They actually started when Andrews became premier in November 2014.
One of his policies was to cancel the fixed contract to build the East-West freeway link. The community and the media focused on the $1bn-plus break fees and the loss of commonwealth money. In hindsight, they were minor issues.
Victoria had assembled over some years (including the years when the ALP’s Steve Bracks and John Brumby were premiers) the best infrastructure designing and building team in the nation and one of the best in the world.
When they saw their signature project machine-gunned with no regard to the cost, most decided to abandon Victoria and within months had been snapped up by international and other Australian state governments who recognised their talents.
The new Andrews government then launched an unprecedented infrastructure building program led by a brilliant concept to replace rail level crossings.
The rail crossing campaign related to voters who could actually see the value of the money that was being spent.
To that was added much larger projects, including a rail tunnel around Melbourne, but the simple fact was that having destroyed the best infrastructure team in the nation, Victoria was never going to attract the talent required to achieve its ambitions at a proper cost.
As well as normal infrastructure, a chaotic renewables power generation and transmission scheme was started. And so, in project after project, costs exploded.
Then came the building cost crisis, which further inflamed the problem, and which was made more difficult by the power of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union. Indeed, one of the reasons the East-West link was scrapped was that non-CFMEU unions had key roles in the abandoned contract.
At some point the rating agencies are going to be forced to do their job and impose a larger reduction in infrastructure spending as well as require the state to develop proper infrastructure management systems, including renewables and the use of Victoria’s world-class onshore low-cost gas reserves.
But the weakness in Victorian public service management goes much further than infrastructure.
