Loading On Friday, Morrison and four Victorian Coalition MPs went to Geelong to promise that travel times from Geelong to Melbourne would virtually halve, from 61 minutes to 32 minutes. The $4 billion project, they said, would start within two years! The catch? State Labor would have to match Canberra’s $2 billion with $2 billion of its own. Regardless of the Andrews government's claim that $4 billion won’t be enough – something in itself that’s startling enough to be worthy of a fact-check – the telling point is when Morrison told Premier Daniel Andrews.

Corangamite MP Sarah Henderson on Friday told ABC Radio’s Jon Faine that Andrews had been told on Thursday night. The state government confirmed the phone message from Morrison came late that night. For a project that, in funding terms, was enough to build 160 new high schools. This is precisely what voters are sick of on infrastructure – the same tired promises being rolled out time and again by politicians who seem to know little of the details of the projects they are pledging, but know the minutiae of how their clever political wedges will play out. It amounts to a complete failure to govern for the fast-growing population when it comes to infrastructure.

This is no way to plan a city, a state or a nation. A functioning system would require states – that know the details of their transport needs – and Canberra, with its billions of dollars, to work together responsibly and with respect. Not a phone message at 8.30pm on a Thursday from one leader to another. Infrastructure Australia and Infrastructure Victoria were meant to help solve these problems. Sadly, so degraded has the public service become at both levels of government that neither have the courage to tell MPs hard truths about what’s required. Perhaps the most gobsmacking aspect of Morrison’s announcement on Friday, via a NewsCorp story referring to bullet trains and European-style links that was part of a 20-year vision? The precise same promise was tried less than six months ago by Matthew Guy.

The electoral result? Given Morrison and his fellow MP’s enthusiasm for the proposal, you would think it helped elected a swag of Liberals in Geelong and surrounding areas. Nothing of the sort; Labor candidates in the region recorded thumping victories. Former federal MP Darren Cheeseman took the state seat of South Barwon from the Liberals with an 8 per cent swing. Geelong Labor MP Christine Couzens recorded double the primary vote of her Liberal competitor. Labor’s Lara MP John Eren took 70 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.

And on the Bellarine, Lisa Neville turned her once marginal seat into safe Labor territory with a 7 per cent swing. Of course, there’s a reason the public is now so desperately cynical about transport announcements, and Victorian Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan was out on Friday providing abundant evidence of why. She referred to the proposal from Morrison as a thought bubble just weeks out from an election. That she could do so with a straight face – having herself last year promised $50 billion on a “suburban rail loop” cooked up independently of her state’s transport bureaucracy – was impressive. The difference though, is that Coalition governments have promised big and delivered little on infrastructure since they came to office in 2013 – remember Tony Abbott’s hope to be remembered as the infrastructure prime minister?