Since people obviously want to have a yarn about this breaking story, and since the Premier of Victoria’s resignation doesn’t have a lot to do with grogblogging where the discussion has begun, here’s an open thread.
60 Responses to “Steve Bracks resigns”
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When he went on the 7.30 Report talking about the Federal takeover of water, he had the air of a man who didn’t give a damn (or who’s trying to outsmirk Peter Costello). Now we know why.
In resigning, we saw a side of Bracks not seen before – he can actually make a decision.
Didn’t give a dam, eh?
Sorry, couldn’t resist the water-relevant pun
Sad, he was a great leader. Much more progressive than he appeared – he allowed the decrim of abortion on the agenda and is setting up a register for gay couples. Managed to grow the economy will improving services and targetting poverty and disadvantage in the state.
“… most of all, though, I’d like to thank Jeff Kennett for making it all possible.”
The stereotype of Bracks as a “do-nothing”/”can’t make a decision” premier strikes me as inaccurate. For better or worse, he did preside over the following:
- Upper House reform;
- institution of a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities;
- vast increase in gay and lesbian access to couples’ rights;
- EastLink;
- “gradual” increases to services funding.
The do-nothing tag has a bit of a sting when it comes to, say, abortion decriminalisation. But less so when it comes to matters such as private operators of public transport, where it seems to me that the decision to retain private operators was a conscious choice, rather than pure non-feasance.
Not sure if this is going to be a double-post, but here goes…
The ‘do-nothing’ tag should be worn as a mark of great honour because it really reflects the policy continutity that we have enjoyed in Victoria since 1992. If I had known in 1999 that Bracks (and, perhaps more importantly, Brumby) was Kennett-lite, I would probably have voted for him.
BBB
Beating Kennett in 1999 was a political masterstroke and how he did it became the hallmark of his government. Targeted, careful and with an ear to the ground – not much for the big picture (with a couple of notable exceptions).
As a campaigner he understood that Kennett was deeply unpopular with the bulk of the population – as much as the Herald Sun may wish otherwise. His cautious approach convinced the voters of Victoria that labour could govern well and without the ‘guilty Party’ label being able to stick the state libs have been a joke ever since.
Random reflections on his time at the top-
Plusses – Upper house reform (this will be his greatest legacy), Hulls as attorney general has made a lot of excellent reforms, the marine sanctuaries, tolling Eastlink (a decision that is already being vindicated), telling Howard where to go on the water plan
Negatives – Melbourne’s public transport system is still a joke, Inaction on forests and other areas, demonising the s11 protesters, dodgy PPP’s, unable to control factional hacks running rampant (Haermeyer, Seitz et al), supporting Geelong
Ditto BBB. Victoria is, at heart, a conservative state and Bracksy’s exceeded our wildest dreams.
When Bracks gave a press conference after he’d been to the site of the rail crash at Kerang he was briefly overcome by emotion and I remember thinking what a shit of a job it must be.
And this is an achievement how, exactly? Inquiring non-Victorian Murray-dependent minds want to know …
It’s a consequentialist point, as he would not have held out for what I wanted to see. The plan avoids the obvious remedy to the water problem (cutting back allocations and raising prices) while providing further subsidies to irrigators.
Btw, PC, I think you’re spot on about the reasons for his resignation:
http://pavlovblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/bracks-2.html
Bracks’s Upper House reforms were the most important constitutional reforms in Victoria in 150 years.
Bracks achieved this only because he achieved the trust of hundreds of thousands of habitual Conservative voters. This was a remarkable political achievement.
Seconded.
Unlike when Carr left in NSW there are no big clouds on the horizon for Victoria, as far as I can see. Expect a big public backlash from left/green voters when they give the public transport back to Connex to mismanage. That’s the only storm on the horizon from here, and it’s not going to really rock the boat at the next election. Still, you never know.
I mean seconded Mark’s comment – but I do agree with Katz as well.
Point taken, but it was a desperate emergency. Bracks was bloody lucky it started to rain when it did.
Well they could have worked more on temporary measures – ten billion dollars is a hell of a lot of money.
What Victorians worry about Howards water plan is both the lack of distributional justice of NSW being rewarded for incompetance coupled with a suspicion that Howard’s waterplan is actually about the privatisation of water.
Agree with Michael’s list of Bracks Govt achievements, and credit to Rob Hulls as a tenacious and forward-thinking Attorney-General.
Melb public transport has been a mess for 40 years; it would be good to see some progress there. Sudden increase in travellers after last summer’s petrol price rise: NSW hobbyist made profits on old trains he had bought from Victoria and parked in a paddock for a few months. Rolling stock as laughing stock.
Thwaites has done well on water saving policies; desalination plant ill-advised. But Thwaites is mired in a little “free skiing trips” imbroglio.
The powerhouse has been John Brumby: canny, calm, forward-thinking, and possessed of Howardian eyebrows.
If it’s a contest between Brumby and Thwaites, they’re both Melbourne Grammar boys, are they not? (As is Master Baillieu of HM Opposition). So, for those adept at cliches:
* is Labor in the clutches of the rich?
* Does ‘Grammar’ cater for a wider social range than just ‘the rich’?
* do ‘Public Schools’ (Melbourne Grammar, Scotch College, Xavier) occasionally produce progressives?
or
* are Liberal and Labor practically indistinguishable?
By the way, we rural folk cheered even louder than you Melbourne people did, at the delightful downfall of Jeff. We felt as Jeffed as anyone else in the State.
cheerio,
Ambigulous
As a recent resident to Victoria, I think the handling of PPPs here is the biggest shortcoming of the State Government. The agreements reached to force commuters onto tollways are just bad public policy. And the privatisation of public transport – what a debacle!
From this distance, and it’s a bit hard to guage from interstate, Bracks always impressed me – far more than Carr or Iemma, for instance. He seemed to combine modesty and gravitas, and I liked a lot of what he came out with in the “national reform agenda” – if anything, he came across as being less parochial than the average for a state Premier, which is one reason why I was inclined to agree with him that the water thing was bad policy when it was first announced, and subsequent reading suggests his judgement was correct.
Kymbos – btw, I haven’t forgotten the Quiggin/risk post – it’s just that I’ve got a bad head cold at the moment and I’d like to write something substantive about it – so it’s on the way when the head clears!
*off topic*
But that was Kennett, I thought?
Bracks has been overall an excellent Premier, and it’s sad to see him go, but good for him to get out when he wanted to. I’m not nearly so sure Brumby, the anointed one, will give nearly as good service.
Re water, the only reason for Victoria to cede powers to the Federal government is to access $$ – which is not a good policy reason, if the dollars are there and can be spent, the Commonwealth shouldn’t be victimising Victoria. Victoria has engaged in massive reform of water over the past several years, and the ALP has taken a lot of political flak for it, and we’ve now got a better regulated system than the CWTH will manage for NSW and QLD. These systems require expertise and experience, which cannot easily be replicated in Canberra. I think it would be a terrible decision to centralise water further without clear evidence as to what is going to be fixed.
Michael, inaction on forests??? Don’t think you’ve been paying attention, the Our Forests Our Future reforms were massive, and the area of national parks continues to expand.
Well, the first issue — resting on the notion that Australia is all about NSW v. Victoria and the rest of us can go to buggery, and furthermore the death of an entire semi-cross-continental river system is less important than whether Melbourne is better than Sydney — is staggeringly shortsighted and parochial.
The second one, about the privatisation of water, is fair enough and I am in total sympathy with wanting to stop that.
But the survival of the river ought to be everyone’s top priority.
Maybe I was being a bit harsh on forests – (I now remember the Otways) but parts of Gippsland are still a free for all.
And Mark, Kennett got the ball rolling but Bracks is just as much to blame for the poor state of Melbourne’s public transport. The operators threatened to walk and he only gave them more subsidies so he wouldn’t have a NSW style situation on his hands.
The system is set up so that no one is ever to blame for the deteriorating state of public transport. And the government seems very content to keep it that way
Mark, looking forward to it.
Privatising PT is the kind of thing Kennett would have done, but Labor’s been running the state for long enough to do something about it, which they have stubbornly refused to do. Has it ever worked anywhere?
Thanks for the info, Michael. Of course publicly owned public transport requires a decent level of investment – whenever I go to Sydney I’m really struck by the differences in reliability and age of the buses and trains with those in Brisbane which has really gone ahead leaps and bounds over the past decade after the Council and State Government made it a priority. Privatising public transport makes no sense whatever – as the usual arguments for competition driving efficiency don’t apply when you contract out all the trains and trams in one district or route or whatever. What you end up with are the worst aspects of purchaser/provider splits, and incentives for underinvestment.
My understanding is that Victoria is alone in responsible allocation of water. Under the Victorian regime the Murray is actually guaranteed environmental flows from Victorian tributaries.
I think there is a world of difference between private provision of the services (which can work pretty well) and letting the private operators try to plan the system. To successfully operate the system also requires the nerve to enforce penalties when targets are not met (which Bracks failed to do)
Thwaites gone as well now.
No great loss there.
Well Victoria is having it’s best snow in years………
re Gipssland forests. The Goolengook catchement is the subject of an inquiry I think and logging has been suspended. Further phasing out logging will be difficult to manage considering the stakeholders invovled but it is wrong to suggest that no progress has been made.
wilful, you must be joking. Its business as usual for the woodchipping industry in Victoria – ably abetted by the Bracks government. Our Forests Our Future was a pro industry statement of the status quo. The Victorian Forest Alliance ask was for about 950,000ha of high conservation value forest to be protected. Bracks “delivered” about 34,000ha. The East Gipplsand forest areas haven’t even been formally protected (or defined) yet. End result: over 90 per cent of our old growth forests available for logging are still available for logging. Score 1/10.
Water: Well, they continue to alllow logging in water catchments, then allocated $3.9b for a desal plant – which we wouln’t need if they stopped the subsidised logging of catchments . . . Score 1/10.
I regard Eastlink as a negative (road to nowhere), and the lack of action on public transport atrocious Score 3/10.
Climate change? VRET is good, but housing energy standards are still crap (and domestic energy consumption rising) AND Labor is committed to building ANOTHER coal fired power station (and they extended the life of very polluting Hazelwood). Score 4/10.
On the positives, some improvements in public education (but not the buildings yet). Score 7/10. And they finally got the slightly fast trains going (6/10) but have not built (or plan to build) ANY new metro rail (1/10).
He seems like a nice enough guy, but basically conservative, not very decisive (until now) and largely shackled and constrained by the ALP oligarchy. He did try hard & I wish him well.
The public transport system changed in 2002/3. The govt took back planning, roilling stock etc and kept on private operators to run the services etc. Letting four private companies plan the system etc was a disaster of Kennett’s making.
As for penalties, well panalties are imposed. Last quarter Connex was fined over $10 million alone. The question for the future is whether the performance criteria are the right ones and are teh penalties right…
I think it fair to assume that Howard would privatise the water system….indeed everything… if he got the opportunity.
Remember that Brumby has been waiting in the wings for quite some time now.
Rumours have been circulating for a while that he would head off for a career in banking. A bit of less than subtle pressure, with Bracks realising he has had a pretty good go anyway.
Incidentally, it looks a bit like Thwaites is going to pull the plug as well. Quite surprising for the golden haired boy, who you would have thought was the next in line after Brumby.
PC: the point is that Victoria reckons it can manage water, including letting the odd dribble down the river for Croweaters, better than the Feds can, and they’ve got a reasonable track record to back it up.
Furthermore, as I understand it there was a fair element of arbitrary power grab in the Federal proposal.
“I regard Eastlink as a negative (road to nowhere)”
Can you give us an example of a road that goes ’somewhere’? Eastlink essentially duplicates Springvale Rd. Driving along that shambolic road in years past, I could have sworn I was going somewhere (albeit slowly and in an energy-inefficient manner).
BBB
Peter I’m not joking, if you think a 31% reduction in an industry is businesses as usual then you work in a funny business. Or maybe you dont work in business at all.
The VFA can ask for whatever they want, it doesn’t mean they’re not frootloops. And it was 41 000 hectares not 34 000. “East Gippsland forest areas haven’t been formally defined”? WTF? There’s an RFA and an FMP that have covered these areas for a decade or so.
Our logged catchments are increasing in their water yield, so it can’t be that much of a threat!
Thwaites going will be considered by the commentariat to be because his Premiership aspirations will be thwarted, but I don’t think that’s true at all. I think it’s because senior Ministers work effing hard and have to destroy their family life, under constant scrutiny for less money than tehy would get in teh private sector.
Thwaites now gone as well.
At a department lunch some colleagues suggested that State Cabinet may have been unhappy about how Bracks handled negotiations with Howard over the water issue. It is said by some that Howard may have been given undertakings that Cabinet would come on board, and Cabinet wasn’t happy to be spoken for in this way.
Chris I was responding more to Mark’s point about privatisation in general.
And also the penalties have only been imposed after years of not doing so and in the face of massive public anger. And you are right on your final point.
Oh, I bet.
Can’t wait to see how the new lot, both state and federal, all line up on this after the federal election. With any luck the various bits and pieces of rain and snow will keep the river system on life support till then.
Wilful – road to nowhere?
Eastlink is a good move. I’m a train-catching vego but I also had to commute the North-South trip in the Eastern suburbs for five years. There is no major arterial road that can adequately service the traffic flow. The Industrial areas around Clayton and Dandenong need it badly, plus having it largely user-pays means that those who need it will pay for it
The Goolengook forests are being protected. We were tendering for an analysis of their values when the announcement came through that they were stopping logging there and the study became redundant.
Bracks has been good on forest protection on the whole, I think.
Wilful, I think you are joking.
The industry is declining because the market for hardwood has collapsed, only the 80% of their output that goes as woodchips is making money. The poor small loggers are being shafted. At the highest rate of logging, most small mills have now closed.
So you think 41,000ha is a good result? A lot of has already been logged – and a lot is low value forest too. And a lot was already protected by SPZs. Smoke and mirrors dude.
You seemed to be confused about logging (RFA & FMP are logging documents) – and forest protection – which is provided by national parks and SPZs (which are temporary). Do you work for VAFI or NAFI?
Please advise exactly which areas you think have been protected. Last time I spoke to Thwaites office NONE HAD. Nothing has gone through parliament yet. There is still only a media release, 8 months after the election and their “promise”.
Our logged catchments would be increasing their yield much faster if the weren’t logged, as our scientist have indicated. Pity they are not listened to.
This is all basically Thwaites’ legacy, but Bracks was obviously implicated too.
Latest Morgan Poll
Good on you Steve Bracks. One of the very good ones. And great to see another politician put family responsibilities ahead of career. (When will the penny drop that we have it all structured wrong?)
Link to PDF for Labor’s media release on 33,500ha of East Gippsland forest to be protected, which still are not.
I have many criticisms of Bracks (perhaps most particularly on Eastlink, which was effectively a decision to gut public transport by putting the funds that could have fixed the problem into a road of limited value) and only a few positives. However, one of those positives outweighs all the negatives.
The reform of the Upper House could have been better, but it will long outlast any of his other achievements and deficiencies.
Alternate . pdf which adds up to 41 000 hectares, none of which have been logged since the election, or will ever be.
A John Cain Jr moment? I hope this doesn’t mean we get Joan Kirner Mk II.
I for one don’t regard the upper-house changes as reforms. We’re yet to see the worst of these changes because the ALP had a comfortable majority in both houses. Anything that leaves the balance of power in the hands of people even stupider than Kerry Nettle is a bad thing.
If not for the Liberals’ incompetence, we might have been spared that, but they probably would have weaseled Eastlink onto us just the same if they’d returned.
Mismanagement of water resources will be Bracks’ greatest legacy.
As others have noted, in 1999 the electorate was all reformed out. What they wanted was conservative government, and as TonyT says he exceeded our expectations. They also wanted a respite from the massive, bluff ego of Jeff, and Hymie was the perfect antidote.
Another achievement was to introduce a level of civility and even-handedness into politics that had gone out the window under Kennett.
But what funds did the State put into Eastlink that could have gone into PT? Given that it’s now tolled, and the community will bear the costs directly rather than indirectly.
I think tollroads assist the development of public transport, they make people keener to see an effective alternative.
Not that I support PPPs, but that’s a different issue.
The Butcher of S11 has fallen on his own sword!
Bracks’ graceful departure is an object lesson to J Howard.
Best wishes, Steve.
As I understand it the tolls will pay for less than half the cost of Eastlink. Of course it does depend on how many cars use it, but given the cost of the thing anything in that ballpark would mean massive government subsidies. Of course that money would not necessarily have been spent on PT. It might have gone on such useless things as schools, hospitals etc /irony off.
It will be interesting to see if Terry Moran stays around. Before he became Secretary to the Department of Premier and Cabinet in July 2000 he was Director-General of Education in Queensland.
Moran and Bracks had worked together in TAFE administration years ago.
Moran was always an admirer of what Jeff had done in Victoria.
Actually, 3 coops that are part of the proposed new East Gippsland “old growth” reserves HAVE been logged since the election. They were coops that logging had commenced in or was about to. But if they were worth protecting, why were they logged?
Also, I say again, NONE of the “new protected areas” have been actually been proclaimed as protected yet and the logging/woodchipping industry is lobbying the Government & DSE furiously to get the area reduced. It aint protected until its protected.
Also, check out the rhetoric about “linking the Snowy & Errinundra National Parks” – this has not been delivered in any effective way. The local DSE chap was all ready to burn the Jungle Creek forest area (including cool temperate rainforest & old growth) near Goongerah in Autumn, but hopefully the rain stopped him.
On Eastlink, the tender was $2.5b. The total cost to build to the State will be 4b+. The government only allocated a paltry $61.8 million in the 2006-07 State budget for funding rail services on existing tracks out of total expenditure of 2.6 billion for transport related infrastructure. No wonder we have a system operating at over capacity, serious delays in getting new trains and no plans for any new tracks (unlike Perth). Melbourne will only get some more ballast, hopefully a few of the 50+ year old red gum sleepers replaced, and a few stations painted.
Train travel has 1/8th the carbon emissions of car travel, and Australia runs out of oil in about 10 years, yet all we can do in Melbourne is build more freeways. Eastlink will make a very good 6 lane bike path.
Two coupes that had already been started were allowed to continue. This was in no way contradictory to the election policy and would have amounted to a theft from the mills that had already contracted for the timber. Glad that you admit my figure was correct though.
Nobody’s quite sure why the areas are worth protection – that’s a matter you’d have to ask EEG and the like – no one’s saying this is a rational decision.
Of course it’s not “protected” until it’s inside the National Parks Act, but your criteria is entirely unreasonable. If you wanted the areas all to be inside a National Park by now you have never been near how these things work – it’s a bit more complicated than you seem to think. They all need to be surveyed to begin with.
The Great Alpine NP (Snowy link) will be delivered with the other parts of the policy.
Fire is managed in a tenure blind manner – it is just as likely to be burned in the future when it’s a national park as it was last autumn as State forest. Of course you’ll criticise DSE if it goes up in a bushfire – bushfires being the only threat to old growth that there is – since, apart from the impact of fire, the area of old growth in Victoria is increasing.
You’re being mischievous with the transport activities too.
· $1.4 billion for new bus services, creating a cross-town transport network for Melbourne and more frequent and late night services;
· $2.9 billion to substantially boost rail capacity and pave the way for future extensions, including funding for new rail lines, more trains and drivers, and extra peak, shoulder peak, and late night services;
· $338.6 million for three new outer suburban train stations, 5000 new park and ride spaces, upgrades to seven suburban stations, and intermodal interchanges;
· $750 million for rail safety, including the replacement of ageing communications and technology systems;
· $510 million for new and improved public transport in Provincial Victoria;
· $577 million for new trams, extended services, and programs to give trams priority on the road network;
· $420 million to make transport more accessible and easier to use, including free travel for seniors on Sundays, a major boost for bike paths, reform of the taxi industry, extension of the TravelSmart program, and major investment in improving access for people with disabilities; and
· $42.2 million towards land reservations for future transport links.
Hmmn. You are saying – “its protected but we logged it anyway”. This is clearly inconsistent.
About 7% of the Forest Alliance proposal was delivered. Hardly a good outcome for the forests – clearly the loggers & woodchippers hold sway with Government policy. They confirmed this by endorsing the outcome.
I don’t pretend to understand the labyrinthine backroom deals Labor cuts with NAFI, VAFI, the CFMEU and the foreign owned export woodchip companies. So much for “government transparency”.
Another furphy. They have been surveyed many times. Check out the DSE Forest Explorer. All the data you could possible need is there. Google maps shows some interesting shots of logged forests too.
You are correct on this one, its blind indeed. Burning wet forests converts them to dry ones, and burning every year accelerates this process.
The threat to old growth forest is clear felling, mainly for woodchips, not fire. Where are your figures for “old growth increasing”? This is ludicrous, with continued logging it is quite clearly DECREASING.
If you want to see how sketchy the new reserves and link (still not proclaimed) are, and see some photos of unprotected old growth, read this report [link].
On tranport activities – show me any evidence of any plans for any new train lines in Melbourne. And its going to take 6 months to buy some new trains that should have been bought a year ago.
Contrast this with $4b on EastLink in progress, and a figure floated of $8b for the East West Tunnel link we don’t even need.