Guy’s $2 coin trick

IN the 2022 federal election campaign, Anthony Albanese carried a $1 coin in his pocket. Every now and then he would produce it for the cameras and explain it was his reminder that minimum wage workers deserved a pay rise.

The prop was employed in press conferences and the debates.

The image was designed to represent a politician who had a grasp on the daily economic reality of the workers.

The dollar was not just a number, it was actual money in the hands of the people who are most in need of assistance. Albanese campaigned strongly and he won the trust of the electorate.

So it was not surprising to see Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy bootlegging the Albanese idea.

Early this week, the former Jeff Kennett staffer held aloft a $2 coin and announced that if elected his Liberal government would intervene in the pricing of public transport and subsidise the cost of tickets to a flat fee of $2 a day.

This was the latest big government idea from the Liberal Party. In order to get more people on the expensive public transport network, the government will pick up the tab.

Guy announced to the Melbourne media that this intervention would be saving the “typical family of public transport users” about $3500 a year.

That is an extraordinary amount of money for the “typical family of public transport users”.

The press release said it was “independently costed by the parliamentary budget office at just under $1.3bn over four years”.

This promise was sold as a cost-ofliving saving for people on the metropolitan train, tram, and bus network, and on “non-V/Line regional city and town services”.

So basically it was a policy designed for the inner state of Melbourne.

The $1.3bn was subsidising public transport for the inner-city lattesipping elites.

In the same presser, Guy was forced to promise there would be a regional public transport plan being released in the “next few days”.

Then in the blink of an eye the $2 plan was propped up to include the magical halving of V/line commuter costs.

It sure felt like this idea had been conjured as an afterthought, because it was not presented as a completed package. It arrived late. Like trains sometimes do.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make public transport more accessible, but anybody who has been a frequent user of the system can tell you, if you put more people onto it, then you need to build a more reliable network.

That’s going to cost money, right? So a radical price reduction seems counterintuitive to the development of a more robust network, and maybe that is why it has never been part of the conservatives’ plan before.

Just like Albanese, the coin prop is a political misdirection. It is asking the electorate to look at something shiny, rather than contemplate how we ended up on this side of the tracks. Guy is a political lifer. He has been in Spring St so long, he doesn’t know how to get out.

He has been the Opposition Leader before, but he is not a miracle worker.

If the opinion polls are close to accurate, this is another policy he will never have to worry about delivering on time.