Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh said if you think the Andrews Labor government is short-changing post COVID regional Victoria – and it is – you just have to look south to Melbourne and see where it’s all going wrong.
Mr Walsh said at a government briefing today, after months of smoke and mirrors, major projects authorities have finally been unable to hide the disaster of deepening problems on the West Gate Tunnel.
He said if you wondered why the government has had work crews going overtime to rip down its wildly optimistic 2022 ‘completion’ banners it is because 2024 is now the year being bandied about.
“That’s two years – and I suspect in the end, billions of dollars worth of planning, implementation and oversight failure by the Andrews Labor government in general and Jacinta Allan, the Minister for Incomplete and Over Budget, in particular – down the track and I will take any odds it’s a wild hope rather than a set in concrete occasion,” he added.
“For goodness sake, Jacinta Allan, who is also Minister for Messed Up, hasn’t even got the issue of the toxic soil worked out yet – and she has mountains of that looking for a home somewhere.
“Right now her preferred address – and she has a permit for it – is the High Quality site at Bulla; almost next door to local communities.
“In what world does Jacinta imagine that one is going to cut the mustard?
“Dumping toxic, contaminated soil near urban communities – I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that?”
Mr Walsh said although the Bulla site has a government permit, Jacinta Allan and her team have yet to facilitate the construction of the works associated with this facility.
Not surprisingly, he added, Labor’s toxic dumping site does not have the support of those impacted local communities.
“But why would that worry this arrogant Labor government; they’ll just fallback on their playbook and steamroll both the local government authorities and the residents,” he said.
“And don’t think for a minute the West Gate Tunnel is the only failure by the Premier of Melbourne’s desire to distract your attention from his other complete failures – hotel quarantine and contact tracing.
“No, the tunnel is just one of Labor’s many major projects that is in trouble. Almost every major project is either late, massively over budget or otherwise botched.
“The only consistency here is Madam Mayhem, with everything Jacinta Allan touches turning into a disaster.
“The West Gate Tunnel project has been a debacle from beginning to end. It’s been a special deal for Labor’s mates. It is wildly late, with time slipping further.”
Meanwhile, Mr Walsh said motorists are paying through the nose every day on the CityLink roads for a tunnel that is not even built – and they may never use.
“I would say that completes the trifecta for Ms Allan – overdue, overbudget and the paying public being screwed over.”
