OPINION: JASON SHIELDS
THERE goes that rug again, pulled from under regional Victorians.
It’s a nasty trick that the Victorian Government plays far too often on us country folk. You’d think by now we would see it coming.
Premier Daniel Andrews this week announced the cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, which were set to be staged across regional Victoria, blaming, well, everything but his own government.
It’s part of the magic, you see. Smoke, mirrors, distraction.
He plucked a figure of $7 billion to stage the 12-day event seemingly out of his hat, up from the $2.6 billion his government had budgeted for. The details of how those cost estimates have been arrived at have not been provided. Magicians don’t give up their secrets.
He then said he would not take money out of hospitals and schools in order to pay for a sporting event, overlooking the mere detail that his government lobbied for the Commonwealth Games with full gusto during the pandemic. Should schools and hospitals not have been a priority then? No, look over there, now see this. It’s theatrical misdirection.
However, the Andrews government PR machine tries to magically spin the cancelling of the Games as a positive, country people aren’t easily fooled: they simply see it as another broken promise.
I grew up in Churchill in the Latrobe Valley, where most of the government’s big promises to support the transition away from coal have not yet eventuated.
One of our main footy rivals down that way was Heyfield, where the timber industry is the lifeblood of the town. This year the government brought forward the end of native timber industry in a snap decision that blindsided the wonderful East Gippsland towns like Heyfield that are reliant on it. Those tight-knit communities believed the industry would transition to plantation in 2030 but, abracadabra, now it is the start of 2024. Thousands of jobs lost by year’s end.
Imagine being on the end of that brutal decision making.
Here in Mildura, our former state MP Ali Cupper last year said Mallee residents had been “betrayed” by the Andrews Labor government over the future of health care in the region.
A master plan for health care in the northern Mallee, which was expected to recommend a new hospital, had been completed and was due for release in April 2022. The plan, to that point, had been kept from the public with no reason given for its secrecy.
“For months, the government gave us false hope and expectation of a new hospital,” Ms Cupper said at the time. “And now, it has betrayed us.”
The masterplan has still not been released. It is 15 months late and counting.
So this week’s Commonwealth Games cancellation doesn’t exactly come as a shock to people in country Victoria, where trust has long been eroded.
But it has a dramatic impact on a much larger scale.
It demonstrates to the world that doing business with the Victorian Government can be akin to walking the high wire.
To now make this problem magically disappear, Mr Andrews will have to spend a lot more money. He won’t say how much, but some are claiming up to $1 billion.
It’s a hell of a lot to deliver nothing. In the private sector, no CEO would survive.
Despite that, Mr Andrews’ supporters flooded social media to praise his decision this week as being “brave”, ignoring that the mess was all of his Government’s making in the first place.
After axing the Games, and cutting his losses, Mr Andrews waved the wand and announced $2.6 billion to be divided up through regional Victoria in an attempt to lessen the blow. Mildura Council will fight for its slice of the pie.
But will any of that money prove to be real?
We wait for the next act. This is Victoria, where the show just rolls on.
