At the same time she was supposed be doing a Q&A with VCOSS boss Juanita Pope about matters of keen interest to organisations doing vital work in this city and state, she was standing on a shiny new rail platform marvelling about the engineering required to build something so big, so deep underground.
She ditched VCOSS to instead be on that night’s television news, and in the Instagram feeds of Melbourne commuters, talking about the city’s new metro rail line, which will take its first passengers some time in December and be fully operational by February 1 next year.
The Metro Tunnel is a big deal. It is a major project Sir Rod Eddington first recommended 17 years ago as a solution to one of the city’s most pressing problems – poor rail connection between the eastern and western suburbs and the need to unlock capacity on a rail system straining under the patronage of a fast-growing population.
Sir Rod Eddington identified the Metro Tunnel as a priority project for Melbourne 17 years ago. Credit: Jason South
It is a project conceived, financed and built under successive Labor governments, a project that the Liberal Party in its infinite folly opposed at the 2014 election and while running things in Canberra, refused to fund. Now that it is completed, it is fair enough for Allan to toot her whistle, long and hard.
It is also an indulgence for Allan to devote four successive days to ribbon cutting on the same project.
On Sunday, she led reporters through a tour of the cavernous Town Hall station beneath Federation Square, on Monday she showed off the new State Library station (both are spectacular, by the way) and on Tuesday, she dragged head-nodding backbenchers, union leaders, Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece, cultural influencers and some of the state’s highest-paid bureaucrats into another media briefing and incremental announcement about future dates and timetables.
Infinite folly: Former Victorian premier Denis Napthine campaigned against the Metro Tunnel and Tony Abbott refused to fund it as prime minister.Credit: Angela Wylie
On Wednesday Allan was back at State Library station spruiking free public transport on summer weekends.
Even within the windbag context of Victorian state politics, rarely has so much breath been spent to impart so little new information.
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The biggest selling point of the Metro Tunnel will be when people can scan through the turnstiles and see for themselves the scale and sophistication of what lies deep beneath the city, paid for by $13.5 billion of their taxes. If it does all that it is supposed to do, it will rival the Sydney Metro as one of the best things built by any state government this century.
In the meantime, it is 14 months until the next state election. Someone should remind Allan that governing and campaigning are two different things.
An hour spent with community and social service leaders probably won’t make it on TikTok but it just might give the premier a better understanding of a sector of the economy which, like many others in this state, is doing it tough.
It is also a reminder that the best measure of a government is not the length of a train platform (220 metres at State Library) or escalator (42 metres) but how it provides for those most in need.
The premier’s explanation of her decision to prioritise an empty train station over a room full of social service providers had more tangles in it than Melbourne’s current rail system.
She started by defending the imperative to mark the end of construction on the Metro Tunnel, didn’t deny that VCOSS was given an altogether different reason for her not attending its event, and landed on a weird accusation that any criticism of her absence was a sexist slight on the government representative who spoke at VCOSS in her stead, Treasurer Jaclyn Symes.
“I don’t think you would have made that comment about other treasurers,” Allan said when asked by this columnist whether community and social service providers had been given short shrift.
No one has any issue with the treasurer turning up at the VCOSS event. The issue is that the premier didn’t after saying she would.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
