TUNNEL VISION FOR RAIL LINK
Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur spoke in favour the Coalition motion requiring the State Government to table the strategic business case for the Melbourne Airport rail link in Parliament.
Recent reports have suggested that the State Government is considering running trains for the airport rail link through the Metro Tunnel, as opposed to constructing a new western tunnel.
Geelong and Ballarat are projected to grow by 36 per cent and 31 per cent respectively in the next 15 years. This will take the City of Greater Geelong to a population of nearly 400 000 people. In the last five years passenger numbers on the Geelong line have more than doubled.
Without a new tunnel and the extra track from Sunshine to Southern Cross, airport trains will run with Metro trains, affecting not just regional commuters from Geelong and Ballarat but passengers from Melton, Sunbury and Wyndham Vale too.
Mrs McArthur said “This has all the short-termist hallmarks of a government losing its grip on the budget, losing its way in strategic infrastructure planning and defaulting to panic measures which, if adopted, will compromise Victoria for decades to come.”
“Infrastructure projects once built cannot be repealed like legislation. They cannot be reset like budgets. They cannot be discarded like policy. They are singularly ill suited to political meddling, which is perhaps why this government has such a poor track record on them.”
“The fact that the minister this week would not confirm what options are being considered rings alarm bells. Coming on top of the ripped-up contracts, project overruns, budget blowouts and toxic soil issues, it is no surprise that the Andrews government is starting to panic about building another tunnel.”
“To shirk this decision is not just a failure in competence by this government, it is a failure in character, the consequences of which the people of Western Victoria will have to live with for generations,” she concluded.
13 March 2020