White elephant projects that failed Victoria

They were meant to make Victoria great but these notorious projects will go down in history as our biggest white elephants.

Wonthaggi’s desalination plant is a white elephant in Victoria. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

They were the projects that were meant to make Victoria great again, but ended up as high-priced disasters.

Last week we saw the closure of the Mickleham quarantine facility — the centre which would help Victoria avoid another hotel quarantine catastrophe — but it’s far from the only epic waste of taxpayer dollars.

These are the notorious projects that belong in Victoria’s hall of shame.

Mickleham quarantine facility

Victoria’s purpose-built quarantine facility abruptly closed just eight months after opening, sparking denials the half-a-billion dollar project was a “white elephant”.

The controversial hub built in Mickleham, 30km north of Melbourne, only housed 2168 residents since it opened in February this year.

The Andrews government planned to house international arrivals and use the site for future emergencies like bushfires.

It closed this week and was handed back to the federal government who own the site.

The Andrews government would not confirm how much had been spent on operational costs so far, with $120.3m originally set aside for the Covid Quarantine Victoria program – charged with running the facility – throughout the 2022-23 period.

An aerial view of the Mickleham quarantine facility.

HealthSMART system

The decade-long implementation of modernising Victoria’s health IT infrastructure never saw the light of day.

The HealthSMART e-health record system was initiated under the Bracks Labor government in 2003 and was proposed to cost $323m.

The project was promised to fix all of the state’s hospital information technology problems, reducing mistakes and allow clinicians to spend more time with their patients.

HealthSMART planned to make a patient’s record available to all their treating health practitioners, including scans, blood tests and doctors notes.

Four years later, 57 per cent of the money had been spent but only 24 per cent of the project had been completed.

The projected cost rose to $427m before it was scrapped in 2012.

Wonthaggi desalination plant

The desalination plant is located in Wonthaggi. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

The desalination plant was meant to supply up to 150bn litres of water a year to Melbourne, Geelong, South Gippsland and Western Port towns.

But it was riddled with problems from the start when it took years to turn on which cost the state $27m, on top of the $607m paid each year to keep it ready for use.

The remainder of the 2022-23 desalination order was ceased in September this year after Melbourne Water provided advice to the state government.

“The Victorian government has accepted this advice and the desalination order will be halted, effective immediately,” a statement read.

Ultranet

The dream was to establish a successful online learning management to connect students, teachers and parents across Victoria.

The project was spearheaded by Glen Waverley Secondary principal and Education Department deputy secretary Darrell Fraser.

After it was launched in 2010, Ultranet was plagued with technical difficulties and rarely used.

It was eventually dumped in 2012 after a massive cost blowout as high as $240m.

East West Link

An artist’s impression of the East West Link.

The controversial East West Link has been in talk for years.

It was recommended in 2008 to connect the Eastern Freeway to the Western Ring Rd, and was backed by the Baillieu government in 2011.

Premier Denis Napthine and Transport Minister Terry Mulder signed the contracts after a bid to halt the project was thrown out of the High Court in 2014.

The court case took place as protesters fought for access to the project’s business case in order to uncover “government secrets”.

Daniel Andrews promised to tear up the contracts if he won government, and promptly dumped the project in 2015.

As premier, he wasted about $1.2bn already spent on the project.

Meanwhile, Victorian taxpayers were left with a $339m bill after the government struck a deal with the East West Connect consortium to pay for costs incurred during the brief life of the tunnel project.

The payment did not include compensation for any loss of future profits.

The East West Link has been backed by the Liberals and Nationals at four successive federal elections, as well as the past two state elections.

Service Victoria app

Despite the promise of an easy-to-use, one-stop shop for all state government transactions, the Auditor-General declared it a failure.

According to a report, the lack of agencies using the platform meant it undertook only 814,282 transactions in 2019-20, only 1.3 per cent of the state’s 62.4m transactions.

It was predicted to host 11m transactions by mid-2018 but it just didn’t meet its full potential.

The report found there was a lack of mandate to ensure agencies used the platform.