In a very rare win for accountability and following an astonishing bout of amnesia, the Victorian Legislative Council on Wednesday voted 25-15 in favour of a Liberal Party motion calling for an investigation into the cancellation of the Commonwealth Games.
This actually could be seen as an astonishing result, given in the days leading up to the vote on this motion, it looked like Labor had done deals with a few members of the Crossbench. One announcement which could've been interpreted as a deal was the decision of the Victorian Govt to announce that from January 1 2024, all new-build houses would not be connected to gas. This was seen by yours truly and others as an attempt to try to appease Samantha Ratnam and the three other Greens members of the LC.
Another announcement that could've been interpreted as a deal was the announcement that the Victorian Govt was considering a trial for medicinal cannabis patients to be able to drive if not impaired. This again was seen by yours truly as a nod to try to secure votes from the two members of Legalise Cannabis. Had those 6 votes gone to Labor on this motion, it would've been defeated and another motion calling for accountability and answers for government decision-making would've been voted down.
Thankfully it wasn't and thankfully I was proven wrong.
The Government's response to this has been predictable and not in the slightest bit surprising to those of us who have paid attention to the decline of accountability and integrity from them. Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes has come out and basically said: "She won't be encouraging Daniel Andrews or Jacinta Allen to appear before the enquiry."
On an annoying technicality, Symes is right. As this is a Legislative Council enquiry, anyone called from the Legislative Assembly to give evidence are under no obligation to appear. The problem with this is that it basically denies Victorians' transparency and answers as to how costs blew out from $2b to $6.8b plus, in the space of 6 weeks. It equally denies us answers to certain questions: Who knew about the cost blowout and when? What advice was given to the Andrews govt that they chose to ignore? Did the costings in 2019 fail to account for certain things that the 2023 costings have?
Symes' response also reinforces Labor's attitude towards accountability and transparency in that they don't actually care about these things.
It was one other comment made by Symes though, which knocked the stuffing out of me when she said "If they had come to us and said we want to hold an investigation in another forum, we would have considered that."
I'm sorry, you what now Jaclyn? That is the biggest load of crap that I've heard this month and given this month has only gone 4 days, it's going to take some beating.
There is no way whatsoever that if the Liberal Party had come to Symes and said "We want to hold an investigation into the Commonwealth Games cancellation and we would like to negotiate a forum to do this" Symes would've agreed to negotiate that. The reason for that is plain and simple. The Victorian Labor Party would never want to give the Liberal Party credibility for doing anything and that means literally anything whatsoever, no matter how small it is. Equally, if they had gotten something out of such negotiations, such an enquiry would be held in secret which it quite frankly shouldn't be.
The fact that Symes is suggesting both Andrews and Allan shouldn't appear before this enquiry is a form of obstruction and it's one that we've gotten too used to here in Victoria. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and both the Premier and Deputy Premier should front up and answer those questions. If they subsequently refuse to, then we can conclude that they have something to hide and that they committed fraud on the people of Regional Victoria.
Social Media response has been nothing short of predictable as people continue to out themselves as being opposed to transparency and accountability in politics. While most of these comments come from absolute partisan hacks, they also represent the growing decline in transparency and accountability in politics. If people are opposed to the govt being questioned about their decisions, then democracy is struggling and unfortunately between this response and the response of Symes, are you honestly surprised about this in Victorian?
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