After months of waiting and uncertainty, the Labor Party has finally done what many thought was impossible - announced an actual policy. Unfortunately, we might have been better off if they hadn't, because this policy is a poorly thought out and contradictory mess. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Labor has promised to nationalise toll roads if elected. Now, let me be clear, in theory, this is a good policy. Roads should absolutely be in public hands, and while my familiarity as a regional Victorian with western Sydney roads is close-to-zero, Dr. Liz Allen has claimed that they are "the most tolled part of Australia", and let's accept that as fact here.

The problem is that the policy is unimplementable on a federal level. Take Melbourne's CityLink, which runs through a large chunk of the city, including its more multicultural western suburbs. If you look at the contract that established the toll road, it didn't even involve the federal government. It was signed by the Victorian planning minister (on page 307, for the curious) and City Link Extension Pty Ltd. The federal government could not if they wanted to get rid of toll roads, because this sort of infrastructure is a state issue.

That's not to say the federal government couldn't do anything. They could halt federal funding for toll projects, or perhaps prohibit the use of infrastructure bonds for urban road projects, as the Keating government attempted in 1995. These would all be sensible policies that I'd likely support.

But this does not read like a well-thought out policy aimed to reduce costs for everyday Australians. It reads like some Labor Party spin doctor found an issue that they thought could be a good attack point against the government, and immediately adopted it in the hope of pursing some dirty attack ads. When deputy PM pointed out that the federal government simply couldn't just nationalise toll roads, Labor Party leader dyljam responded with derision.

And herein lies the rub. dyljam has voted against both QANTAS and Medibank nationalisation as a Senator, even calling the latter "the most nonsensical, useless piece of legislation proposed by the government this term". He has claimed that the government has a nationalisation fetish. In one breath he disavows government ownership of public businesses, in the second he embraces it when he thinks he can score some votes. While he might think that nationalising Medibank is useless, at least it has achieved something. The Labor Party's policy cannot.