That does not commute: transport policy flawed

The Bracks Government has adopted some strong pro-public transport and anti-car stances.

One irksome illustration of this is the increased use of the motorist as a cash cow.  Increased parking imposts and the new 40km/h speed limits are examples of revenue raising trumping traffic management.

The nature of trip origins and destinations together with the consumers' wish for flexibility means that cars are indispensable.

While 50 years ago public transport accounted for more than half of Melbourne's trips, it's now at 8 per cent, with cars delivering 92 per cent.

Public transport is only cost-effective in servicing the central business district, which has seen its share of jobs fall from over half the total 50 years ago to only 12 per cent.

Short of crippling the State's economy, there is no possibility of the trends away from public transport being reversed.

But the State's 2030 plan envisages doubling public transport's share of trips.

The problem with planning fantasies of this sort is that they start to influence policy and spending.

In fact, Spring St plans to spend almost three times as much on public transport investments as on roads.

And road spending in real terms, having risen until 2001, fell sharply under the present government before recovering last year with the $2.5 billion Eastlink project.

With the Eastlink project, the Government has shown a welcome hard-headed business approach.  It had previously allowed itself to be skinned by insisting on the unions controlling projects like the MCG redevelopment.  Perhaps it learned a lesson from the resulting cost overruns.

On Eastlink, the Thiess-led consortium was determined to run its own show.  It refused to accept the hire-a-dope, pay-a-wrecker requirements of the CFMEU.

Instead it sought agreements with unions like the AWU which are more focused on their members' incomes than fighting destructive class wars.

It insisted on flexible work practices and on setting and policing for itself high levels of site safety.

This was made possible by the Commonwealth's industrial relations reforms.  Having voiced the obligatory ALP indignation about these, the Bracks government actually allowed its contractor to run its own show.  This meant it could do so without the union stand-overs that have plagued so many of Victoria's major projects.

The outcome has been a triumph for all concerned.  Eastlink is opening months ahead of schedule.  Management savings are at least $200 million.  And the workers involved have benefited with pay packets 10 per cent above the norm, as well as from a safety record second to none.

As long as it is only paying lip-service in favour of union and green crazies, the Bracks Government will prove an able manager of the State's economy.  This makes it a capable, though reluctant, implementer of the reforms set in place by the Kennett Government.

The danger remains that in adopting a different rhetoric it, or some of its Ministers, may come to believe that they can bring radical change.

Already some such "back to the Kirner" policies are evident and it will need careful management from the top to prevent them being implemented and undermining the State's economy.

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