Prime Minister Abbott today repeated a lie propagated by Dr. Napthine that inner city residents will benefit enormously from the link by removing through traffic from local streets.

“Those precincts and communities and neighbourhoods will be returned to the people and they won’t be choking on traffic,” he said.

In fact, the project will make inner city congestion much worse. How much worse is not known, and when it is known probably won’t be published.  Hoddle Street will be so congested it will be need to be expanded into a massive toll-way in a futile attempt to solve congestion.  The project will do nothing for the inner city but attract more cars.

Tony Abbott says he doesn’t need to see the east-west link’s full business case: “”I have no reason to think that the short case which has been published is in any way mendacious.” He doesn’t want to know how because if he did know, he wouldn’t be throwing $1.5 billion at it.

Read the full article in The Age on this astonishing capitulation of accountability.