Liberals outspend Labor in South West Coast election promises

The Standard is only comparing the major party promises, acknowledging the minor party and independent candidates are not in a position to make costed funding commitments.

Following a statewide pattern, the Liberals have splashed more than three times as much cash than Labor in South West Coast.

The big ticket item on their agenda should they take office is $36m to build The Lookout, a long awaited drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for Warrnambool and the region.

The project has become a flash point after being overlooked by state and federal governments for several years despite being fully costed and backed by experts. The state Labor government has so far declined to commit to funding it.

Liberal MP Roma Britnell has also pledged $12m to build a new Warrnambool Surf Lifesaving Club, to replace the crumbling facility overlooking Lady Bay, as well as $8m to rebuild the rock wall protecting the century-old Warrnambool breakwater.

The Liberals have also promised $6.6m to redevelop the Warrnambool Hockey Club, building new pitches and bringing the playing surface up to international standard, making it suitable for Commonwealth Games training and warm up matches.

They have also pledged $10m for a multi-purpose indoor sport and recreation facility in Portland, with a four-court arena for basketball, volleyball and table tennis. In Portland, Ms Britnell has also pledged $2.5m to build a new dedicated facility for the local coast guard, which is operating out of a shipping container and lacks toilet and change facilities.

While the Liberals spread their promises across a range of areas, Labor has concentrated the bulk of its funding in education. South West Coast Labor candidate Kylie Gaston has pledged $5m to build a new learning centre at Our Lady Help of Christians Primary in Warrnambool, where enrolments had grown 50 per cent in the past decade.

Labor also promised $5m for a green Building Innovation and Design Centre for South West TAFE at Deakin University's Warrnambool campus, with the new facility focused on training workers in the skills that will be in high demand during the transition to renewable energy.

On the eve of the election Labor announced Warrnambool would also host one of six new tech schools across the state, one of only two in regional Victoria. The new school would be housed at South West TAFE's city campus, training secondary schoolkids from across the region in high-demand areas like nursing and renewable industry skills.

Ms Gaston also promised $5.5m for a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner for the Warrnambool Base Hospital, in order that patients can avoid travelling to Ballarat or Geelong for diagnostic scans.

The major parties also made statewide transport pledges with important south-west implications.

Labor vowed to cap all daily public transport costs to metro prices, cutting the cost of a Melbourne return trip from nearly $80 to just $9.20. The Liberals pledged to halve the price of regional tickets, and said when buses replaced trains the trip would be free, an initiative Ms Britnell said she pushed for personally.

The Liberal Party also promised to spend $10 billion over the coming decade to repair the state's crumbling road network, a modest increase on the $780m in annual funding from Labor.

While they were unable to make specific funding pledges, the minor party and independent candidates said they strongly supported many of the measures Ms Britnell and Ms Gaston were committing funds to.

Independent candidate Carol Altmann said she would push for funding for The Lookout if elected, while independents James Purcell, Jim Doukas and Michael McCluskey all pointed to south-west roads as key priorities if they took office. Greens candidate Thomas Campbell said his party would build 10,000 homes across the state to end homelessness.