Liberal reprisal threat on ‘dirt’

OPPOSITION Leader Matthew Guy is threatening to fight fire with fire and release cabinet documents relating to controversial Labor Government decisions.

Mr Guy is staring down calls from Labor to resign, following revelations he instructed government lawyers to settle the notorious Ventnor planning case to avoid it going to court.

“I’m not going to take lectures from a government that is under police investigation, a government that wasted $1.5 billion to scrap the (East West Link) to try and tell me that I . . . have done the wrong thing,” Mr Guy said.

The State Government took the unprecedented step of tabling confidential documents relating to the 2011 rezoning of farmland at Ventnor on Phillip Island for housing.

Mr Guy, as planning minister, reversed the decision two years later. The controversy sparked an Ombudsman investigation and ended in an out-of-court settlement totalling $3.5 million, including costs.

Some $2.5 million was paid to a landowner and a potential buyer who sued after the planning decision was reversed.

“It would have been a law- yer’s picnic otherwise,” Mr Guy said yesterday.

“It would have been a hell of a lot more to go to court.”

According to the tabled documents, in 2013 Mr Guy wrote of his desire to avoid a legal contest.

“This can’t go to court. I shall not be in the job [as minister] if it goes to court,” he wrote to his lawyers on July 19.

South Barwon MP Andrew Katos defended his leader’s record as planning minister, and called for Labor’s “dirt unit” to shift its attention to governing.

“In Geelong, we have a rail system that can’t handle demand every morning, we have crime, increasing congestion and skyrocketing power bills,” Mr Katos said.

He described the release of the 80,000 pages of confidential documents as “pretty low”. “It is a very dangerous precedent that has been set,” he said.

Mr Guy warned that he could release potentially damaging documents from the Government’s term if he came to power in November,

These include Labor’s $1 billion-plus move to scrap the East West Link contract, its industrial dispute with the CFA and a confidential deal with Crown Casino.

“(Daniel) Andrews has now thrown parliamentary convention out the window,” he said.