West Gate Tunnel
Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (09:46): Recently my son and I were able to experience a marvel of Labor’s so-called Big Build – a futuristic, state-of-the-art experience, something so unfathomable that we had to be prepared, with our taxes diverted away from building it to being spent on building a virtual experience of it instead. The marvel I speak of is a tunnel, the West Gate Tunnel – that election-winning infrastructure promise meant to solve all the problems of the west. Of course in the virtual version there are no potholes, no traffic jams and no trucks and there is no mention that the project is three years late, $3.5 billion over budget and the clearance is too low for most of the B-doubles it was meant to divert. There is no mention of the toxic soil, the ghost shifts or the families whose compensation for the vibrations cracking their walls from floor to ceiling was a pizza voucher. There is no mention of the giant Orwellian mirror boots that are going to spew unfiltered diesel fumes all over thousands of homes. We know that all the resources and the money are being spent over in the east on the Suburban Rail Loop, but I suppose in the west we should just count ourselves lucky to have gotten a key ring and a shoddy little virtual game.