Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today we have learnt that Australia's most appallingly planned infrastructure project, the Perth Freight Link, has blown out by $167 million, and that is before a single contract has been awarded and a single shovel has hit the soil. That $167 million does not include the $300 million that is needed to build a new bridge over the Swan River to actually get the traffic into the Fremantle port. Members might be surprised to know that this project, which is designed to get road truck traffic into the Fremantle port—supposedly—actually misses its mark by 1.5 kilometres. It does not actually arrive at the Fremantle port. So in order to achieve that we now know from other submissions that we will need a $300 million bridge to add to the cost of this project.

Nor does it include the $400 million net that we are going to need now to dig a tunnel through Hamilton Hill, because there has been a very unfortunate redistribution at the state level. The transport minister now finds that the people and businesses who are going to lose their homes and businesses are indeed going to be in his new electorate. So he has committed to a tunnel rather than a surface road, which we know will cost $400 million net, at the very least.

When you add all of this up—an additional $167 million that we have just found out about, with no announcement; the $300 million and the $400 million—we are now going to see a project that is some $2.4 billion. It is no wonder that the Infrastructure Australia report that was very quietly posted late last night on their website, with no announcement, described this as a project that had high risks around its costs.

We have also learnt today from this report that the state government had 11 other options available to them, including rail infrastructure projects, but it did not do any cost-benefit on any of these other 11 projects to see if there were a more cost—effective solution.

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