefully collects their stamp duty and then just spends it elsewhere. Often in the form of reckless government waste, like the $600m cancellation of the Commonwealth Games.

The degree to which Labor takes our growth areas for granted cannot be underestimated. A case in point is the Growth Area Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC).

This fund was established with the explicit purpose of funding essential infrastructure in Melbourne’s growth areas, such as new bus routes, stations, footpaths, bike lanes and bridges.

Instead, it is being used by Labor as an accounting trick to prop up the state budget’s bottom line following years of profligate spending. In the last two budgets, Labor has not allocated a single dollar from it and the fund has almost half a billion dollars unspent sitting in Treasury’s coffers.

The latest kick in the guts for these residents was found in the recent housing statement which said it would “bring forward a package of works from this fund”.

It’s cold comfort to those waiting hours in traffic, sending their kids to schools with enormous class sizes or catching a packed regional V/Line train from an outer suburb that the state’s budget has been propped up at their expense.

Two new electrified lines to service the burgeoning suburbs of Melton and Wyndham Vale, promised by Labor at the 2018 and 2022 elections, were recently cancelled due to budget pressures. Instead, the government has chosen to prioritise building a Suburban Rail Loop through established suburbs.

Having spent a lot of time listening to these Victorians, there is an expectation that infrastructure should be built in growth areas before residents move in, not decades after.

We should be providing all these Victorians with proper communities to live in, not shattering their dreams by providing them with deserts of housing estates with no access to the basic amenities that others living in established suburbs enjoy.

Evan Mulholland is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council and Opposition spokesman for Outer Suburban Growth