EAST WEST LINK: FROM ‘DONE DEAL’ TO DEAD END

By Michael Petit

How did the East West Link, an $8 billion major infrastructure project backed by the state and federal governments, overwhelmingly supported by vested financial interests, editorially endorsed by both metropolitan newspapers and underpinned by a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar publicity campaign go from a ‘done deal’ to a dead end?

There are many answers but one truth: a steady growth in community opposition. As one of many community opponents who took a ‘gap year’ to voluntarily campaign against this extraordinary waste of public dollars, I detail 12 principal reasons why this project met such avid opposition and why the Government of the day failed to impose this one-trick pony on the people of Victoria.

1. Yarra Council’s Trains Not Toll Roads campaign.

Without this campaign, there was no platform and no credible chance of success. A Public Transport Advocacy Community Committee (PTACC) was established comprising transport experts, members from major transport, environmental and bicycle user groups, residents and Councillors.  Community groups and individuals lobbied and then worked together with a united Yarra Council to devise and fund a $100,000 plan for opposing the project and the messages opposing its construction. This fertile ground was bolstered by a long-existing and extensive network of people and organisations well versed in public transport. This included veterans of the unsuccessful campaign to stop the building of the Eastern Freeway in the early 1970s. It was reformed and expanded in a unique alliance of Socialist, Greens, Independent and some Labor supporters that led to the 13 June 2013 campaign launch of the Council’s Trains Not Toll Roads campaign. As interesting, existing and new groups and organisations formed and operated independently of one another whilst keeping in touch on social media for call outs to events and demonstrations. The Yarra campaign continued as  a generator of public support for public transport with its messages, street stalls, websites, posters and pamphlets duplicated and sometimes modified by community groups, organisations and individuals across the inner city and beyond, all seeking the same outcome. The Toot for Trains community rallies greeting commuters each Friday morning at the Hoddle Street exit to the Eastern Freeway was a spirited event attended by activists, neighbourhood residents whose homes were threatened and just plain appalled citizens.

2. Socialist Party & The Pickets.

The scourge of the right-wing media occupied front row seats in the State Government’s enemies list. The Pickets were not an organisation as such, but an assemblage of activists organised predominately by the Socialist Party and expanded to include anyone prepared to engage in direct action. Every morning at 5am for six months the picketers, often in front of the media, police and motorists, would not be moved. Lambasted constantly by the Herald Sun, their effectiveness was exemplified by a front-page photo and headline ‘Make Them Pay’ castigating picketers for exercising their citizen rights to link hands and protest at drilling sites and targeted events in opposition to the toll road and tunnel. Ironically, the constant depiction of protestors as ‘rat bags’ by the State Government and the Herald Sun and its columnists kept the issue alive and encouraged actions from others for the life of the campaign. What many of their critics failed to see was just how effective they were. Their discipline, leadership, ability to liaise with the police and tactics took courage, commitment and plain hard work.

3. Community Groups.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the opposition was the manner in which new and existing groups inter-connected enabling a growth and diversity of activities in the fight taken to the state government. In the early days the fight was led by those closest to the threat: the Collingwood and Abbotsford Residents’ Association (CARA), Carlton Residents’ Association (CRA), Fitzroy Residents’ Association (FRA), Yarra Coalition for Action on Transport (YCAT), Yarra Climate Action Now (YCAN), Public Transport Users Association (PTUA), Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc (PPLV), Kensington & Flemington residents’ associations, Royal Park Protection Group and others.

As the opposition grew, new organisations blossomed or formed alliances that included individuals and groups of a variety of political persuasions but with a common objective to defeat the East West Link. In this new age of social media, they were linked through tweets, Facebook, websites, phone trees and filmed footage shared on line. These were effectively used to recruit participants in localised or metropolitan-wide events and demonstrations. Yarra and later Moreland council yard signs opposed to the toll road popped-up across the City.

Moreland residents formed the Moreland Community Against the Tunnel (MCAT) to lobby Moreland Council to adopt its own version of the Yarra Council’s Trains Not Toll Roads campaign. Opposition spread to the southeast with the formation of the Sandbelt Transport Options group that directly lobbied candidates to oppose the EWL in the 29 November election.

Flemington and Kensington residents and associations met with activists as a newly named Community Groups Against the East West Link in monthly and later fortnightly forums. The Residents Against the Tunnel (RATS) made its presence felt and The Tunnel Pickets broadened its base to organise rallies, photo petitions and regional education tours as well as inner city activities under an expanded Community Groups Against the East-West Tunnel banner.

4. Tony Murphy Supreme Court challenge.

April 2014. An important date and the first of three Supreme Court challenges to the state government. This legal action cited a breach of consumer protection laws through misleading representation about the benefits of the EWL, a lack of due process and consultation and demanded the tabling of the business case.

The provision of de bono legal support to picketers, residents and in the Murphy Court case was critical and raised doubts stemming from the secrecy and dismissiveness of proponents of the East West Link.

5. Investigative reporting. 

Despite editorial endorsement of the EWL by Melbourne’s two major dailies, reporters at The Age did not abandon the best tenets of journalism and exposed a treasure trove of deficiencies within the project. Hundreds of articles were written and columns published noting the many deficiencies in the case for the road.

Amongst the most telling arguments were 18 April 2013 (AGE) “Auditor slams plan for road tunnel link” by Jason Dowling; 26 May 2013 “Tunnel won’t fix traffic woes,” (AGE) by Josh Gordon; 9 December 2013 “Secret report on east-west link reveals traffic explosion (AGE) by Josh Gordon and 2 March 2014 “Poll bad news for east-west link,” (Sunday AGE) by Farrah Tomazin.

Columnists and academics pointed out the numerous flaws in telling and precise analyses including the 15 May 2013 (AGE) “East-west tunnel plan looms as a road to ruin” by Sophie Sturup and Nicholas, Melbourne University; 24 June 2013 (AGE) “Why tunnel vision will cost all Victorians, big time,” by Kenneth Davidson, senior columnist and 16 September 2013 (AGE), The east-west smog factory should never be built,” by Brendan Gleeson, professor of urban policy studies of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at Melbourne University.

6. Planning Panels Victoria Assessment Hearings.

(March/April 2014). More than 1500 submissions opposed the EWL with only a handful in favour, principally from the State Government, its agencies and the Royal Automobile Association Victoria (RACV). Opponents were kept informed throughout the hearings by a ‘live’ blog throughout the proceedings. It is a lasting, detailed record and was a great resource to those making presentations or unable to attend.

That planning experts had serious reservations with the EWL was underscored in December 2013 when Chairwoman Roz Hansen and five of six members of the ministerial advisory committee on planning resigned amid concerns with key transport decisions including the EWL.

Predictably, the State Planning Minister ignored many of the PPV recommendations and thereby further expanding and galvanising opposition to the project.

7. Moreland and Yarra councils Supreme Court challenge.

This ultimate tipping point gave the Labor Party a reason to abandon its statement to honour any signed contract. A tipping point that almost didn’t happen.

Yarra Council had contributed more than $130,000 to its Trains Not Toll Roads and was facing costs forecast of up to $350,000 to mount a Supreme Court action in July 2014. The CounciI was subjected to vigorous scrutiny on its expenditures by the state government and its agencies. Councillors were understandably reluctant to go to Court.

On the Friday before time expired on Monday 21 July to bring Supreme Court action, Moreland Council met in special session and after spirited debate, advanced the case. Yarra on the Monday deadline followed suit. The grounds for the challenge included that the project was infected by jurisdictional error due to planning flaws and that the Planning Minister failed to follow due process in approving the project.

This ultimately lead to legal advice being given to the Opposition Labor Party that in reviewing the challenge any East West contract ‘wasn’t worth the paper it’s written on’. On 10 September Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews announced that Labor would oppose the EWL.

An extraordinary absurdity to the antipathy toward Moreland Council for its opposition to the EWL occurred on 18 September 2014 when Moreland Mayor Lambros Tapinos (Labor Party) was pillared on Page 1 of The Herald Sun under the headline “You Can’t Hide”. The article was a ludicrous effort to link Council Supreme Court action with a failure to provide CCTV cameras along Sydney Road the (quote) “scene of the murder of Jill Meagher.” The Herald unashamedly called for the sacking of the entire Council and editorialised that “Council hangs by a thread.”

This was a week after the Labor Party announced its opposition to the EWL. Many campaigners became convinced they now had the upper hand.

8. Public Rallies, Social Media and Greens opposition. 

The opposition campaign occurred upfront through many city-wide and local rallies and marches and behind the scenes using the tools of social media.  Also in the background was an implied threat to Labor that the Greens early and sustained opposition to the toll road and tunnel could cost the Labor Party as many as five inner and near suburban electorates.

An early rally called by The Community Picket to Stop the East West Link gathered several hundred people together on 15 December 2012 at Smith Reserve adjacent to the Fitzroy Pool. This event buttressed Yarra Council’s determination to oppose the EWL and was a catalyst for two major marches for public transport to the City Centre to Flinders Street station. In a following rally at the same site in May 2013, the Socialist Party started a pledge for community direct action to stop the Link. It created a phone ‘tree action list’ for instant response time to a location.

Adam Bandt MP (Greens) office organised two of the first community forums (in Carlton and Kensington) against the project and a number of ‘snap’ rallies against soil tests at drilling sites. The Protectors of Public Lands Victoria and the Public Transport Users Association through its campaign arm Public Transport Not Traffic organised periodic demonstrations on the steps of Parliament.

The first march for public transport involved several thousand residents organised by the Moreland Community Against the Tunnel (MCAT) on 1 March 2014 from the Brunswick Town Hall to a local park two kilometres away in support of its own Trains Not Toll Roads campaign.

This was followed on 4 May 2014 by another MCAT event in concert with the Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc (PPLV), a Children’s March for the Animals to Melbourne Zoo to raise awareness of the noise, pollution, blasting, lighting and 24/7 traffic 40 metres from zoo gates. PPLV drew attention to the more than 5000 trees to be destroyed in and around the Zoo to facilitate a tunnel and open cut roadway.

On 28 June 2014 thousands took to the streets for a march from the State Library to Flinders Station in support of public transport, an event duplicated on 15 November 2014 two weeks before the state election.

For some, the only sour note in this burgeoning support was an understandable but misplaced mistrust of the Labor Party once it announced its opposition to the EWL. This antipathy became clear when on a vote of 16 to 13 the organisers of the pre-election November event rejected a motion to invite a Labor Party spokesperson to address the rally along with those of other political persuasions.

9. Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) and campaign offshoot Public Transport Not Traffic (PTNT).

Whilst the many community groups concentrated the campaign locally, the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) and its campaign arm the Public Transport Not Traffic (PTNT) took it ‘global’ across metropolitan Melbourne and into the suburbs.

As others were doing in inner-city neighbourhoods, PTNT volunteers joined by those of the Sandbelt Transport OPtions (STOP) group knocked on doors espousing public transport, particularly in the vital Sandbelt areas of Bentleigh to Chelsea, and leafleted at railway stations across the network.

In April 2014, the PTUA arranged for Nick Seddon, adjunct professor at ANU College of Law, to address a Forum in Melbourne to affirm that governments can and do break contracts and outlined instances. This worked to counter the arguments that signed contracts are chiselled in stone and unbreakable.

The PTUA lobbied politicians directly and indirectly and involved their constituents in public transport ‘Take a Pollie to Parliament’ media events. They consistently highlighted to politicians that the East west face the public opposition across Victoria and not just in the inner-city.

10. Secrecy is the downfall of PR Campaigns. 

People are not mugs declared the Prime Minister. Abbott’s words echoed all along the planned tunnel route. The failure to release the business case only heightened suspicion that the project simply didn’t add up.  This was reinforced by the many articles and columnists who examined the project’s financial implications and adverse impact on public transport and other infrastructure projects. Many predicted that the project would lose 50 cents on the dollar.

Every letterbox got a Government glossy brochure, full page ads appeared in daily and suburban newspapers, television and radio were saturated with adverts spruiking the East West Link in a campaign that cost the taxpaying public tens of millions of dollars.

In the middle of all this, the state government had the chutzpah to demand that Yarra Council detail what it had expended on brochures, yard signs and street stalls in its commitment of a comparatively modest $100,000, plus a later $20,000 to save its community from the most disruptive and wasteful road project in memory.

11. Labor Party Opposition.

All these events and activities contributed to the demise of the East West Link but without question it would have gone ahead unless an elected Labor Government changed its position and opposed the project’s construction.  It might have gotten messy and opposition escalate to a higher level, but with both major parties ‘honouring the contract’ it would have become a fait accompli.

Many Labor party politicians, in particular those in threatened seats, worked tirelessly behind the scenes to shift the Party’s position on the East West Link. The role of ALP activists at branch level and from sitting inner-city members combined with a number of labour unions never ceased to advocate for a change of policy. The threat to seats by the Greens and the writings of academics and investigative reporters all had their influence.

But it was ultimately the Yarra and Moreland Supreme Court challenge that allowed Labor to propound that the EWL contract was “not worth the paper it’s written on.”

A summation for an entire project that all the organisations and individuals involved in this most successful lesson-learning community linked campaign would endorse.

The Prime Minister declared the state election would be a referendum on the East West Link. Another instance of the admonition to be careful what you wish for.

All groups continue to remain active as the new State Government finds a means to extract itself from one of the most extravagantly wasteful road proposals in memory.

A vigilant watch is now the order of the day until the final curtain drops on this sorry saga.

12. Paul Mees OAM. “One of the great minds of Australian urban studies and the most important transport and land use researcher of the last 20 years.”

So read one of the many tributes to a tireless and unstinting advocate for public transport improvement whose untimely death at the age of 52 on the eve of the Yarra Council Trains Not Toll Roads launch inspired everyone in the campaign to defeat the EWL.

Associate Professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, he was President of the Public Transport Users Association in Melbourne from 1991to 2001. In the Australia Day Honours of 2014, Paul Mees was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for “service to public transport and urban planning as an academic and advocate for creating sustainable cities.”

He will always be missed.