In this interview, Mia Schlicht appeared on Steve Price Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into the economic and societal decline of Victoria since 2014.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Steve Price:
Coming up at the top of the hour, let’s get straight into our Friday night panel. Research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs and our regular panellists, Mia Schlicht and Sky News contributor, Joe Hildebrand. Guys, great to see you both.
I want to go to this big tunnel project. I mean, I’ll get to you in a minute, Joe, because Sydney is just covered in these tunnels that you have to pay tolls on. But, Mia, first to you, I mean, this thing is going to open on Sunday. The Herald Sun had a six-page wraparound today, and the government got surprised by that and didn’t want to really confirm that it was going to open on Sunday. But when you go through the actual details, and the Herald Sun had this panel today, what they’ve actually built is a toll road that has a congestion taxed onto it, tacked onto it at the end. So we’ve got Australia’s first, as far as I can work out, capital city congestion tax.
Mia Schlicht:
Yeah. It’s just really unbelievable, isn’t it? I mean, only in Victoria would we be so lucky that we get to pay for these things twice. How lucky are we here? Look, they’ve been nice enough and they’ve said that in January we can all use the road for free, which is just fantastic news given that that brings down the debt that we’ll only be paying off, I don’t know, for the rest of our lives. But it’s great that we’ll be able to use it for free during January alone, but really? I mean, Jacinta Allen is out there doing her victory lap at the moment, just trying to pull the wall over the eyes of Victorians to pretend that she has this state somewhat in order before the state election next year.
But Victorians aren’t mugs. They can see just how mismanaged this project has been from the very beginning. Its cost blew out almost double. This tunnel now, it cost about $10 billion. It ran extremely over time and the only person who seemed to benefit from it are her union mates.
Steve Price:
Yeah, man, Joe went through… The tunnelling was done underneath suburbs like Footscray Yarraville on the edge of the Maribyrnong River. And anyone like you and me who’ve lived in Melbourne back in the past, why would anyone be surprised that they found contaminated soil under there given what was on the top?
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s very interesting, isn’t it? I remember when the West Gate Bridge was first built and, yeah, mate, too pricey and they had a toll there just to cover the cost of construction that was then eliminated. I think you had to drive past and throw your 20 cents, I think it was, or 40 cents in the little toll booth. And then I remember also when Jeff Kennett introduced CityLink, which was the first major toll road that Melbourne had ever had, first permanent privately operated toll road. And Victorians just went into meltdown.
People were saying, “Bring back the South Eastern Arterial that would go about three kilometres a day if you were lucky.” So I think it’s not surprising for anyone in New South Wales to get a new tunnel or a new road with a giant, horrible, unrealistic, brutal toll on it. But I think for Victorians, it’s still causing a bit of PTSD.
Steve Price:
And, Mia, the West Gate bridge at the moment and always has been since that old toll fell away about 40 years ago. Trucks are going to now have to pay a toll. They put a new toll gantry on the bridge. Big trucks, heavy trucks are going to have to pay a toll to go over the West Gate Bridge, which until today or Sunday is free.
Mia Schlicht:
Yeah, it’s just unbelievable, isn’t it? And on top of that, there’s also charges in the tunnel about utes. They have to pay a bit extra than everyone else to drive through the tunnel. So whilst Jacinta Allen and her lovely oped in the Herald Sun that she was given today was going on about how great this will be for tradies and how they’ll be celebrating on their way home. I’m not sure how long tradies will be celebrating for when they come home to the mountains of bills they have to be paying. They’re sitting there knowing their children are going to have to pay off this debt for years and years to come. I think that celebration will be pretty short-lived.
Steve Price:
Joe. Anthony Albanese, he was out [inaudible 00:03:55] another government handout to Rio Tinto today, but I think they’ve got a big problem in aged care. 3,000 elderly and disabled Australians stuck in public hospitals. I think that’s a national disgrace. They’ll be at home or they can’t get into homes or residential care. I’ve got a mother in her early 90s. I’m going to have to confront this at some point not far away. They talk about a looming crisis. The crisis is here right now.
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah, not just here right now, but has been here for years. Again, I remember in 20 years ago or more when I was in the state press gallery in New South Wales Parliament, and the state government here was blaming the fact that it had so many hospital beds backed up with people who should be in aged care. It just goes on and on and on. It’s a real structural problem in aged care. It’s hugely expensive. It’s very difficult for, and this is going to sound callous, but it’s very difficult for companies to make a buck out of it, which means that there’s no incentive for businesses to go into that sector.
Governments often need to prop it up or they have to basically tell people that to go into them. Are they going to have to remortgage their family home. And again, this is where things get more and more complex, but there’s a worker shortage. There’s a massive shortage of aged care workers, which is why we need to bring people in from overseas. And then that can raise issues sometimes with language barriers as well and people getting the care that they need when often the client, your mom or dad, your grandma or granddad might not be the best communicator in their condition in the first place. And then you’ve got that additional language barrier. You’ve got to make sure, of course, the qualifications match up.
But again, that’s one reason why we need this skilled migration programme, but then of course that then causes its own flow on effects in terms of housing. So it is basically a big hot mess, but it is something we do need to do because hospital beds, to paraphrase Annastacia Palaszczuk’s infamous comment during COVID, hospital beds should be for hospital patients, not for people who should be somewhere else.
Steve Price:
Mia, we had a Royal Commission. We’re supposed to sort this all out.
Mia Schlicht:
Oh, yeah. And nothing has been sorted out because I know Labour can’t spend their way out of this one because quite frankly, they’ve run out of money. I mean, they’re throwing billions and billions of dollars at this. We’ve got state departments, we’ve got federal departments. We have an ever-growing NDIS, yet despite all of the money being thrown at this, there seems to be no solution. The fact that we have 3,000 Australians not receiving the care they need is absolutely appalling and it’s time to start looking at where all this money is going.
But of course, anytime we start opening conversations about what we’re doing with the NDS and all the reckless spending that’s been spent there, people shut it down. But we’ve got to start talking about these things because we need better outcomes.
Steve Price:
I think I’m watching an episode of Utopia when it comes to this tobacco trade.
Joe Hildebrand:
That’s right.
Steve Price:
We decided we’d make legal cigarettes so expensive that the biker gangs and organised crime could import them all from China and make millions. I mean, surely we have to sort that mess out.
Joe Hildebrand:
Yeah. I’m very fond of quoting the Roman emperor, Tiberius in this one. Price, I’m sure you are as well, which is that, “A good shepherd shears his sheep. He doesn’t skin them.” And this is what the government has done. It’s gone from having a nice sort of tidy little earner with a tobacco excise that actually brought in more money than cigarette smokers cost the economy. So one of the original rationales for bringing in the tobacco excise was not just to make cigarettes more prohibitively expensive and hopefully encourage people to quit, but to say, “Right. Well, smokers are costing the economy billions of dollars a year in terms of…” Or the government, sorry, the taxpayer, in terms of increased healthcare costs and also economic costs because they’re sick more often, they’re not as productive. So we need to recoup that. That tipping point has actually-
Steve Price:
We just need a new-
Joe Hildebrand:
… gone over the top. That’s right.
Steve Price:
We need to go back to the point. Well, Joe, we have to have a debate about whether we knock off some of the excise.
Yeah, absolutely. This is the thing. Mia, Joe, have a great weekend-
Joe Hildebrand:
Love you.
Steve Price:
… both of you.
Joe Hildebrand:
Thanks, mate.
Steve Price:
Enjoy yourselves. I might go and drive through the new West Gate tunnel at the weekend just to make myself feel angry.
This transcript with Mia Schlicht talking on Steve Price Sky News Australia from 12 December 2025 has been edited for clarity.
