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  "PageContent": "<h3>Waking up in Geelong - Marcus Wong. Gunzel. Engineering geek. History nerd.</h3>For Victorian Government authorities the 1990s was a time of massive change, as Jeff Kennett’s government forced them to divest many aspects of their operators to the private sector. But for some it was seen as an opportunity to take advantage of, creating new commercialised business units that would compete in the open market using their decades of experience. Since I love a good “rule of three” blog post, here are three examples.VicRoads and SprayLine Road ServicesSprayLine Road Services is the first commercialised business unit I’m looking at today – spun out from VicRoads in 1997, they now fall under the umbrella of Transport Victoria after the registration and licensing elements of VicRoads were flogged off to the private sector in 2022.SprayLine Road Services undertakes bituminous spray-sealing, line-marking, and road maintenance services to Transport Victoria, municipal councils, and private industry; with the contracts between SprayLine and VicRoads looking a little unusual.VicRoads hereby accepts your final tender, as confirmed in your email of Tuesday 23 October 2018, and hereby engages SprayLine Road Services (SprayLine) as the Contractor under Contract No 9960 for the Eastern Package of the Metropolitan Road Assets Maintenance Services program.I confirm that notwithstanding that SprayLine is not a separate legal entity to VicRoads, VicRoads engages SprayLine to provide the Maintenance Services and to perform SprayLine’s other obligations described in CN 9960 as though VicRoads and SprayLine are separate legal entities and there is a binding contract between them.And in 2008 the Victorian Auditor General finding:Most of the service level agreements with the road services group and councils cover the more remote areas of the state, where VicRoads expects very limited competition for routine maintenance contracts. VicRoads road services group costs were often above comparable contractor costs for different parts of the region but provided higher quality routine maintenance services than comparable private sector contractors.In summary, VicRoads has used service level agreements in situations where there is likely to be limited competition, to deliver value for money.Fire Rescue Victoria and Fire Equipment ServicesFire Equipment Services was spun out as commercialised business unit from the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1984 as part of the deregulation of the fire services industry, having been 1902 as the ‘Special Services’ division to service fire alarms and sprinkler systems.Fire Equipment Services photoAnd their public sector nature being seen as an advantage against competitors.Competition is stiff in the industry, particularly from private sector firms, although being a division of Fire Rescue Victoria gives FES a different profile in the industry. This influences the way FES goes to market. Stuart Yarnall, Director and General Manager at FES, emphasises being in a division within Fire Rescue Victoria and part of the public sector provides FES with a different context (and, thus, culture) compared to its competitors in the private sector. “The organisation is governed by an ethos of ‘public safety first and foremost,’ rather than driven by for-profit shareholder expectations. FES is instead run fundamentally on a commitment to public and community safety.”City of Melbourne and Citywide Service SolutionsCitywide is a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of Melbourne, which established the business in 1995 after Jeff Kennett implemented compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) to force local governments to open up in-house activities to the private sector.The Australian Financial Review writing at the time that Citywide was established.Peter Donald is the City of Melbourne’s $80 million man. The council’s corporate director, he is in charge of seeing that amount of council work go to contract by March next year under the State Government’s compulsory competitive tendering legislation.The City of Melbourne transfers its in-house service providers to a private company, CityWide Service Solutions, as they prove their commercial viability. So far, the in-house teams have won more than half the contracts, as well as contracts with other councils and private businesses. Alan Gostelow, the chief executive officer of CityWide, says the key to winning contracts is “working smarter” than the opposition.It was also used as a way to screw down workers.Gostelow is continually compiling information about his competitors, such as their staffing levels, wages and equipment. He says workers have taken pay cuts and forgone penalty rates to reduce their bid to the level of the opposition’s. He praises workers and unions for their cooperation in streamlining work practices and adjusting to meet contract requirements. He thinks in terms of fulfilling needs, not quotas. When the waste management bid came up earlier this year they did not promise to empty bins daily, but pledged that no bin would ever overflow.But a handful still work at Citywide today, despite everything else changing around them.When Maltese migrant George Spiteri jumped off the boat, Melbourne mid-1960s was little more than a big local town with little to boast in the way of world status credentials.Things hadn’t changed much when Rosario ‘Ronnie’ Dalli arrived a few years later behind his fellow Maltese émigré, finding only a nine-to-five Monday to Friday working town with office buildings barely rising above 15 storeys.Some 26 lord mayors and 10 Victorian premiers later, George and Ronnie between them have chalked up almost a century of service exclusively to the City of Melbourne.It’s a period of time in which Melbourne has literally grown and matured to claim the crown of world’s most liveable city seven times, with George and Ronnie bearing witness from the coalface to the city’s astonishing change.Both men – who currently work on Citywide’s civil infrastructure works team – were originally employed by the then Melbourne City Council (MCC) before it established Citywide as a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary in 1995 with George and Ronnie transferring across.Today, they are still based out of the same depot in North Melbourne as when they started with the MCC’s City Engineer’s Department.It’s fair to say by their own bare hands, both George and Ronnie have devoted themselves to maintaining what has become the world’s most liveable city.Footnote: and someone new out to kill themFor all the “Kennett is bad” talk, it’s actually a Labor government who sold off SprayLine Road Services in August 2025.The road maintenance work of Victorian government-owned Sprayline services, across the Loddon-Mallee, Grampians and eastern metropolitan Melbourne regions, will be privatised by July 1 next year.Copies of letters sent by the Department of Transport sent to Sprayline Road Services employees state: “Maintenance services in each of the three regions managed by SRS will be re-tendered commencing in late-2025” to private sector contractors, but on the proviso they take on its workers.“All SRS employees…will be offered employment with the external operator selected to deliver services in the region that aligns to their categorisation”.Sprayline’s spray sealing and line marking business will be sold through a separate bidding process. Road contractors said the most valuable assets SprayLine holds are its depots at Dandenong, Ardeer, Lilydale, Bendigo and Ballarat, as well as others across the state’s west, although some are heavily contaminated with bitumen residues.And in June 2024 the City of Melbourne announced they would sell off the waste management division of Citywide to competitor Cleanaway, in a deal finalised in July 2025.Lord Mayor Sally Capp appeared alongside Citywide CEO Chris Campbell and Cleanaway’s CEO and managing director Mark Schubert on June 24 at the Dynon Rd Waste Transfer Station in West Melbourne.The council, which owns Citywide, said it had worked with the company’s board to identify a buyer for the business, with Melbourne-based Cleanaway chosen as the best operator to deliver world-class waste collection services.  The deal includes Cleanaway’s $110 million purchase of Citywide’s waste and recycling business and assets, and a $35 million investment to redevelop the aging waste transfer station at Dynon Rd in West Melbourne. The redevelopment will be boosted by a further $10 million from the City of Melbourne. A decision triggered by a near $8 million loss recorded during the 2023/24 financial year.",
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