THE Victorian Nationals are pushing for an overhaul of the criteria to tender for major projects in regional centres to put local commercial builders “in the game”.
Nationals leader Peter Walsh said that if the Coalition wins power at next year’s state poll, it would reform a policy that sees Melbourne companies automatically rip a hefty slice out of multi-million-dollar regional projects.
“We want to see all the (government funding) kept local, rather than having a percentage of it going out of town for effectively signing bits of paper,” Mr Walsh said.
“The commercial builders I talk to in regional cities often say they could have built a major project a lot better, and for the same or less amount of money.”
The Member for Murray Plains cited the $44 million Mildura South Sporting Precinct as a “good example” of how locals could have benefited from it even more.
The project manager for it is Melbourne commercial construction company CICG.
“A big project like this doesn’t come to Mildura very often, but for the local commercial builders, they don’t meet the requirement of turning over more in their business (in a financial year) than the total value of the project, which means they are excluded,” Mr Walsh said.
“So a builder from Melbourne usually wins the tender and will use the locals as subbies (subcontractors).
“But 20-30 per cent of the total project cost goes out of town for the administration of it.”
He also has concerns around local commercial builders being overlooked to lead major school upgrades.
“When you look at school projects across country Victoria, the Melbourne-based project manager sometimes never even visits the project site, but takes a significant cut of the funding,” Mr Walsh said.
“One of the things we’re committed to is changing the criteria so that local commercial builders can bid on these projects.
“The Andrews Government doesn’t recognise it, but the font of all planning wisdom is not in Melbourne.”
