‘I certainly do,’ said the man. ‘But I don’t think I…’
‘Stephen Villani, head of Homicide,’ said Barry. ‘Meet Clinton Hulme.’
‘Steve, good to meet you,’ said Hulme, soft handshake. ‘I feel very safe here. So many policemen.’
‘Clinton’s CEO of Concordat Holdings,’ said Barry. ‘Max Hendry’s company. Our hosts.’
‘Just one of them, please,’ said Hulme. ‘This consortium’s so big only Max knows everyone.’
A soft drum roll, a plump man on the small stage, wired for sound, behind him his image on a huge screen. Villani knew he was once a television star, a game-show host perhaps. The amplified voice said, ‘Ladies and gentleman, good evening and welcome. I’m Kim Hogarth representing the AirLine Consortium.’
Through the crowd, Villani could see television crews, still photographers.
‘A great pleasure today to welcome so many people who serve our great city and our great state,’ the man said. ‘And at such a wonderful venue, the Hawksmoor Gallery at Persius.’
Applause, canned.
‘I’d like to offer a special, special welcome to the premier and his ministers and their partners, the leader of the Opposition and her colleagues and their partners,’ said Hogarth. ‘We appreciate them joining us. The AirLine project isn’t a secret. It’s been speculated about in the media for months. Tonight we put an end to that. We’ll spell out our dream.’
A long pause.
‘Of course, we all know that dreams don’t often come true. We give up because achieving them is just too hard, needs too much work, needs too much courage. And more boldness than we have.’
Triumphal symphonic music. On the giant screen, images of primitive machines and Saturn rockets lifting off, the Wright brothers and jet airliners taking off, three-masted sailing ships and supertankers, dusty paddocks and shimmering pictures of city skyscrapers, it went on.
Then the screen showed the city from a great height, zoomed in, cut to speeded-up helicopter-shot footage of gridlocked highways, bridges and city streets, of overcrowded railway platforms and rail carriages. Over the images, voices announced train delays and cancellations, warned of road blockages, diversions, malfunctioning traffic lights, sluggish flows, stoppages.
‘AirLine has a bold dream, a bold vision,’ said Hogarth. ‘It comes from a great citizen of Melbourne, a great Victorian, a great Australian.’
Soaring music.
Still and moving pictures of a man, from slim youth onwards, hair short, long, short, running, playing football, laying bricks, beside a light plane, at a drawing board, in a hardhat on building sites, leading in a winning horse at Flemington, walking bunch-muscled through the shallows after a Pier-to-Pub swim, talking and laughing with politicians, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd, with artists, musicians, athletes, being hugged by Nelson Mandela.
It went on too long. It ended in silence with the man walking down a country road, fire-black tree skeletons and paddocks on both sides. An elderly couple came to meet him in front of a burnt down house and outbuildings. He put his arms around them and they stood, heads together, a tableau of sorrow and sympathy.
Silence.
Hogarth said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you AirLine’s visionary, its founder and chairman, I give you Mr Max Hendry.’
Max Hendry was on the platform, moving easily.
‘That bloke in the pictures,’ he said. ‘Looks a bit like Harrison Ford. Anyone remember Harrison? Only taller. And a damn side handsomer.’
Long, loud applause, the sombre mood dissolved. Max Hendry made a palms-out gesture.
‘Guests, friends, it’s good to have you here,’ he said. ‘And enemies too. You are all welcome. My father used to say it’s hard to dislike a man who pours you a glass of the Grange.’
The crowd laughed, they liked him.
He waited, looked around the room. ‘I want to ask you a question,’ he said.
‘Is there anyone here, and that includes you Mr Premier and your ministers, who can say with hand on heart that this city’s public transport isn’t woefully inadequate?’
Murmurings.
‘No takers?’ said Hendry. ‘Of course not. Woefully inadequate is being polite. It’s a disgrace. That’s why our consortium wants to give this city at least one system that is super-fast, safe, and comfortable. A great system for a great city. It looks like this.’
The screen showed an elevated train bulleting along above a highway, passing another going the other way. Then a map of the city with bold lines along the arteries, all meeting in the heart of the city.
‘It’s not another toll road. It’s not another train. It operates in the air, in useless space above the highways. In the airspace. We call it Project AirLine.’
More applause.
‘We have no small ambition,’ he said. ‘We want to build the most advanced transport system in the world. Passive magnetic levitation, suspended pods, lightweight advanced metals, cuttingedge engineering. But we need the state government to help us. We need all the councils on all the routes to come to the party.’
Applause.
‘We can have the Monash line operating in around twenty months from the go-ahead,’ said Hendry. ‘Imagine fifteen minutes from the outer suburbs to the heart of the city. Then we’ll do the western feeder. Melton, Caroline Springs, ten minutes. And that’s just the beginning.’
Longer applause, Max Hendry nodding, camera flashes winking.
‘Two other things,’ said Max Hendry. ‘I like the idea of fear-free mass transport. Very much. Some people here know my wife’s nephew was beaten to death near a station a few years ago. He was much loved.’
The respectful silence, the wait.
‘Makes you think, that kind of violence, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘It plagues our city.’
On the big screen, a panning camera was on the premier, no expression, hands steepled under his bottom lip, bovine Robbie Cowper, the planning minister. It moved to Orong, to Gillam, to Barry. Villani saw himself. Then it came to a nodding Paul Keogh.
‘So this will be the world’s safest public transport,’ said Hendry. ‘I give my solemn word.’
He was on the screen now, five metres high, he pulled loose his tie, a man coming into the pub, friends waiting. He smiled. It was a good smile, all the better for being so long awaited.
‘The second thing,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a commercial-inconfidence secret.’
The wait.
‘We’re greedy bastards. We hope to make some money out of this. Of course, greedy bastards have built a lot of the world. Some things greed builds outlive the greedy bastards who built them.’
More applause.
‘So our message for the state government and the councils is this. Forget about more freeways. They solve nothing and make many things worse. Forget about more tunnels. All they do is take the problems underground for a while.’
Pause.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this project is about actually doing something to stop this city choking to death. In the major corridors, we can take at least twenty per cent of passenger vehicles off the roads. We can cut greenhouse emissions dramatically. It’s the greenest thing any level of government could do. It’s a gift to the present and the future.’
Applause, flashbulbs popping. Hendry took breath.
‘What will it cost? Frankly, we don’t know precisely yet. Big bikkies. Our people are working flat out on costs. Do we seek a public-private partnership? Absolutely not. Do we have merchantbank robbers involved? Bugger them. So do we want government contributions? Bloody right we do. Contributions from government at all levels, from the federal government down.’
Louder, longer clapping.
‘So, you may ask, why make this announcement now? Because we’ve done our private talking. We’ve talked our heads off and we’ve had nothing more than polite expressions of interest. Now we want to go to the people.’