With the East West link slowly sinking under its own weight, big business is pulling out all stops to try and save it. Treasurer Michael O’Brien said Labor’s position was “economically insane, and would cost Victoria $3 billion and 6200 jobs”.

Tony Abbot has promised $3 billion, some of it for stage 2, as part of his ‘stick to your knitting’ no trains policy. That funding can now be reassigned to higher priority and more productive projects such as the unfunded Melbourne Metro. So that’s hardly a cost, more of a gain.

The Treasurer also said no one would want to do business with a Labor government that was prepared to “rip up contracts and … go back on their word.” The contracts will be unenforceable, so there is no need to rip up anything, they can simply be set aside.

“We are not going to be held hostage by Mr Andrews and his reckless behaviour, we are going to get on with negotiating the final stages of these contracts, signing the contracts and getting on with building the East West Link.”

Michael West in Fairfax Business Day, put it succinctly,

“This idea that you can stick an incoming government with an $8 billion bill just weeks before an election is a bit rich”. The government is recklessly trying to hold the next parliament hostage to contracts.

“Nobody should ever be required to commit $8 billion of other people’s money on a project that they know nothing about and which lacks community approval in any case. This would be truly reckless.”
Michael West, Business Day, September 12, 2014, p.32.

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