The Making and Unmaking of the East-West Link, by James C. Murphy

 

A major road project takes a belly flop.

Here's an extraordinary story of infrastructure planning gone awry, costing the taxpayer a billion dollars. The idea of an East-West road link had been kicked around policy circles for years and was finally taken up by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu in 2011, just after his 2010 election win. Baillieu was seen as a weak, ineffectual premier, and his enthusiasm for the road project was lukewarm. Seeing his support as premier crumbling, he jumped ship before being pushed. His successor, Denis Napthine, wanted to appear a man of action and with a strong sense of mission. He took up the East West Link with gusto.

So far, so good for the new Liberal Premier. Trouble was soon brewing, however. Locals who would be affected took umbrage – and then took up arms, or at least protest placards. There were court challenges and activists physically disrupting machinery, stopping works commencing. The Murdoch press portrayed the protesters as Luddites and greenie agitators. The Herald Sun covered the protests intensely, inadvertently helping the protesters' cause by keeping it relentlessly in the public eye.
Enter the Labor party. With many an inner city seat at risk of succumbing to the Greens, the party moved in support of the protesters, even though there was much in principal support of the East-West Link within Labor. Finally, weeks out from an election, Daniel Andrews vowed to rip up any contracts that had been signed. Denis Napthine, despite this, committed the state to the project.

Melbourne University academic James C. Murphy's main interest in the East-West Link story – or fiasco, as it is often gleefully referred to in this book – is to examine where power is located when it comes to decision making for major infrastructure projects. As he notes, public infrastructure is intensely political, as it involves public space and directly affects people's lives. His conclusion is that the East-West Link got up and running due to the influence and co-ordination of roads bureaucrat Ken Mathers. Mathers had three decades experience in roads bureaucracy, was well connected and skillfully orchestrated industry groups and other various boosters in favour of the project. Baillieu and Napthine appear as hollow men, holding power but not having any actual policy convictions. That the project was defeated appears to be almost random. The various protest groups that arose were not co-ordinated, more scattershot. But their vehemence and commitment won the day.

The Making and the Unmaking of the East-West Link mixes theories of political science with a real life test case. Who holds power? How are major projects decided? Are community protests effective? Do faceless bureaucrats exert too much influence? These are some of the questions Murphy tries to answer, often with a sly sense of humour. The truth is governments can waste extraordinary amounts of money and we should probably pay more attention than we do.

The Making and Unmaking of the East-West Link, by James C. Murphy. Published by Melbourne University Press. $34.99

OCT22