Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've been very vocal recently, urging the Victorian government to build a designated tunnel from Southern Cross Station to West Footscray Station as an integral part of the Melbourne Airport Rail Link project. The concept of a designated tunnel to take six to eight trips to Tullamarine every hour has featured strongly on the Labor Party government's press releases and websites. Last year, if you entered the Big Build website, you could read about the Melbourne Airport Rail Link project. It said: '… additional tracks between Sunshine and the CBD, to cater for faster, more frequent metro and regional trains. This would most likely be a new tunnel that would be part of the Melbourne Airport Rail Link.' If you go onto that same website now, the Labor government in Victoria has deleted all references to the tunnel. On 16 October 2018, they had a press release and a big launch, saying: '… additional tracks between Sunshine and CBD, most likely through a new tunnel, which would also be used by airport-bound trains and integrated with the Airport Rail Link.' If you go onto that website now, you'll see that that press release has been doctored.

In 2017, Daniel Andrews said, effectively: 'When we build this airport rail link, it needs to benefit every single Victoria. In our view the airport rail link has the potential to unlock western Victoria and northern Victoria.' It seems as though Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan have walked away from all these promises. They've walked away from all of these comments that they made previously, and now they're going to burn western Victorians and burn northern Victorians. They're going to burn everybody, just to put in a cheap and nasty airport rail project.

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