Steve Price: Dan should invest in reviving Melbourne rather than a second-rate Commonwealth Games
It may be too late to save our stricken capital but Premier Daniel Andrews could try by appointing a minister for Melbourne. If he “had any guts” he’d take the job himself.
Opinion
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In Premier Daniel Andrews’ Victorian government there is a minister for solar homes, one for equality and even for boating and fishing.
What Melbourne desperately needs, though, is a minister for Melbourne, before it’s too late to save our city.
Fishermen can look after themselves. And what exactly does a solar panel minister do anyway? Trawl the state checking people’s roofs?
Victoria’s jewel in the crown, Melbourne, is on the brink of being almost unvisitable. I have written plenty of times about the destruction of a once-unmissable tourist attraction for overseas and interstate visitors – not to mention locals – but nothing happens.
Absolutely zero.
Premier Andrews needs to stop spending weekends on the Mornington Peninsula playing golf, get out of his taxpayer funded chauffeur driven car and take a walk around the city.
I’m not sure he even understands just how bad things have become. His TV news obsession for hard hats and high-vis on his vanity infrastructure projects aimed at transporting people into Melbourne are, as we know, over budget by billions.
What he doesn’t realise is that he is building assets to take people to somewhere they increasingly refuse to go to.
Covid accelerated Melbourne’s decline into a dirty, inaccessible, graffiti-stained stopover for homeless people, but a Green-obsessed, woke city council has poured petrol on the fire.
Loud voices from small business and hospitality — people like restaurateur Chris Lucas and Small Business Australia executive director Bill Lang — are ignored by town hall and treated as if they are a couple of shouty agitators.
Lucas has poured more of his own money into making a Melbourne experience worthwhile, than is good for him. He ought to be a special envoy advising government what needs to be done.
His, at times aggressive, slaps at the Premier’s handling of Covid lockdowns makes that prospect about as likely as Dan eating at one of his restaurants.
Lang wants to be a politician, so is accused of running his own agenda under the small business umbrella.
Both, though, have been consistent in their message: the city is being smashed by green-tinged decisions, such as flooding famously broad avenues with under-utilised bike lanes and elevated tram stops.
As I have reported here before, the body responsible for doing what most thought would be impossible – wrecking Melbourne – is, of course, the Melbourne City Council.
Led by two-time popularly elected Lord Mayor Sally Capp – who tries hard but thinks a photo opportunity riding an electric scooter in high heels is a good look – this group includes someone with a PhD in human rights, a trade union official, a Green and a commercial lawyer.
It would be like having an AFL club run by tennis players and coaches.
Not one of these councillors, to my knowledge, has any expertise in urban transport; you know, roads and things that carry trucks and cars and delivery vans. The things that make a city tick before dawn and after dark.
One example of state and local government incompetence struck me this week as I sat behind a B-double tanker loaded with something flammable turning left off City Rd into Power St.
It’s that corner where people have been badly injured as trucks try to turn to get on the freeway. Who in planning still thinks the only east to west route for these vehicles should be through Southbank?
Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, worked out you need a heavy transport ring road to avoid north-south movements of trucks and semi-trailers, and built a ring road.
There is a serious disconnect between Spring St and the Andrews government and town hall.
I can’t quite put my finger on it but I wonder if state Labor doesn’t want to be blamed for what’s happened to the once-mighty Melbourne?
How else can you explain its reluctance to appoint a minister for Melbourne? If Daniel Andrews had any guts he’d take the job on himself.
Instead, the Premier has a Local Government Minister, Shaun Leane, who most Victorians would never have heard of. I presume local means suburban or regional? So why not call him that?
It might be too late to save what was Australia’s most European of cities. The new minister for Melbourne needs to immediately sideline the Green, politically correct, hijacked Melbourne City Council and appoint some proper experts.
Bike lanes need to be ripped out of streets like Exhibition St and plans for a heroin injecting facility dropped while moving homeless people on, like former mayor Robert Doyle did.
Weekend parking on streets should be free and parking stations encouraged to heavily discount it. The crazy experiment with electric scooters that poses a head injury risk to youngsters riding conwhelmet free should be scrapped.
City laneways need to be upgraded and filled with music and the never ending Victoria Market debate finished, to give traders certainty and the public a reason to come back and shop.
It won’t be easy bringing the sick patient back to life but rather than spray $2.6bn dollars around on a second-rate sports carnival such as the Commonwealth Games, spend it giving us our Melbourne back before it’s too late.
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