As a passenger, you would expect the person ultimately responsible for Melbourne’s suburban railway network would be fully across his or her brief. After all, the position oversees a service comprising 220 six-carriage trains that transport 415,000 passengers each day across 965 kilometres of railway tracks. You would also assume that person’s priority would be railway, not social, engineering.
But if you witnessed the recent ineptitude of Victoria’s Public Transport Minister, Jacinta Allan, you could be forgiven for refusing to set foot on a public train, bus, or tram as long as she occupies that portfolio. Last week she proudly announced she had directed Metro Trains to remove Sky News Australia programs from its CBD stations. “Hatred and racism have no place on our screens or in our community,” she tweeted.
I’ve directed @MetroTrains to remove @skynewsaustralia from all CBD station screens. Hatred and racism have no place on our screens or in our community. #springst
— Jacinta Allan (@JacintaAllanMP) August 8, 2018
The supposed reason for this arbitrary decision was the network’s recent interview with far-right activist Blair Cottrell. Yet Allan was silent about Channel Seven in Melbourne, which in January featured Cottrell, and about the ABC when it did the same last year and in 2016. Her singling out of Sky News appears to have little to do with protecting commuters and a lot to do with politics.
You can imagine her eagerness in making this announcement on television, particularly the thought of earning plaudits from the inner-city progressives. But her self-righteousness soon gave way to panic when Sky News host Laura Jayes informed Allan that the interview with Cottrell had not been shown in Melbourne’s train stations. “It’s — well it’s not just about one interview and I think we should be really really clear about this,” spluttered Allan; “ … there — there has been a number of complaints that I’ve received about the content that’s shown on our public transport assets.”
When told that the Sky News material shown in the stations was limited to news and weather, Allan floundered even further. “Well, well, well, there, there is a number of — there have been a number of complaints about the content that people find — that people haven’t appreciated, haven’t liked, have taken offence to, and there’s a long list of that …” Could you provide specific examples, asked Jayes, not unreasonably.
“Well it’s the material that has been screened on these TV screens that are in our city loop that people haven’t appreciated,” replied the hapless minister, digging a hole large enough to accommodate a new underground station. What material? “A pretty long list that is — that is well known, whether it’s material that is out of step with what people — people’s views are.” One thing is for certain, and that is she was being anything but really really clear about this.
By this stage viewers no doubt concluded Allan was unfit to narrate the children’s television series Thomas the Tank Engine, let alone be in charge of a major metropolitan rail network. To paraphrase The Fat Controller, Jacinta was not proving to be a really useful engine.
Neither was Jacinta an upfront one. APN Outdoor, which was responsible for managing screens that broadcast the network’s bulletins in Victorian train stations, confirmed it had not received a single complaint from the public about Sky News interviews. Additionally, Sky News CEO and managing director Angelos Frangopoulos advised the Victorian government had never complained about the content of the network’s new bulletins since their introduction to train stations in 2015.
Comical as this debacle has been, it is yet another disconcerting insight into the extent which the Andrews Government is prepared to go in making Victoria one giant infantile ‘safe space’, with the exception of cracking down on violent crime. Only last year Allan made an official visit to China, one of the reasons being “developing Victoria’s important connection with Jiangsu Province”. By the looks of it the country’s officials gave her a few tips on how to deal with a critical media. Be assured though the $20,279 it cost taxpayers for her trip was well spent. For example, in Allan’s official report she notes her visit to one of Changchun City’s train stations “provided me with a good example of how interpretative information and integrated artwork from local creative industries can be incorporated in a station’s design.”
Had she not been so obsessed with virtue exhibitionism and muzzling the media in her socialist utopian province, Allan might have instead learned from the example of Virgin Rail Group. In January it announced it would no longer stock Britain’s second highest-selling newspaper, The Daily Mail, in its on board shops, claiming staff had raised “considerable concerns” about the tabloid’s “editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights and unemployment”. Sound familiar? The backlash was intense. The rail group’s founder, Sir Richard Branson, quickly reversed the decision. “We must not ever be seen to be censoring what our customers read and influencing their freedom of choice,” he said. “Nor must we be seen to be moralising on behalf of others.”
How could someone with Allan’s responsibility be so out of touch, as well as so contemptuous of the citizens’ ability to think for themselves? The answer has a lot to do with the fact that Allan is typical of today’s professional politicians, particularly her dearth of life experience. She was only 25 when she was elected. Prior to that she was employed in the then Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations for only a matter of months, and spent four years as a political staffer.
She also has an entitlement mentality to match. Last year The Herald Sun revealed Allan travelled to Hanging Rock at taxpayers’ expense to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. This was, she explained, in her capacity as major projects minister. Presumably this member of Labor’s Socialist Left faction travelled on public transport with the common folk for the 150km return trip, just like her fellow MP and Cabinet Secretary Mary-Anne Thomas did? Not at all; the ministerial derrière was ferried to and from the concert by a chauffeur-driven car.
As for Allan’s extraordinary move of dictating what news networks should not feature in public view, she might care to reflect on her parliamentary maiden speech of 1999. “I wish to highlight the importance of democracy in our parliamentary system to our way of life as Victorians and Australians,” she said. “Our democracy needs to be strengthened and invigorated.”
Perhaps Allan could explain what she has since done to strengthen and invigorate democracy as a senior government frontbencher, particularly in light of Ombudsman Deborah Glass’s finding that during the 2014 election 21 Labor MPs unlawfully used $388,000 in public funds in the so-called ‘redshirts’ rorting. The allegations are now the subject of a criminal investigation by police. Despite her professed love of openness and democracy, Allan, as with all members of the Victorian Cabinet, has done her best to frustrate this investigation. The Andrews government repeatedly and unsuccessfully challenged the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction in the courts, spending approximately a million dollars in public moneys.
It was the Victorian Legislative Council (the upper house) which referred the matter to the Ombudsman in 2015. In 2017 Allan, as leader of government business in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house), moved a motion to assert that its right of privilege was such that the investigation “cannot be taken to apply to current or former members of the Legislative Assembly”. Less than two years before, Allan had told Parliament when introducing a bill: “It is crucial that all Victorians can have confidence that public officials and bodies conduct themselves, and use public funds, with the highest degree of integrity and accountability.” Could the hypocrisy be any more obvious?
It gets even more farcical. The architect of the redshirts rorting was John Lenders, who was Treasurer in the Brumby Labor government. In 2015, the year after this rorting took place, Allan announced his appointment as chair of the state’s rail asset owner VicTrack. Fittingly the announcement was made on April Fool’s Day. His “decade of experience in senior roles in public office would be invaluable in leading the independent Board of this critical public-sector organisation,” she said. Later that year he was publicly named by a whistleblower. Despite this, it was not until March this year — just days before the Ombudsman’s report was made public — that Allan announced Lenders’ resignation.
Here is some advice for you, minister. Your responsibility is to look after the literal, not the metaphorical, platforms. By all means call out the media when you think it has got it wrong, as it often does, but don’t ever try to curtail its reporting for reasons of self-interest, especially when your government has a proven record of wrongdoing and abrogation. To act so is to invite even more scrutiny, and your attempts at distraction are about as effective as standing in the path of an oncoming train as a means of stopping it.
Add your comment to this story
Causational goose of the week
Would it be too much to expect the usual postulators to hold off attributing blame for the Christchurch tragedy?
Sixteen reasons to be wary
Greens senator Jordon Steele-John wants the voting age lowered to 16. But don’t be fooled on the motivations behind his private member’s bill.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout