Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is remarkable that we are being asked to acknowledge and be grateful for $2.57 billion in funding in the October budget for Victorian infrastructure from those on the other side who are professing to have superior IQs. The adage is that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth; but it is spring racing time, so we can at least do the form! This is remarkable, because the last budget delivered by the coalition allocated $3.3 billion to Victoria for road and rail projects to keep people and freight moving and to grow the economy. That's the difference: growing the economy. The investment took the coalition government's total commitment to transport infrastructure in Victoria to $35.5 billion since 2012-14. We can all do the maths—or most of us can do the maths—but there's a bigger underlying problem: $2.2 billion is being poured into Premier Daniel Andrews's pet project, the Suburban Rail Loop. The $125 billion price tag and the expected finish date of 2085 are staggering. Not only will this city-centric pipedream siphon off a disproportionate amount of infrastructure investment every year for decades to come but the Victorian Auditor-General has also found that the business case did not support informed investment decisions, and that for every dollar spent on the project the return is just 51c. Infrastructure Victoria's independent 30-year infrastructure strategy, released in 2016, did not include or signal a need for an orbital rail line in Melbourne, and yet here we are.

The Victorian Auditor-General also looked at the Melbourne Airport Rail project. This isn't a major project that came out of the blue, like the Suburban Rail Loop, or out of someone's head, but it has had numerous false dawns over many decades. The business case for this was also found to be undercooked, including on key questions like affordability and options assessment. This is important, because in its current form the $5 billion will build yet another expensive taxpayer funded monument to missed opportunity in Victoria. And we've been here before, with the Regional Rail Link, completed in 2015 under a federal-state partnership. It allows trains from Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo to bypass the congestion on the suburban rail network. The Seymour and Shepparton line, which services the electorate of Nicholls and other electorates of those opposite was not included in the link—a missed opportunity at the time. Equally, the Melbourne Airport Rail project will do nothing to advance the connectivity of northern Victoria. It could have, if the project were designed with the capacity for high-speed electrified trains from the regions, particularly from the north and the north-east. The first VLocity trains travelled to Shepparton just last week and, thanks to $320 million of investment by the coalition, when in federal government, the line will soon support nine return services a day and faster speeds of 130 kilometres per hour. That is, of course, until those trains hit the suburban rail system.

The improvements to rail services in my electorate are welcome and long overdue but, at a time when housing affordability and the cost of living are pressing issues, we should be leveraging major rail infrastructure projects to improve regional connectivity. The regions have the capacity to grow and absorb a greater proportion of our population. When spending public money, we should be trying to benefit the greatest number of people and we should not be missing opportunities. The future is high-speed rail, not just as a connector between capital cities in different states but to connect regional cities and capital cities within states. If we don't want Australia to become a nation of unaffordable megacities, we need to face up to the challenge of growing our regional cities.

The three projects I have mentioned total more than $133 billion. For that eye-watering amount, the design should include a dedicated conduit for electrified high-speed trains from regional centres to the north of Melbourne and through the north of Melbourne. Instead, I believe we are squandering billions on the Victorian government's Suburban Rail Loop—and there are other projects. The floods in Shepparton and Mooroopna closed the causeway linking the cities, and the coalition has set aside $208 million to progress the first stages of the Shepparton Bypass, a critical project which links the two cities of Shepparton and Mooroopna—especially when disasters like flood happen. The Andrews government has not committed to build it; it has played politics with it. The time for games is over and we need to build the Shepparton Bypass.

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