Jacinta Allan oversaw $20b in cost blowouts, now the debt bill will bite

Jacinta Allan will have to defend the largest blowout in construction costs any transport minister in this state has overseen as she takes the reins as premier.

On Victoria’s big signature projects, where Allan fronted countless media events alongside Daniel Andrews, they add up.

Jacinta Allan at her first media conference as Premier.Credit: Joe Armao

In 2016, the North East Link was to cost $10 billion. Its price tag is now $16.5 billion. The West Gate Tunnel ballooned from $5.5 billion to $10 billion. The Metro Tunnel’s 2015 business case said it would cost $7.5 billion, but it will cost $12 billion. And the Suburban Rail Loop was to cost $50 billion. Its first stage, covering a third of the total plan, is budgeted at $34.5 billion.

Even the incredibly popular level crossing removals have all had significant cost overruns. The auditor-general found in 2017 the cost of removing the first 50 level crossings had blown out to $8.3 billion — at least 38 per cent more expensive than its initial $5 billion to $6 billion estimated price tag.

But despite the blowouts, Allan’s parliamentary experience is impressive. Along with being deputy leader since last year and leader of the Lower House since 2014, she has handled a range of serious portfolios, including police, and some requiring great sensitivity, like being the minister for bushfire response after Black Saturday.

She has also survived the hunger games of Victorian politics to take the top job, seeing off contenders for the premiership such as Jill Hennessy and Martin Pakula.

The immense debt that has piled up under Labor, thanks in part to the pandemic but also the massive infrastructure spending, will be one of the biggest challenges facing Allan.

Victoria’s net debt is set to grow from about $135 billion next year to $171 billion by 2027.

The West Gate Tunnel, pictured under construction last month, is among several big ticket projects billions of dollars over budget.Credit: Clay Lucas

With Treasurer Tim Pallas remaining in place, a change of direction is unlikely despite the leadership shift.

Allan’s other priorities will be steering through the enormous housing plan bequeathed to her by Andrews, reforms to Victoria’s integrity watchdog, and Indigenous issues — whatever the outcome of the Voice referendum.

Zareh Ghazarian, from Monash University, said Allan’s communication style would be key to whether she had cut-through with voters. “There is work to be done to reposition the government as more approachable,” he says.

Jacinta Allan, pictured in August at early works for the Suburban Rail Loop project.Credit: Jason South

It’s not hard to guess which way Opposition Leader John Pesutto lands on Allan’s infrastructure record, estimating she has overseen “nearly $30 billion of infrastructure cost blowouts”. It’s a figure of some exaggeration, but it’s easy to arrive at $20 billion over budget in a cursory scan of projects Allan has been directly involved in.

“As premier, she needs to provide an urgent update on these and other projects including the Metro Tunnel and come clean with Victorians about the status of these projects and their true cost to taxpayers,” Pesutto says.

It’s an easy jibe for Pesutto to make — the blowouts are indeed enormous — but some will see it as a bit rich. Pesutto served as an adviser to Denis Napthine, whose main infrastructure project, the never-built East West Link, was a debacle from start to finish.

And unlike Napthine and Ted Baillieu before him, Allan has got things done, overseeing an absolutely enormous portfolio that was, before the pandemic came along, the main game in Victorian politics: building new transport infrastructure.

Despite the massive cost overruns, she and Andrews will be remembered for enormous toll road projects such as the West Gate Tunnel and North East Link, along with the railway Metro Tunnel, first conceived in the early 2000s but too hard for any government before they came along.

It’s undeniable that under Allan and Andrews, an enormous amount of new and much-needed transport infrastructure has been built at a frenetic pace in Victoria since 2014.

In her inaugural speech to the Victorian parliament in 1999, Allan noted some of the firsts she had already achieved in Victorian politics: the first Labor member to represent the electorate of Bendigo East and the first woman to represent Bendigo in any Australian parliament.

When she became a minister at age 29 a few years later, she was the youngest in the state’s history.

Now Australia’s longest-serving female minister, Allan turned 50 last week. She is an expert at donning a hard hat and high-vis and batting off complaints that projects cost billions more than the government initially said they would.

The daughter of an electricity linesman, and granddaughter of a long-standing president of the Bendigo Trades Hall, the pandemic had many challenges for Allan.

She was acting premier in late 2020 and early 2021 when Victoria took the dramatic step of shutting its border with NSW on New Year’s Eve. “This is not an easy choice,” Allan said of a closure that upended the summer breaks of 60,000 Victorians and led to massive traffic jams as motorists frantically tried to cross the border to avoid 14 days of home quarantine.

About 4000 Victorians could not cross the Murray before the 11.59 cut-off that night and found themselves trapped on the wrong side of the river.

Allan has two children with unionist, former ministerial adviser in the Brumby government and Victorian Fisheries Authority board member Yorick Piper. She was elected in the pro-Labor regional swing of 1999 and increased her margin over the Liberal Party to more than 14 per cent at last year’s election.

It will be fascinating to see the degree to which Allan faces the sort of sexism experienced by her predecessor, Joan Kirner, and former transport minister Lynne Kosky.

New Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said the state’s first female leader the late Joan Kirner, pictured, was a mentor to her.Credit: Mike Bowers

Asked about being the second woman to lead the state, Allan acknowledged Kirner as a wonderful mentor and support to many of us.

“It’s not lost on me that I am only the second woman to lead this state — that comes with some emotion,” she said, holding back tears. “I hope it says to young women, older women, women from across different backgrounds of all parts of the state that leadership takes on all shapes and sizes.

“I hope it sends a message to younger women. Hopefully, they can learn from some of the slings and arrows and not have them repeated.”

But Melbourne University associate professor in political science Lauren Rosewarne says the media does sexism “a bit more craftily now”.

“You’re not going to call out a woman for being a dowdy dresser anymore - rather than that you will have talk about ‘fit to take on the job’ or the like.”

And Rosewarne says there is a simple reason the media has improved its behaviour on sexism when it comes to female politicians. “It’s not because they are being good or well-behaved - it’s that people are ready to call it out and shame them on social media and that has forced them to be more crafty.”

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