Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Suburban Rail Loop

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:58): Today I want to draw the chamber’s attention to the outrageous mismanagement of our Suburban Rail Loop and the involvement of Mr James MacKenzie in the matter. This is a project that is massively over budget already. They said $50 billion for the whole lot; it is now $35 billion to $50 billion just for one-third of it. The FOI information we have shows Mr MacKenzie using his private email address both at the Suburban Rail Loop Authority and at Development Victoria. This is an outrage. It is clearly a breach—an absolute breach—of the Public Records Act 1973, and the massive blowouts in cost on this project and projects across the state reflect the mismanagement of these projects and the ramshackle approach to public management of them.

I make the point very clearly: how can you expect to manage, cost-contain and constrain these projects from blowing out if you actually do not have half the documents? We have actually got cabinet-in-confidence documents being transmitted on a private email service with no control and no proper backup. I say there is a lot to cover up on this. I say the project is corrupt to the core and that the government’s approach to this—its secrecy, its use of private emails to cover up on this project—is outrageous. This is crooked. It is wrong. And I have to say that the Premier should step in and demand that the proper email service be used, rather than the corrupt processes that are operating now.