Thursday, 16 September 2021

Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms ALLAN:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (16:43): I rise to lead the opposition’s response to the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. I will of course spend my time talking about what this bill does, but I think we need to start by being very clear as to what this bill is not doing. It does not hire a single construction worker, and it does not set a tunnel-boring machine going. It does not allocate a single dollar to build the Suburban Rail Loop. It is, however, a huge bill. It is 204 pages, and it establishes a new principal act. The Liberal-Nationals will not oppose this bill.

I will start by describing the bill. There are nine parts to the bill. Part 1 specifies preliminary matters, including definitions, objectives and the commencement provision. Part 2 establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) as a statutory body corporate, and that authority will take over all the functions, staff and administrative matters from the Suburban Rail Loop Authority administration office that was established in 2019. Part 3 of the bill provides the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop the power to declare areas of land that are proposed to accommodate the Suburban Rail Loop infrastructure and related precincts as Suburban Rail Loop planning areas. Part 7, through amendments to the Planning and Environment Act 1987, then allows the Suburban Rail Loop Authority to act as a planning authority for the land which part 3 has declared as part of the Suburban Rail Loop.

Those parts are some of probably the most contentious parts of the bill, and they are certainly ones we have had significant responses on, even in the short time the bill has been released, from various communities along the line, with their concerns about how an authority can declare land subject to itself and then act as the planning authority.

Part 4 recognises this project is a very big intergenerational project that will be delivered in stages, and it therefore refers to the progressive development of the Suburban Rail Loop program and makes provision for its component parts. That will mean that different parts of this project will be declared as Suburban Rail Loop projects without the whole thing having to be declared at the beginning, and also that it will effectively have standalone components within the bigger project.

Part 5 specifies the power of delegation by the minister and then sets up confidentiality provisions for the staff of the authority. It also specifies who can enforce the offences created in the act, and what evidence can be regarded as proof, and the general regulation-making powers available under the act.

Part 6 is largely transitional. It provides for the transfer of property from the Suburban Rail Loop administrative office to the Suburban Rail Loop Authority.

Part 8 is the amendment of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009. This is also I think a part that needs to be brought to the attention of the house. What this does is, and I read from the explanatory memorandum:

Part 8 provides for amendments to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009. Amendments are made particularly to Part 6 of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to provide a number of additional powers for projects to which that Act is applied …

To be very clear here, that means that this bill creates additional powers under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act for all projects that are declared under that act. They are not simply for the Suburban Rail Loop. The Suburban Rail Loop Bill is amending the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act, and of course that act is not simply this project. So any of the changes that are made there—and there are significant changes made to what constitutes project land—are largely changes about how projects that are major transport projects control the land which they are working on.

Part 8 also creates some changes in relation to the value of rights more than 15 metres below land and therefore applies to all of these projects. It puts that value at nil. Again, we have received some commentary in terms of the consultation that suggested that 15 metres may constrain some of the major multilevel car park projects that will be planned along this route and that setting that value to zero may have an impact on that. However, the government has assured us that their modelling comes to the conclusion that there is no value to land below 15 metres below the ground.

Then part 9 of the bill amends several other acts to account for the existence of this new authority.

Fundamentally, though, this is about a project—a very big project, a multigenerational project. It is a multibillion-dollar project that was dreamt up in the Premier’s office before the 2018 election. When the Premier unveiled what had previously to that point been called Operation Halo in August 2018, he said it would cost about $50 billion and be built by 2050. The government now says that half of it will cost $50 billion and that half will not be done until 2053. The investment and business case that the government has recently released only includes costings for the first two sections—that is Cheltenham to Box Hill and then Box Hill to the airport—and it then has the other half of it. The airport through the western suburbs is just regarded as a future project. This is in fact not a loop; it is at best a half semicircle—we are not going all the way round. If a Victorian lives in the western suburbs of Melbourne, it is very unlikely on this basis—unless they are very young at the moment—that they will ever, ever see this project in their lifetime, because the government has not planned for anything past the airport and has not made any pretence of that. All of their documents in relation to economic benefits, the cost—all of those things—stop at the airport, and in fact many of the benefits that the government is claiming in this project come from getting the line to the airport.

Interestingly—or perhaps not interestingly, I suppose; it is just an illuminating point—while we have the first two sections of this project costed, and I will come back to that in a moment, there is no breakdown between the first two sections as to the benefits. All of those benefits have been aggregated together, and one would have to come to the conclusion, therefore, that the first section, the section that goes from Cheltenham through to Box Hill, does not stack up and it therefore needed the benefits that come from an airport rail connection to get it across the line—and it only just gets across the line in terms of its benefit-cost ratio. There is not much fat there, and I will come to that in a moment.

Many infrastructure commentators and analysts have commented about big infrastructure projects—not specifically this one. They have said it before this one came out, and they have then used this one as an example. Infrastructure should be planned for where it is needed. It is one of the reasons that we have Infrastructure Victoria and Infrastructure Australia. It should not be the other way round—that an election promise is made and then it is back justified—and it especially should not be when we are talking in excess of $100 billion. When we are signing Victorians up for decades of infrastructure spending on one project, it is incumbent on government to make sure of that choice, because when you make a choice to do this thing it means you are also making a deliberate choice not to do something else. So it is absolutely incumbent on government to always seek to test whether any project is the best choice amongst others, and that is not what occurred here. And, as a result, we have a situation where this project is not a priority project for Infrastructure Australia or Infrastructure Victoria, and it is not mentioned in Plan Melbourne.

Now, if we think about how big this project is, I go to a piece by Alan Davies. Dr Davies is the principal of a Melbourne-based economic and planning consultancy, Pollard Davies Consulting. He has had a look at this project, and he has said:

… it’s way more than enough to double the size of Melbourne’s tram network. It’s more than the estimated cost of building a High-Speed Rail line from Sydney to Melbourne. It’s around three times the $17 billion the Rudd government spent on the BER program to avoid Australia being strangled by the GFC.

And yet, is this the best project? This is masses of money. It means we do not get other things, and as Dr Davies goes on to say:

The glaringly obvious alternative is Melbourne Metro Stage 2.

That is a project that Infrastructure Victoria and Infrastructure Australia all say is needed.

Then we think about this project itself. The loop is only going to have 15 stations spread along 90 kilometres, and as a result, it is not going to attract many walk-ups. The business case makes that point, actually, in the way it describes the benefits. It suggests that there will be—in 2056 I may add, some time away—more than 430 000 orbital journeys occur per day. Now, 430 000? There are 12 million journeys a day already, so we are not talking a big number of journeys here for our $100 billion; we really just are not. This is not a project that is delivering huge benefits. It has benefits; there is no question about that. There is no question that this project provides benefits. The question is: are they the biggest benefits for the dollars that it requires to be built?

It is also true that only about 5 per cent of Melbourne’s employment is currently around the centres that they are building the stations at, and while part of the program is of course to increase jobs in those centres, we are still not talking about most of Melbourne—and none of regional Victoria. So most of Victoria, most Victorians, will not benefit from this project. Then when you say that and you say, ‘Well, it’s so much money’, is it the right project given that the whole of the western suburbs will not benefit, regional Victoria will not benefit and there are plenty of people who live in the eastern suburbs who will be beyond this loop and will not benefit either?

As the Grattan Institute notes, and I think this is quite amusing in one sense, for the kind of money that this will cost, and this is just the $50 billion for the half of it, we could fund Uber trips for the next 20 years for everyone who works in one of the 15 suburbs nominated for a new station, or we could have an awful lot of timetabling improvements, high-capacity signalling, station and interchange upgrades, electrification of the Melton, Clyde and Wallan lines and other improvements. In other words, there are plenty of other projects—needed infrastructure projects—and these have to be evaluated against this one, and that has not been the case. As a result, Tim Colebatch labelled this as ‘the worst transport project Melbourne has ever seen’.

I think at this point it is important to think about the costing side, and I have been talking about how it constrains us as a state from other options. But that is assuming that it gets built for the $50 billion or so that is in that investment case, because the Grattan Institute has also found that every time an infrastructure project comes out of an election promise, projects announced close to an election have cost overruns 23 per cent higher on average than similar projects announced at other times. We know this government’s record on infrastructure spends. We have got the Metro Tunnel—$3.4 billion it is running in its cost blowout. The Level Crossing Removal Project is $3.3 billion over cost. The West Gate Tunnel—we do not even know. We are up to $1.9 billion in cost overruns, but many would say it could be double that. That is three projects which together will cost less than this, and they have already blown out by that amount.

That becomes important when we go to the business case. The business case finds that the total cost of this project will be between $30.7 billion and $50.5 billion and the total benefit, according to how this has been calculated—and there is some controversy over that, but these are the numbers in the document—is $48.5 billion to $58.7 billion, so the benefit-cost ratio for this project is 1.1 to 1.7. It does not take much for people to understand that this project does not need to blow out very much from its $50 billion, if it has only got a 1.1 cost-benefit ratio, for that to be underwater. You do not need to be a mathematical genius to know that. This project only comes across the line of being net cost-benefit positive if there are no cost blowouts. But this government has never run a project without cost blowouts, and especially it has never run a project of this size without them. So we are not going to see this project delivered for $50 billion. There is no chance of that given this government’s history. It will be far more, and this project will not have a positive benefit-cost ratio. I will leave it to the government members to look through all the things they have said about projects that do not have positive benefit-cost ratios. They have been fairly voluble on that topic. It is coming right back at you.

I just want to mention one other thing about the business and investment case. The case makes a lot about the additional activity levels that will be created around these stations. Page 189 of the business case shows that if this project is built, the population in what is known as the eastern section, which is Cheltenham to Box Hill, will rise from 131 000 people to 306 000 by 2056. It helpfully breaks it down by station. I do think people in Burwood, for example, need to know, need to have the information provided to them, not buried in this document, that their current population of 22 000 people is expected to go to 44 500—more than double. They are the ones that will be wearing the urban infill. That is what this document says. There will be an additional 22 500 people in Burwood. But then Box Hill currently has a population of 29 000 people. This document says that by 2056 Box Hill will have 77 500 people. They are going to put another 48 500 people into the Box Hill precinct, into those towers around Box Hill. Now, I do not think that the communities of Box Hill and Burwood really have had this pointed out to them. But I can assure you we will be pointing it out to them, because they are the ones that will be wearing that cost of congestion, and it will not all be taken away by the fact that they have got a shiny new train station.

I now come to problems with the bill, and I think they can be put into a few categories. I will start with what is part 2 of the bill. Now, part 2 sets up the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. This will have a board, and it will have a chief executive. It is highly constrained in what it can do without the permission of the minister, the Treasurer and in some cases the Premier to the extent that the board is required to come up with a plan of works, effectively, submit that to the minister, then the minister has to sign off on it and then the board has to do what the minister has signed off on. That in itself is not unusual. I have sat on a government board that operates in a similar way. However, the trouble with this is this is a giant project that is by no means not controlled by its minister.

As we go through this I think we will have a situation where the minister will often want to say, ‘That is the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. They did that. We didn’t do that; they did that’. Well, the fact is the minister, the Treasurer and the Premier are involved at every major decision-making point in this Suburban Rail Loop Authority, despite the fact that the Suburban Rail Loop Authority is going to be yet another Labor mates gravy train. It is just going to be fabulous to be appointed to this board, because it will have significant assets, significant payments to its directors. Its chief executive is mooted to be on $800 000 a year. This is absolutely another Labor mates gravy train that is being set up here.

I then come to part 3 and part 7. This is where the bill provides the power to declare land as Suburban Rail Loop land, and then part 7 lets the SRLA act as the planning authority. There has not been very much time between when this bill was introduced and today to get feedback from many stakeholders. However, we have received some. The mayor of Whitehorse has responded to our request for comments, and he notes:

There is potential for SRLA to take over planning control from Council for approximately a quarter of the Whitehorse municipality.

He notes that there is:

… a lack of clarity regarding the extent of developments/precincts to be managed by SRLA and how these will be determined. In particular the proposed declaration of planning areas could be anywhere up to 1.6km from each proposed station using no logical boundaries.

He also notes the problem with land below 15 metres and the problem with car parks. We do have concerns about these planning laws. We do think it is fundamentally flawed to have an authority able to declare what it thinks is the area it wants to have control over and then become the planning authority for that. We have checks and balances in planning for a reason, and this bill is deliberately overriding that. We do not think that is a good idea.

Similarly, the expansion of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009’s powers for all transport projects we think is overreach. This has been put into this bill when really there should have been an amendment bill to that act rather than being stuck in here as part 7 of the Suburban Rail Loop Bill, because it is far more far reaching than that.

But overall the biggest problem we have with this is that the bill does not set up scrutiny of this project by the Parliament or by any committee of the Parliament, yet we are talking about the biggest project that this state has ever seen. For that reason, I will move a reasoned amendment. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government re-establishes a public works committee to oversee all major public works in Victoria, including the Suburban Rail Loop, given the massive cost overruns, serious time delays, contractual disputes and inadequate business cases for the Suburban Rail Loop and other major projects’.

Now, there used to be a public works committee and the Public Works Committee of the Victorian Parliament operated between 1935 and 1982. It was a significant committee. I have but a small sample of its many, many inquiries, but one I suppose that I really noted was its inquiry and report on the proposed provision of an underground city railway. This was in 1954. They also did an inquiry on the eastern railway. They did a couple of inquiries on the abolition of level crossings, one on Napier Street, Fitzroy.

This committee added enormous oversight to these projects, these big projects for the time. There is no reason why we should not think about how we should have a special oversight for a project the size of that of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. There is no reason that the government should not consider our proposal to re-establish this committee. One would hope that they would be so proud of their infrastructure delivery and this project that they would like to see a standing committee of this Parliament look at the many things that go both well and badly when you do a project of this size. So we would hope that the government would support the reasoned amendment and go away and re-establish the public works committee, a joint committee of the Parliament.

I live in hope that we will see that, but I also am a realist and I suspect we will not get that support. However, without that, we are facing in Victoria the largest project that this state has ever seen, with no proper accountability mechanism, no oversight mechanism of this Parliament. I think that is abrogation of our responsibility as parliamentarians. The government should not be afraid to have more oversight put onto this multigenerational, multibillion-dollar project. They should welcome it. I look forward to seeing how they support my reasoned amendment, and with that I conclude my remarks.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (17:13): Thank you, Deputy Speaker—Acting Speaker McGuire, sorry. Good to see you in the chair. Of course you can have a promotion. I am happy to promote you, member for Broadmeadows. And it is actually quite nice for you to be in the chair, because I know how strongly you have advocated for this project, how desperate you are to see this project in your community, how much you push for this project to be connected for your community. In fact you would love Broadmeadows to be the starting point, and we know this. We know that you cannot have airport rail connected quickly enough and that you want to have suburban rail come through, connecting the people of Broadmeadows with the rest of the city by public transport as quickly as it can.

Now, I am extremely happy to speak on this bill. It is a fabulous project. It is a project that this city has not only embraced but has waited for for a really long time. It is interesting just to hear the cynicism, to hear this fear, from the other side—to be so conservative that any challenge, any change, any vision is met with disdain, with fear and with scepticism. We need a government that is visionary, we need a government that wants to build things and we need a government that wants to make things happen. And it is only with governments like ours, with Labor governments that look to the future, that want to invest in people and that want to create opportunities, that we find projects like this not only being developed, not only being imagined, but actually being realised. And we have seen this with our level crossing removals and the huge success of those and how many of those have been delivered quickly and efficiently across the board.

I want to go back to something that the Premier said at the memorial service for our fantastic past Premier John Cain, someone for whom I know so many people in this house have great respect. The Premier said about John Cain:

Just as he had once modernised our party, John set about modernising our state.

And this is a legacy that Labor governments have built on, of this Premier who was brave, who built our city loop. I vaguely remember when the city loop was opened. I was not that old, but I do remember what it was like. I do remember pulling up to Princes Bridge station and having to walk across to Swanston Street to jump onto the loop, which evolved over time and became a much better connection. But the way it helped people move around our CBD was transformative. The way it helped connect other suburbs across the city was absolutely transformative. Just as I am sure that conservatives met that with scepticism, I bet you that every single one of them has used the city loop, and I bet you every single one of them has taken the city loop for granted and that they have forgotten what it was like or have no idea what this city was like before it and how it has changed. And we know that this will happen with the Metro Tunnel. The Metro Tunnel will continue to transform how we move around as a community. This Suburban Rail Loop will absolutely change how we move around, and it will be fantastic. It will be incredible. The advantages that we have here are just amazing.

Now, the previous speaker spoke about this project being dreamed up. How many people in this city have spoken about having a train ring, having a train that connects through our suburbs? How many people have screamed for a train connecting Doncaster? How many people hate the traffic when going down Springvale Road to get to Monash? There are so many blocks in this city when we try and move around using cars as our vehicle. When we open up train networks, when we improve train networks, when we open things up, that gets transformed, and I cannot understand how the speaker opposite could talk with disdain about the fact that it will only move 430 000 people a day—that nearly half a million people being underground on that one line is insignificant. Well, it is not. You tell those people using that train every day that their journey is insignificant.

I see the member for Glen Waverley is here. The member for Ripon was talking about how we need to focus on projects where they are needed. Now, I would bet you quite a lot of money—in fact quite a lot of the slabs of beer that our Premier has urged us to get onto when the time is right—member for Glen Waverley, that the people in your community love this project; that they want to see that connection; that they want to be able to get the train across the city, not just the spoke that takes them into the CBD; that they want to be connected to places like Burwood and that they want to be connected to Monash, to Cheltenham, to Box Hill and eventually to Doncaster, to Heidelberg, to La Trobe University. Acting Speaker McGuire, I know that you have had these conversations with La Trobe University, as I have. They want this project to happen yesterday. The way that it feeds into their plans for their education precinct, the opportunities that they know this will offer—they want this project yesterday. They do not want it to be slowed down. They do not think it is inefficient. They think it is absolutely worth doing, and so many people do. This city does. This city voted for this project. This state voted for this project.

I will talk to you about how this transforms our regional community. My mum and dad live in Traralgon. This project will take half an hour off their journey if they want to go to Box Hill Hospital, for example. They will be able to get the train to my house.

Now, the way that the member for Ripon was talking was that there will be people who will not be around when this project is finished. That is good government. Good government is delivering projects that will be here for the people of the future. Good government is about creating infrastructure that looks to the future. We have people complain day after day that governments do not futureproof, governments did not think of this, governments did not plan. This is exactly what this project offers and exactly what this project does.

It will help our regional community access services, particularly health services, so much more easily in this city. Now, I did—and I reckon you might have too, Acting Speaker McGuire—have a bit of a sideways glance at the member for Ripon when she started talking about positive cost ratios, once she started talking about the benefits of this project, once she started talking about between $1.10 and $1.70 returned for every taxpayer dollar invested and that perhaps this was not good enough, that perhaps this could, you know, have cost blowouts and be a disaster. Well, I want to understand from the member for Ripon how her party could endorse a major infrastructure project that only returned 44 cents in the dollar, that was actually going backwards. If there was a cost blowout, there was a cost blowout before that project even began.

This project has so many benefits. There are so many things about this project that I love, but one of the things that I really love is the activity precincts that these train stations will create. These train stations will create hubs in themselves. They will become activity centres. They will be places where we can get off the train and we can go to the pharmacist, we can go to the supermarket, we can pick up kids from child care, we can buy a new pair of shoes, we can go to the greengrocer—where we can do a whole bunch of things within that train station precinct. And not only does that create more jobs, not only does that create more opportunity, it makes transport safer. It creates passive surveillance around train stations. It creates economic hubs—and economic hubs in our suburbs.

Now, we are all, I think, in this house in agreement that 20-minute suburbs are what we are after. We are after having communities where people do not have to travel distances to get to school, to get to work or to get to health care. These stations and this train line are part of that transformation and part of creating those opportunities. For people to scaremonger, to create fear and to be so sceptical about this project I find quite surprising. I really do. I have not found one person in my community who has said, ‘Oh my God, this isn’t going to be built for years. Please don’t do it’. They have said, ‘Can you please hurry up and get this built? Can you please hurry up and put the shovel in the ground? When is it going to happen? When am I going to have this station? Because I want it. I want this project. I voted for this project, and I want this project’. This project creates economic opportunity, it creates social opportunity, it helps us rely less on cars to get around and it will reduce carbon emissions. This is a fabulous project that people are excited about. That is why it deserves the support of this house, and that is exactly what I am doing. I support this bill.

Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:23): I have been looking forward to the opportunity to say a few words on this particular bill and this particular project. We are going to hear obviously a cavalcade of those opposite telling us what a wonderful project it is, what genius it was by the Premier of the day to put forward this project at the last election and how it is going to transform the state, yada, yada, yada. I actually think—and I have said this before in this place—it is a good idea. If you go to any major city around the world with a good metro system, they do not have a hub-and-spoke model; they actually have circular or orbital or cross lines. If you think of the tube in London and the Metro in Paris, you can go anywhere. They have, though, been developed over 130-odd years.

But I do think it is a good idea. As I have said before, I also think it is a good idea that I buy a Caribbean island to live on, but I cannot afford that. I cannot afford that, and this state cannot afford this project at this time. And there are serious questions as to whether it is the right project either now or in the future. One of the reasons for that is the expectation that Melbourne will just continue to grow exponentially, and I think very, very clearly the pandemic has changed the world, it has changed Victoria and it will change Melbourne. We saw data in the last 24 hours that shows that Victoria was the only state to actually go backwards in terms of population growth in the past 12 months. We saw data in the last few months that showed dramatic increases in people moving out of Melbourne to other states and more particularly to regional Victoria. That is where I want to I guess focus my comments.

My very grave concern—and I think it is held with very good reason, particularly under this government—is that this project will suck up capital in this state for decades to come, and that capital will be sucked up at the expense of the needs for infrastructure in rural and regional Victoria. We see it already. I do not have to just talk about this project. Right now, I can tell you, I can just tick off four projects: level crossing removals, North East Link, Metro Tunnel and the West Gate Tunnel—$54 billion of megaprojects in metropolitan Melbourne right now. $54 billion, those projects are, each one of them blown out. Even the North East Link started as a $5 billion project and is now $16 billion. All of them have blown out, and that is before you even start thinking about this Suburban Rail Loop. We got told it was probably about $50 billion. It is very clearly now closer to $100 billion just for the first two stages, for the east and the north. When you go further to the west, God knows how much it will cost, and there is no justification.

I will not go over the ground that the member for Ripon did, but there is no question that the business case, the benefit-cost analysis, is rubbery in the way it has been presented and more importantly in the way that it ignores the fact that there will be cost escalations. You can call them cost escalations, but we all know we are talking about blowouts. That will happen, and we have seen it on those four projects I talked about—level crossing removals, North East Link, Metro Tunnel, West Gate Tunnel. I mean, the West Gate Tunnel—how much is it going to cost at the end of the day? It just continues to grow in cost. That cost is going to come at the expense of the things that we need in rural and regional Victoria, and that is why I am actually opposed to this project at this time. Like I said, in principle I actually support it. It is actually a good idea. But when you boil it down—the needs of this state, the need for this project—it does not stack up.

I can go through a couple of projects that do need doing. One that I have been going on about for a long time now is a dedicated line for Gippsland trains. We have got that with Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong with the regional rail link. We do not have a dedicated Gippsland line, and as a result our trains go along pretty smartly until they hit Pakenham, and then they get stuck behind Metro trains. And whether it is a single or a dual dedicated line all the way in, whether it is additional passing lanes, whether it is parts of a tunnel—whatever it might be—we do not know the detail, because this government will not even consider a business case, will not even consider actually having a look at the detail of what could be done to address this issue.

I fear that what is happening is we are seeing an additional station put in at Pakenham, which the minister keeps going on about—‘This will make it easier for Gippsland train lines’. I think what she is actually saying is that we will eventually stop Gippsland trains at Pakenham and you will have to get off and get on a Metro service. And if that is not the case, what also worries me about this project is these super-hubs, one proposed at Clayton, which the minister talks about being great for Gippslanders. If it is not Pakenham, my fear is that this government will say eventually, ‘Okay, Gippsland trains—V/Line—are all stopping at Clayton. You’ve got to get off and get on the Suburban Rail Loop or continue on on a Metro train into the city’.

I know that the Minister for Transport Infrastructure actually has talked up the notion that if you are coming from the country, there will be benefits for you here, because if you are going to Box Hill, it will only be one change to get off on the Suburban Rail Loop at Clayton and go around to Box Hill. I hate to tell the minister, but if you are going into the city to go to Box Hill now, it is still only one change—you just go to Flinders Street and you get off and come out. So some of the purported benefits that they are spruiking for Gippsland are wrong, and I have a genuine fear that the government ultimately will want to terminate Gippsland trains early, which is not acceptable, absolutely not acceptable. Gippsland passengers will not accept that. Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo do not accept it, and so neither should anyone else. So that is a project that we should be doing.

Again, my concern is about the capital question. There are so many projects in my electorate or across Gippsland that will desperately need funding in years to come. A Traralgon bypass has been on the agenda for 25, 30 years and yet continues to stall. That is going to be—who knows—$400 million or $500 million for a full bypass of Traralgon, but it needs to be done. The Leongatha heavy vehicle alternative route—I have been talking about that this week in here and in the media—is probably only a $15 million project if you do it properly, but we cannot even get planning money for it at this stage. Sale rail services—you know, East Gippsland and Wellington have got a population of about 80 000, 90 000 people. Ballarat and Bendigo have about 100 000 people, yet they have got 19 and 17 services a day. We have got three—three services a day—to Sale from Melbourne. So additional services we need.

South Gippsland Highway is a basket case, as I said yesterday—and the Minister for Roads and Road Safety is here again, so I will repeat it. South Gippsland Highway and access to Wilsons Prom—Meeniyan-Promontory Road and Foster-Promontory Road: these are the sorts of things that we could be spending money on. And it still continues to come up that the previous Labor government promised to return rail to Leongatha. It was going to cost $70 million, and they said that was too expensive. This is now a $100 billion-plus project, and those small but really important projects in my electorate and right around regional Victoria, I fear, will just continually get overlooked because of this project.

It is interesting too. I had a briefing with Infrastructure Victoria just recently on their most recent report, organised by Mr Davis in the other place. Of course Infrastructure Victoria never mentioned this project. This is the body that the Premier set up. He stood right there in the box opposite me and told this Parliament, ‘We’re going to take the politics out of infrastructure’. And I laughed when the very first Infrastructure Victoria report came out recommending congestion tolls, congestion taxes. I think it came out at about 8 o’clock, and it was ruled out by about half past 8. So that is really taking the politics out of infrastructure. And yet here we have the biggest infrastructure project the country has ever seen, let alone the state, and it has not been recommended by Infrastructure Victoria, so I find the government’s justifications for this project pretty amusing.

This project, as I said, in principle would be good, but the world has changed. I think the population of Melbourne will change. We need to have more focus on regional Victoria and decentralising our state. This project is not going to help, because it is going to suck up capital for decades and decades to come. Regional Victoria will miss out. That is not something I am prepared to accept, so I support the reasoned amendment put and I do not support this project.

Mr CARROLL (Niddrie—Minister for Public Transport, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (17:33): It is my pleasure to rise and make a contribution on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. At the outset can I congratulate the Minister for Transport Infrastructure for introducing this bill to the Parliament but also for the work she has done with the Suburban Rail Loop Authority and Frankie Carroll—no relation. This project is really, really important for Victoria’s future, and it is about building for the next generation and the next generation and the generation after that. Building transportation infrastructure is at its core about building environments for the future and for communities of the future. This is the most ambitious public transport project that this state and indeed this country have seen for decades, and it will transform in future how we move around the state.

One of the books I have been reading—one of a couple of books since I became the Minister for Public Transport—has been Paul Mees’s book Transport for Suburbia. I should comment too that I did not know until recently that he was a lawyer before he became essentially a transport advocate and transport planner, and I have come to realise that quite a few good lawyers have made the transition from practising law to transport policy, including Janette Sadik-Khan in New York. But the premise of Paul Mees’s book is all about having public transport go where the motor vehicles go—that ease of transportation—and that it is not always about how many people work or live there; it is about the ease of commuting, the opportunity for everyday Victorians and Australians living in outer suburbia to have public transport within their reach. And that is what this bill sets up. It is a focus on essentially land use planning and making sure that we can actually get on with delivering this most vital project for Victoria’s future.

We do know that density, particularly around residential areas, does arouse many, many strong emotions. But low-density suburbs, particularly those that have often lacked that train infrastructure, the rail infrastructure, should have every opportunity to access world-class transportation infrastructure. I noticed Mr Mees, in his book, talked about where he grew up, in Vermont South, essentially—

Mr Angus interjected.

Mr CARROLL: yes, Neighbours territory and outer suburbia—and what it means to have world’s best access to public transport. I grew up in Airport West, and I take issue with the lead speaker on the other side saying this does nothing for the western suburbs. This will be a game changer, as is airport rail, as is the West Gate Tunnel and as is the next-generation tram project that we are now building the new facility in Maidstone for. This will transform not only, in the beginning, the south-east, this will transform lives and communities right around this great state of ours. And it needs to because if you do look at the figures, Victoria’s population is scheduled to grow and surpass New South Wales’s. We are one day going to be a city of 9 million, the same size as London. Anyone who has been to London has got to see, above and beyond, that they have more than a hub-and-spoke rail system. Their public transport goes right out into the suburbs.

The Andrews Labor government, in many respects complementing the level crossing removal program—where we are scheduled, way past everyone’s expectation, to get on and deliver 85—are almost building a city underpass now with the level crossing removals and the Metro Tunnel. Add that to the Suburban Rail Loop and Melbourne will be, on a world scale, one of the most outstanding cities to get around on public transport. And why shouldn’t we be? Because it is good for the environment, it is good for people that live near it and it has many different social benefits.

Not one speaker from the opposition yet has caught on that coming through the pandemic we are seeing more movement on public transport in our suburbs than we are in the CBD. You only have to look at the Productivity Commission report that has come out in the past 24 hours that suggests that our suburbs will continue to grow strongly and that work from home will continue to deliver and grow momentum, hence why a project like the Suburban Rail Loop that is delivering suburban railway lines and extending them right around our great state is so important. I get the figures on public transport every day, and our buses and our trams in the outer suburbs have been among the most resilient forms of public transport through the pandemic compared to the metro rail, and that is something that transport planners have to—I have to—think of and navigate as we continue to make investments and continue to look at different policy ideas that we can bring to the table.

I also wanted to take up the reasoned amendment from the opposition. It does not make a lot of sense at all. In particular, if you actually read the second-reading speech or you look at the statement of compatibility with the human rights charter, there are judicial review processes. Above all else there is a thing called a state election. At the last election, overwhelmingly the public endorsed this project. I suspect from today—showing how we are so committed and so serious on this project—they will continue to endorse it in November next year. If there is a change of federal government to a party that believes in climate change—I have got the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change right next to me—this project gets more cars off city streets, and that is what it is about. At the last election federal Labor committed a significant proportion of funds to this project, and I think an Albanese Labor government would do the same. This is because it is game-changing infrastructure that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

I did want to talk a bit about equity because this project is also about equity. The Minister for Transport Infrastructure herself spent a lot of time in her second-reading speech talking about equity because we know it will be about jobs. But you think also about the university precincts, as an alumnus of La Trobe University, the Parliamentary Secretary for Transport, the member for Eltham, spoke about. La Trobe University and Monash University are so excited. Tomorrow I will actually be meeting with the vice-chancellor of Victoria University, and no doubt we will talk about transport planning, airport rail and suburban rail and what it all means for Victoria University. We know our university sector is doing it tough at the moment. We know that Melbourne, a bit like Boston, is known for its universities. You think of a world-class rail system hooking up our universities, our tertiary sectors—it is just a first-class project that the Andrews Labor government should be very, very proud of. When we talk about equity too, it is about ensuring the public transport options that our frontline workforce, our students and everyday Victorians in the outer suburbs should have access to.

One thing I do take issue with too is the lead speaker for the opposition—I could not believe this, but she quoted the amount of Uber trips you could do if you put this funding towards Ubers. I mean, it beggars belief. She is talking about Ubers on the suburban rail project. This is all about moving away from car dependency to public transport. I am still getting over the contribution that the shadow minister made.

We do know the Suburban Rail Loop has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the Victorian public. We know this project gives certainty from a planning and land-use perspective, with lots of consultation and lots of judicial review processes embedded in the legislation. This is about getting on and delivering what Victorians so resoundingly voted in and asked for last time, a 21st-century model for transport for outer suburbia. You are going to hear from my colleagues on this side of the chamber talk about the differences that it makes in their communities, and we cannot wait to get on with this project.

I just want to close by saying well done to the transport infrastructure minister, to the Premier as well and to all the members that led this policy, took it to an election and got it resoundingly supported, and this is why it is so important that we are putting this legislation through the Parliament. Let us have some debate. Let us have some real ideas from the opposition. I have been the public transport minister for some time now, and I still am yet to get any questions from the opposition, because we are making world-class transportation infrastructure— (Time expired)

Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (17:43): I rise this afternoon to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. I note that the main purposes of the bill are to establish the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, to confer on the authority the appropriate functions and powers for the authority to plan and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop and development associated with the Suburban Rail Loop and to enable the authority to operate or manage the operation of the Suburban Rail Loop or to manage development associated with the Suburban Rail Loop. We know that it is a very weighty tome, some 204 pages—very weighty in size, and extraordinarily weighty in terms of potential cost. And that is what I particularly want to focus a lot of my commentary on this afternoon.

I want to start off by looking a little bit at the background of this particular project. I think it is well summarised in an interesting article that appeared in the SundayAge on 15 August 2021, just a few weeks ago, a special report. It was entitled ‘Left out of the loop on suburban rail plan’, and I thought that it went through very well some of the background in relation to this particular project, particularly the fact that it traced back to where this project came from. I quote from the article. It says:

The Sunday Age has traced the likely genesis of the loop to a conversation between three men in the business-class galley of a flight to Hong Kong in 2015.

Well, isn’t that a marvellous way to set up the infrastructure of this once great state here in Victoria, that it is done on an international flight by three blokes in the galley. It goes on:

What began as three friends sharing a fine bottle of wine on an Airbus A330 became a discussion about the future shape of Melbourne …

Unbelievable. The article starts off talking about the secrecy in relation to it. I will quote again from the article. It says:

… the senior transport bureaucrat responsible for its design was legally gagged from telling his boss about it.

It goes on:

… board members of the government agency responsible for its delivery were unaware of it until the Premier’s announcement before the 2018 election.

The Premier:

… kept all but a handful of ministers in the dark about the 90-kilometre train line.

It goes on:

… troubling questions hang over the project.

Its timelines, budgets and ambitions are still not clearly spelled out … the cost is reckoned to finally land at double the $50 billion estimate.

We can see there what an extraordinary start there was to this particular project. This article, as I said, encapsulates a lot of the key issues and concerns rather well. It talks about how basically the whole background to it is a Labor mates project. It goes on:

Among the inner circle were Labor’s go-to board director James MacKenzie, former Labor political adviser Tom Considine and a friend of Andrews, then PricewaterhouseCoopers chief Luke Sayers.

It goes on:

Transport experts question whether the loop is the best way to spend transport dollars. Its timelines, budgets and ambitions are even now not clearly spelled out.

And it just goes on and on. It talks about the fact that the project was concealed from the departmental secretary who was responsible. It goes on to talk about the surprise in the underlings and indeed some of the more senior members of the public service when they found out about this particular project. It goes on, and let me quote this section:

Even inside the Andrews government, information about what was being cooked up in the PwC tower was known to only a handful of ministers.

A $50 billion project was kept secret through a whole range of different provisions, making people sign on in terms of non-disclosure agreements and all sorts of situations like that. It goes on further and talks about various aspects of the project:

Is it a precinct project or a transport project?

That is a pretty good question there. It talks about:

… the authority, which has since hired seven former Andrews government ministerial advisers or DPC staff.

I would really encourage all members in this place and all Victorians to read this article. I think it is most insightful. It goes on:

It’s very difficult to think of a comparable example of a project of this scale that has been announced with virtually no public discussion, no analysis, no preliminary deliberations or planning documentation … What level of demand will there be for the Suburban Rail Loop? That’s a pretty fundamental question.

We can see here, I think, a classic example of the Labor Party and what they do. They say, ‘Ready, fire, aim’. We have got a situation where the project has been announced and it is now up to the people left holding the baby, so to speak, in terms of the project to somehow make it work, regardless of whether it is sensible or whether it is financially responsible or anything else to do with it. There has been a whole range of newspaper articles in relation to this, and again I think this provides a lot of important information for the community here in Victoria. We can see in the Herald Sun on Friday, 20 August 2021, an article there says:

There is no price for the second stage, but it’s likely to cost more than stage 1 …

It goes on and talks about a whole range of deficiencies and other potential major issues with the project. It concludes by saying:

“We know Labor’s costings are always wrong, they are always underestimating the true cost,” he said.

“Like with the Metro and the West Gate Tunnel, they are routinely billions of dollars out.”

That is the key point that I want to bring out today: the fact that we know that Labor cannot manage money. We know that there are countless documented examples. I can look at my list of the top 26 examples of Labor budget blowouts on infrastructure projects. Of those 26, 20 of them are Department of Transport projects, and they have blown out by tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and in some cases billions of dollars. So we know that this is going to be an absolute financial disaster for all Victorians.

We can see there are lots of other newspaper articles. There was a good one, also an opinion piece, by Matt Johnston in the Herald Sun on Friday, 20 August 2021. I will quote from it. He says:

Now it seems like money is make-believe; that we’re playing a giant game of Monopoly with Treasurer Tim Pallas as Rich Uncle Pennybags doling out $200 as we pass Go.

And it just quotes it rather well. It goes on. Lots of other experts have queried the costings, and there was a great article in the Age on Tuesday, 24 August, which I commend to members and all Victorians. I quote from that as well. It says:

The Andrews government’s flagship Suburban Rail Loop is not good value for money, experts warn, as questions are raised over the way the government calculated the multibillion-dollar project’s benefit-to-cost ratio.

It goes on. I have not got time to go through all that, but I just want to come to a conclusion by talking about the councils and some of the concerns from the councils. I note that the mayor of the City of Whitehorse, which is one of the municipalities within my district, Andrew Munroe, has come out publicly, and I will quote from him. He says:

However we are concerned that the SRL Bill, which puts forward broad ranging powers, has the potential to take power from councils without proper scrutiny or consideration of the local impacts …

That was in the Herald Sun on Wednesday, 15 September—yesterday.

I note that the authority has got the ability to take over the controls within a 1600-metre radius of where they are going to be operating, and I was looking at that before because that is an extraordinarily large area. You might be surprised to know, but that 1600-metre radius results in an area of 804 hectares. That is nearly 2000 acres in the old language, so that is a massive area that this authority is going to have responsibility and control over in suburbia. So I think of the City of Whitehorse and I think of the City of Monash, and they are going to be subject to this.

Just in conclusion I note that the Auditor-General has tabled two reports in the last few weeks, both in August—the Major Infrastructure Program Delivery Capability report and the Integrated Transport Planning report—which both identified a range of deficiencies in the way the department manages projects and give anybody looking in any detail at this project absolutely no comfort that this project can be managed and run efficiently and effectively. I support the member for Ripon’s reasoned amendment which she has proposed. Much more work needs to go into this. The reasoned amendment outlines the concerns that we have, and that is what I support.

Mr FREGON (Mount Waverley) (17:53): I rise with exuberance on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021, and I have shown and stated my excitement about this project ad nauseam. I would say it and the announcement of it greatly assisted my presence in this house. It is not just about the infrastructure that you build as a government, it is about the change that it makes to the people you build it for—and public transport is about giving access to everyone. It is inclusive, but it is also transformative. It can play a pivotal role in improving urban life for everybody, and that is exactly what the Suburban Rail Loop will deliver.

Now, I can remember the campaign trail leading up to the 2018 election. It was morning in what would have been late October, from memory, and I was at the Mount Waverley train station doing as we do—talking to people at the train station in the morning on their way into work. I got a call from the campaign team informing me that there was going to be an announcement—I believe it was in Box Hill, and I think you were there, member for Burwood—and it was explained to me what this announcement, which was the Suburban Rail Loop, was.

I had to pick my jaw up off the asphalt, because I did not ever think—I had just not conceived—that we would actually do such a thing as this project. To put it in context, one of the previous members was talking about London. I was in Tokyo in 1984, which is quite a while ago, and obviously the Tokyo transit system is world class. London, again, is world class. Big cities a lot bigger than ours, especially back then, but big cities, world-class metro systems—Paris, Beijing. As the Minister for Public Transport rightly said, we are becoming a city of towards 9 million people. We are growing, and we are going to grow, and we cannot expect and do not expect that we will all grow within the CBD.

One of the previous members was referring to our COVID period and how that will affect our growth. There are some aspects of what he was saying that are right. I think some people will look at moving to different areas. Working remotely will have an effect. There will be changes. But we will grow across the board. The Monash area, which my electorate of Mount Waverley is in, is already the second-biggest employer outside the CBD, and it will continue to grow. Having rail connections—and we are just talking about the first eastern part from Mordialloc to Clayton to Monash to Glen Waverley to Burwood to Box Hill—is transformative. It will affect all of us—especially in the eastern area when we are talking about that part—every day.

I have said before in this house that I grew up in Ferntree Gully, and the member for Ferntree Gully is in the house, on the Belgrave-Lilydale line. I think parts of that date back to before the 20th century, so 18-something or other. I reckon that if you started to cost the Belgrave-Lilydale line in today’s money, if you had to buy all that land, it would be a little bit expensive. I appreciate that members on the other side talk about the cost, because this is a large cost. But that is not a reason not to do it. As has been said before, there is a cost to not building it too. There is a cost to keeping us locked into the spokes of our public transport system. This unlocks that, and yes, it will take a long time, and yes, it is expensive, but it is a commitment that we took to the Victorian people and to the people especially in the eastern suburbs and said, ‘This is the idea. This is the vision. This is what we will do’.

I spoke to countless people not just that morning in Mount Waverley but throughout the whole campaign and since—doorknocking in Glen Waverley and Mount Waverley, talking to people—and occasionally you find someone who has not heard about it. There are not that many of them, but there are some. I remember there was one guy who was a truck driver. I was talking to him—this was probably in June last year before lockdowns. I said, ‘Have you heard about the Suburban Rail Loop?’. He said, ‘No, I haven’t heard about it’. So I explained it to him. ‘This is what we are looking to do’. I told him it is going to take decades to do the whole thing and it is going to cost a lot of money. But he as a truck driver immediately just went to, ‘Yes, that’s a good idea’. And that was it. And that is the response that I get from so many people, that they see the inherent value of this. The bill we have in front of us today establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, and it confers on that authority powers that other members have spoken about. But what this bill also does is it is another step along the way that shows the people of Victoria and the people in my electorate of Mount Waverley that we are doing what we said we would do, and that is an important thing that we need to continue doing and we are continuing to do.

I listened to the previous member speak. I sat here to listen to them because it is so monumental as a project that it is important that we all have our say. I appreciate that we are already at 6 o’clock, so there is not that much time left in the day. I am sure we will get more chances to speak about this project as it goes on. But I heard their arguments, and what I did not hear is ‘We support it’ or ‘We don’t support it’. I heard ‘Well, I’m sort of in favour of it, but, but, but, but, but, but, but’. In fact if I remember correctly, the lead opposition speaker, the member for Ripon, started her address with ‘We don’t oppose this bill’. She finished her address with, ‘But we’re going to put in a reasoned amendment that says everything after the word “That” goes away’. I would say that means you are opposing the bill. To that point, on the reasoned amendment, there is a committee that already exists, but I will let others speak to that.

We have a choice as Victorians. We had a choice in 2018, and we chose this project. Certainly those that are affected by the first stage seem to have chosen it quite a lot. They see the value of it. I believe even Mr Davis in the other place sent a letter out to people informing them that the Suburban Rail Loop would actually increase the price of their property. He made some other arguments that I do not agree with, but I have actually used Mr Davis’s letter. I had one group of people come to us who were concerned that this might have an adverse effect on the price of their property, and I said, ‘Well, actually the opposition thinks that it’s going to go up, and I think they’re probably right’. People want this. People in my electorate want this, and I definitely want this. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (18:03): I thought the member for Mount Waverley had actually been here long enough to appreciate that a reasoned amendment can be moved and in the event that it does not succeed, then the position can be not opposed. That is what the member for Ripon made very clear to start with. We would prefer the reasoned amendment. We would prefer the public works committee to get up. I understand that the support of the government is of course going to happen, but in the unlikely event that the government does not support that, then we will not be opposing the bill.

The second point in the debate that I just wanted to come to before I speak on the bill itself is the member for Eltham, in opening for the government, made an interesting claim that John Cain was the man responsible for the underground rail loop in Melbourne—interesting to claim. The trouble with that argument is that the first sod was actually turned in 1971. For those who do not have memories quite as long as mine, Henry Bolte was the Premier in 1971. Most of the construction occurred under Premier Hamer and it was pretty much finalised under Premier Thompson. I cannot remember whether John Cain opened it or not; he may well have.

Mr Pearson: Yes, Flagstaff in 1985.

Mr MORRIS: Okay, the minister at the table says he did get to open it. But he certainly did not initiate it, so let me just make that clear.

As others have said, this bill establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. It is pretty stock standard, and it enables the authority to operate and to manage the operation of the line. Where the bill gets interesting I think is here. Without going into the detail of the bill, and just referring to the final few words of the long title, the bill will ‘manage development associated with the Suburban Rail Loop’—manage development associated with the Suburban Rail Loop. So does this mean that the government is going to be acting as a developer? Because if that is the case—there are some issues with the project itself, and I will certainly come to those—and if this bill is intended to facilitate turning the government of Victoria into a land development corporation through the vehicle of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, then that is problematic.

The second point on that issue is around—it might be part 5 of the bill—the way the area affected by the project is defined. Basically it is a declared area or an area declared by the authority or the relevant minister, which effectively gives the authority planning powers. Local councils and local communities can potentially be and are likely to be totally sidelined by this bill. We saw a media release on 2 September talking about how communities are to play a key role in the Suburban Rail Loop. The fact is nothing could be further from the truth. Local municipalities are being sidelined, and we are talking about key areas. If we take just one example, take Box Hill. If the City of Whitehorse is excluded from having control over planning in the vicinity of this development, then the community is totally excluded. Certainly there is a need to work together. You need to have the opportunity to get that synergy, but to have council sidelined the way that is proposed in this bill is absolutely disgraceful.

The next point I want to make is: why are we being rushed? The bill was second read last Wednesday—Wednesday of last week. A bit over seven days later it is going to the guillotine at 7.30 tonight. The house will have had, if we debate this bill until the end—and I do not know what the government’s intentions are, but if we do—less than 3 hours of debate on a bill for a project of such significance that it, in the words of the government, dwarfs anything else that the state has ever done. I have got to say when you look at other major infrastructure projects—Snowy Hydro, for example—what we get in terms of bang for our buck in this bill is pretty damn limited.

Now, we know the government has form on major projects. We know they have got form on debt blowing out, and I thought the Auditor-General’s recent report Integrated Transport Planning was relevant to this debate. The report is on the Victorian integrated transport plan, and effectively the Auditor-General found there was not one. He found that there were 11 published documents plus 21 others and that the government relied on that ragtag documentation and called it an integrated transport plan. In fact two of those documents are not yet complete. As I mentioned, 11 of them are published, the rest are held by government and not available to the community. So the fact is in terms of integrated transport planning the state has no plan. The Auditor-General found no whole-of-system approach and zero transparency, yet the government fronts up last week with this bill and wants to wave it through in a matter of hours when the Auditor-General has clearly indicated that the government has form.

Of course we also know that there is no independent advice. Infrastructure Victoria is simply a cheer squad for the government. They are not objectively identifying priorities. They are simply putting forward the views that are being transmitted to them. I know government members have consistently claimed that Infrastructure Victoria is independent, that it gives independent advice. But the fact is out of a board of seven, three are secretaries of departments: the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Secretary of the Department of Treasury and Finance and the Secretary of the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning—three men who work directly for the Premier. Now, you cannot tell me that they are going to give independent, public advice contrary to the wishes of the government. It just does not happen. So to suggest that the priorities stack up and that somehow this project fits in because Infrastructure Victoria thinks it is okay is absolutely false.

The next point I want to make is that the project is hugely expensive. Is it justified? Is it going to be $50 billion? Is it going to be $100 billion? It is going to be $150 billion? We do not know—and, as I said, there is no independent advice, there is no prioritisation. Now, I have said repeatedly in this chamber I have no problem at all borrowing money to invest in infrastructure. But it has got to stack up, it has got to provide value for money. It has got to be needed, it has got to either add to the economic capacity of our state or add to the livability of the state. It has got to be needed, and it has got to be near the top of the pipeline, which we do not know in this case. And it has got to be procured effectively. Obviously procurement is still to come, but there is absolutely no evidence that this project clears any of those other hurdles at all.

Now, we have got this massive business case. Others have referred to it. Two points I want to make just very simply on this. It says clearly in the key findings document that the Suburban Rail Loop comprises three sections, yet the advice prepared is prepared for two of the three sections. Why is that? I think the member for Ripon referred to the issue of what stacks up and what does not. But you cannot have a complete business case which does not identify what are clearly two separate but connected projects. Does each of them stack up?

The second point I want to make on this is the discount rate. The government says quite up-front in this document on page 293 that if you used the normal 7 per cent discount rate it would not stack up. So they have dropped the discount rate to 4 per cent. Wonderful—suddenly it stacks up. It does not. Simply because you fudged the numbers does not mean it is right. It means you fudged the numbers. It is marginal at best on 4 per cent. It is going to be way out of the ballpark on 7 per cent. So there are some significant issues with this proposal. That in fact is why the member for Ripon has proposed this reasoned amendment, why the opposition is proposing a public works committee—because we desperately need something to oversight all public works.

We are seeing enormous cost overruns. We had the capex figures withheld from the late budget last year. We saw them this year and—surprise, surprise!—some had blown out by 100 per cent, and the total of the major projects had blown out by over 100 per cent. We have got grossly inadequate business cases, and the one I have just referred to is clearly one of those. We have seen totally inadequate planning. The Auditor-General has confirmed that. We have seen a total lack of transparency. Again, the Auditor-General has confirmed that. We need parliamentary oversight as an absolute prerequisite for this project and we need parliamentary oversight for the other blown-out major projects the government has put forward.

Mr KENNEDY (Hawthorn) (18:13): I am pleased to contribute today to the debate on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. As a regular user of trams and trains, my contention will be that this bill provides the framework that is needed for what is a game changer in the provision of public services right across Melbourne and that it will also transform the way Melburnians live and work. I would particularly like to make the point that I have probably travelled more tram kilometres and more train kilometres than this entire Parliament put together. When I grew up—it must have been prophetic—I did not learn to drive a car. I have existed entirely on public transport, and I am very proud of that fact now, at my ripe old age. So I know the value of transport.

I think often a lot of people talk about it, but they hardly ever get a train or they hardly get a tram. I certainly do not see them on the Belgrave line. I just think we underestimate it. When I came down from Sydney in my late 20s and lived in Ivanhoe, I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, the trains are pretty good’—and away we went. But then when I moved to Hawthorn, I discovered that there was this third line that exists, and I thought, ‘What foresight is that, how much would that have cost in those days?’. Well, now, this third line runs an express service from Lilydale and from Belgrave right through. Sadly it goes through Hawthorn, does not stop. But what an impressive arrangement that we are witnessing here on that line and I understand on other lines that have this so-called third line down the middle. I offer that as a classic example of where people would have had foresight in terms of the money, the cost and thinking it through, and now we have seen the benefits of that third line. I think what we are dealing with here is not unlike that sort of adventure.

Before going on to some of the details, I would like to just say that it is all very well for the opposition to come up with all these various alternatives. The member for Gippsland South, for example, thought that a train to Sale—surprise, surprise—would be a better investment and so on and so forth. We all have our own ideas of what is a better investment, and often it is fairly close to home. I suppose I am biased therefore, being in Hawthorn. I think we have got to really think carefully before we just jump onto ‘It’ll cost too much’ and all that sort of thing, because sometimes when we have that sort of cost talk, we are talking as though we are the treasurer of a local tea club. These are really big projects, and an enormous amount of work has gone into their cost and into the cost benefit of them. I think we can see that in the documentation that we have been given.

I also worry when people throw around words like ‘Labor mates’. I have often thought a good film would be Labor Mates and Liberal Mates. It could be a musical; I would enjoy it. But I think it is just a bit too easy always to be using that sort of phrase—‘so-and-so’s mates’ and so on—and I just think we have got to get away from that.

The member for Forest Hill offered what he thought was a truism: ‘We know Labor figures are always wrong’. He was quoting there from some learned chap in the Age. Well, blow me down. What do you do about that? The answer is: you cannot just trade in generalisations. You have got to be able to offer hard data and really get in amongst it.

I also was concerned—this one is departing from my original prepared speech—at all this business about councils: ‘Councils shouldn’t be rushed’. Some councils are famous as blockers. They are famous in that, if it is not their political complexion in the current state government, they just oppose everything or go slow or there are all these problems et cetera and so forth. We have got to recognise that some great work is done by some councils and that for other councils it depends on what flavour of government is there, whether it is Labor or Liberal in government. If it is not one or the other, they can certainly be caught out on go-slow and game playing and all that sort of stuff. I think it is fair enough to make sure that there is respect on both sides between government departments and council officers and so on. I certainly think that is the case. But I do not think that can wag the dog in this. This is bigger than that. This is bigger than a few bruised egos in a council and a few bruised egos in a government; it is much bigger than the bruised ego business, I think.

I want to also just say that I think we have got to recognise the importance of transport. The other side, for example, relates very strongly to notions of rugged individualism, which are things we used to hear about the United States, didn’t we, last century. If you are big on rugged individualism, you will be big on transport and you will be big on long-term planning of transport to make sure that it is effortless to go from home to work or home to entertainment or whatever it might be. And then there was all this talk about secrecy. Again, it is one of the ones you always seem to throw in in this place, I have noticed. If it is not ‘Labor mates’, it is ‘secrecy’, and if it is not that, then it is ‘Don’t rush’ or that sort of thing. Well, let us leave that as it is.

Let us go to the details of the bill—this exciting bill—in the small amount of time that I have got left now that I have dealt with some of the initial feelings of certain people. As a vital part of the implementation of the largest transport infrastructure project in Victoria’s history the government has determined to provide a robust structure to ensure the Suburban Rail Loop’s objectives in providing seamless travel around Melbourne are met. To that end the bill establishes, dare we say it again, the Suburban Rail Loop Authority with a principal purpose to plan and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop program and associated urban development and also enables the authority to operate and manage the operation of the Suburban Rail Loop. The bill provides for Suburban Rail Loop projects to be undertaken by the authority.

The bill will form a new principal act by defining the objects, functions and powers of the authority as well as defining rules and procedures within which the authority will operate. Set out in the bill is the governance structure for the authority, including its board, procedures, committees and the delegation of its functions, duties and powers. So you really just cannot be too tolerant of the people who say, ‘Oh, we don’t know what it’s about, we’ve got no idea, there’s no accountability, there’s nothing’—you know, on and on and on. In fact it is very highly organised—in prospect and, I am sure, in delivery as well.

Another aspect of the bill is that it provides for the authority to access powers under other acts. This will be done through the application of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to Suburban Rail Loop projects. The bill also makes related and consequential amendments to a range of other legislation, including the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and the Transport Integration Act 2010.

Finally, the bill also makes amendments to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act, particularly part 6 of that act. Additional powers in that facilitation act will be provided for in the bill that will be available to Suburban Rail Loop projects and other transport projects to which that act applies. So the aim of the bill is to facilitate the planning and delivery of the rail loop program, just to repeat.

The other thing that can be said in the short term is that it will be reshaping metropolitan Melbourne over decades through the creation of new employment and activity centres, delivering more jobs closer to where people live, as the Minister for Transport Infrastructure succinctly put it, by providing a critical transport connection between these key health, education and job precincts in our suburbs. I must say that it is a very exciting project. It is a big project. It will have to be carefully managed. There have to be in-built checks and balances, without a doubt. I think my only regret is that it is a 30- or 40-year program there and there is a chance I will not be there to be part of the cutting of ribbons and that sort of thing, but so be it. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (18:23): I also rise to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021, and I do so noting that the Suburban Rail Loop, as is currently planned, commences within the electoral district of Sandringham, which I have the great honour and privilege to represent in this place, at in fact the Sir William Fry Reserve, just next to Southland shopping centre, a Westfield shopping centre, there on the corner of Bay Road and Nepean Highway. I raise that because for me in addressing this bill today I do so not through the lens of other members who have addressed this bill to talk about the potential statewide benefits of this but through a particularly local lens and through the lens of a local member advocating on behalf of their community.

Members of my community were shocked to receive in their letterbox a missive coming from a state government department effectively announcing by letterbox drop the Suburban Rail Loop. They were shocked by that because they did not know the scope of the project; they did not know the impact it would have on the community. They did not know much about it at all other than what they received in their letterbox. And so what I undertook to do as a local member was to draw together members of my own community and to ask them what they thought about this and consult with them on the matter, something which, sadly, the state Labor government did not do prior to the announcement of the Suburban Rail Loop in the first place.

And in doing so I met with some 140-odd members of my local community via a Zoom call, and there were many questions that my community members raised, the majority of which I submitted on their behalf to the Minister for Transport Infrastructure and now Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop in a letter dated 23 October 2020. Over three pages I outlined roughly 30 questions, maybe more, that were asked on behalf of the community following that meeting that I had with local members of my community. Lo and behold, the response that we got back from the minister was disappointing. Needless to say, the claim made in the minister’s response, received on the fifth of the following month, 5 November 2020, was that by posing the questions on behalf of my community I in fact opposed the development of the Suburban Rail Loop, when in fact what I was doing was presenting to the minister and presenting to the government the questions—the genuine questions, the legitimate questions—of my community in relation to this project.

I am concerned about the clear inability of this government to explain this project in a way that can be understood by the community. In fact in its messaging the government has stated this project will connect every major railway line. Now, I wrote to my friend the Minister for Public Transport at the time, asking for clarification on how the government defined ‘major’, because the claim by the government was of course to ‘connect every major railway line’. Given that the Sandringham line as well as the Frankston line are in my district and the Suburban Rail Loop seeks to connect the Frankston line only, I was keen to understand what the government’s definition of ‘major’ was, as it omitted the Sandringham line from its planning. Of course I sought clarification about this, and the response was, well, less than adequate. The Minister for Public Transport wrote back to me on 4 March this year with lots of very useful information about timetabling and other such things and information about the Metro Tunnel and the creation of room for more passengers et cetera—but nothing which actually went to the substance of my question and my purpose in writing to him, which was to ask him a pretty basic question: what is the definition of a major train line? Once again my community was left in the dark and without a substantive answer to a pretty basic question.

I go on to the fact that my community has just come out of two pretty major rail developments at both the Mentone and Cheltenham stations, the removal of the level crossings—and thank goodness, through the course of a concerted community campaign, we were able to achieve rail-under-road solutions at both of those crossings. But if in fact the way that those projects were managed is an example of what we are in for with the Suburban Rail Loop, then it is less than adequate.

I think of Alan Cook, who is a local business owner in Cheltenham and owner of the Hot Bird, which is a charcoal chicken place and does great chicken and great chips. If you are ever in Cheltenham, get to it; I highly recommend it. Alan wrote to me when the Cheltenham level crossing works were being undertaken. He ended up with a bus stop permanently outside his shop after that project—a bus stop permanently outside his shop. He wrote to me and he said:

Why is there a standalone bus stop for a singular route which is only in use for 12 minutes a day?

Well, that is a very good question that Alan asked, which I posed to the government and which the government was not able to respond to me on. Well, if this is symptomatic of the way that the government chooses to manage major projects, then should this Suburban Rail Loop go ahead? We are in for a really big surprise.

Of course there is the matter of the lack of planning and the lack of a business case. The business case was effectively put together after the project was announced. Now, in my private sector experience, whenever we sought to spend any private sector dollars the first thing we did was figure out whether it was worthwhile to spend it, if there was a business case in fact to spend it. And what the government has done in this case is announce the project and then retrofit a business case to suit its purpose. Now, lo and behold, that business case says that it is a worthwhile project, but the same people charged with the delivery of the project are the people who undertook the business case to justify the project after the project was announced. Now, this would not fly in the private sector. It would not, but because it is the government, because it is the public sector, we apparently need to put it to one side and accept it. It is not the right way to do business, but it is the Labor way to do business, and we should do better.

Now, specifically on this lack of planning and the lack of a business case, where the Suburban Rail Loop is due to start is at the Sir William Fry Reserve. It is on the corner of Nepean Highway and Bay Road in my electorate, just down the road from the former Gas and Fuel land, some 6.3 hectares of state-owned land that this Labor government has earmarked for high-density high-rise development. Now, lo and behold, there is a value-capture piece to the Suburban Rail Loop, and at the Sir William Fry Reserve, which currently houses a very well used skate park with lots of green space and a natural amphitheatre as well—the home of the Kingston council’s carols by candlelight for many, many years—the Labor government want to slap this Suburban Rail Loop. On some estimates about 40 per cent of the existing Sir William Fry Reserve will be assumed by the Suburban Rail Loop development, therefore taking away further precious green space, further precious parkland, and taking away the regional home of a skate park from my community.

Now, of course, as you would expect me to do as a local member, I wrote to the government about this as well. I wrote to the Kingston council about this. The Kingston council are unclear about the effects specifically of this. In fact the then acting chief executive officer wrote to me, saying:

Council has highlighted the importance of the regional youth skate facility, an active youth precinct at Sir William Fry Reserve and is advocating for the SRLA to consider the impacts on existing uses within the reserve through the EES process.

The local government authority have no clue as to what the impact of the Suburban Rail Loop will have on our community, a lasting impact. Now, I am not opposed to major infrastructure projects—far from it—but there needs to be a process. There needs to be due process. There needs to be a proper process considered that takes on board the concerns of the community. When we are building generational projects—projects that will last for many, many decades ahead—we have one opportunity to get it right. My fear with this Suburban Rail Loop project is that a bunch of it has been retrofitted to suit a government announcement, a political announcement, and that is not good planning.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (18:33): It is a very great pleasure indeed to rise and speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. I have got lots to say. I got have lots to say about this, but I will start with the contribution from the lead speaker of the opposition, the member for Ripon. Now, I feel a bit sorry for the member for Ripon, to be honest. She has had better years, I think. She has been redistributed into a very difficult position for the next election. The prior opposition leader threw her under the bus with all that tinfoil hat nonsense, then—

Mr Riordan: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, just on relevance, the critiquing of the member for Ripon is not part of the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL), and I think people in glass houses probably should not throw stones about being relegated to certain spots. If you could just draw the member’s attention back to his task at hand. I know it is a very hard sell for him to say anything positive about this project, but it is his task this afternoon. He might get back to it.

Mr Pearson: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, I have been in the chamber now for about 35 minutes, but it has been a wideranging debate. We talked about John Cain. We have talked about Rupert Hamer. We talked about Henry Bolte. It has been a wide, expansive debate, and the member was merely making a comment about the member for Ripon’s reasoned amendment.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Suleyman): At this point I am ruling that there is no point of order, but I just remind members to continue to observe the rules. Thank you.

Mr FOWLES: Thank you very much, Acting Speaker. I offer no criticism of the member for Ripon. I merely say that recent circumstances explain why she is a bit down in the mouth in relation to this bill, the lack of enthusiasm for the project and the admission during her submission that she was slightly lost: being one of the two most senior women in the parliamentary Liberal Party, both of whom were demoted as a result of the recent shenanigans, seeing a bunch of blokes promoted—

Mr Riordan: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Burwood has lost his notes and he is instead insisting on his obsession with the member for Ripon. And while I can understand why he might have an obsession with the member for Ripon—she is a fine representative of her community, and there is a lot to talk about with her and her achievements in Ripon—I do not think Ripon has a lot to do with the Suburban Rail Loop. I know that the member may find it difficult to find positive things to talk about with this piece of legislation, but he is welcome to. We invite him to return to the topic at hand and to leave his imaginings about the member for Ripon to himself, and perhaps he can think about them later tonight when he is in the comfort of his own presence.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Suleyman): Thank you, member for Polwarth. As I indicated earlier on, at this stage I do not see a point of order, but it has been a wideranging debate. So, member for Burwood, please continue.

Mr FOWLES: Well, I am loath to provoke further obfuscation from those opposite, but I will say that there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this project from members of the opposition—a distinct lack of enthusiasm—as can be ascertained by their demeanour and their somewhat scattergun attacks on this bill and on the project which the bill clearly references. So with all the po-faced naysaying going on and lots of reference to ‘Oh, well, you know, if not this project, it needs to be assessed against other projects’, what I have not seen is one decent idea from those opposite—one idea, one even half-decent idea—about what they would do as an alternative. Because what we have is a growing city, what we have is the need to make sure that this growing city is accommodated and what we have is a complete paucity of suggestions from those opposite.

I can recall with absolute clarity the moment I found out about this project and, whilst I am prone to some exuberance, I was seriously excited. I was bouncing around in the kitchen, much to the chagrin of my wife, who simply did not understand what was going on at that point, because I had just been told about this. I was excited. I was Big Kev excited—I was polyester shirt Big Kev excited. The reason I was so excited was that this is a genuinely game-changing project. I was not excited particularly about the politics, although they fell out beautifully for those on this side of the house in the fullness of time. I was really, really excited about the visionary nature of the project, about the ability to cast one’s eyes, to lift our eyes, to the horizon and to look further into the future than any government has, any Victorian government has, in my lifetime—to actually look so far down the track as to actually have a view and a vision of this city and what it is going to look like not before the next election or even the election after that but actually casting generations hence.

As the Premier has said, he will not be the Premier who opens this project, but he will be darned if he is not the Premier who kicks it off, and that is why I am so delighted to be rising today to be speaking on a bill that establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. It is an unbelievable project. It is a project that is city changing and game changing. Do not take my word for it, take the word of all of those voters who so resoundingly endorsed this project at the 2018 election. If you look, in fact, along the Suburban Rail Loop, there were a number of seats that flipped from Liberal to Labor that line up with the Suburban Rail Loop line. So as I say, the project is visionary—it is what you need; you want governments thinking long term—but the politics fell out okay. I think it can be absolutely said that the good voters of Mount Waverley and the voters of Burwood and the voters of Box Hill all took a view about the completely benign policy platform that was being put forward by those opposite and the visionary policy platform—the forward-thinking policy platform and the game-changing policy platform—that was put by the Premier, and they endorsed it; they endorsed it in numbers.

I know from when the member for Mount Waverley and I were down at Jordanville station on many mornings during the course of the campaign that if there was one policy that resonated throughout the course of the 2018 campaign, if there was one policy that genuinely captured the imagination of our prospective constituents as they were then—and you do not see a great deal of this in modern politics—it was this one, and it was because it is a beauty. It is an absolute beauty. And, hey, the member for Gippsland South agrees with me; he says it is a good idea. The member for Sandringham got up and said, ‘I think it’s a good idea’. There are plenty of people who think it is a good idea, but only this side of the chamber has had the courage to actually convert it from idea to reality, to actually get cracking on delivering what will be a city-changing project.

Now, the member for Ripon has moved a reasoned amendment. She wants to bring back the Public Works Committee, a committee that was last a committee of this place in the early 1980s. I wonder what else we might be keen to bring back. Are we going to bring back the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works as well? Perhaps we will bring back the Gas and Fuel towers; we will get rid of Fed Square. We will bring back the horse and cart or bring back the member for Bulleen—hang on, they did that. Are we going to bring back the State Electricity Commission of Victoria perhaps? I might actually support that idea. Perhaps we can bring back all the schools that Jeff Kennett closed down, or all the hospitals. But in all seriousness, there exists a committee that does this: it is called the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, and it quite specifically looks at infrastructure, major projects and transport projects. It belies the truth of this reasoned amendment, which is that the Liberals have been caught flat-footed on it. They should have just endorsed it full-throatedly from day one. They have been trying to manage the politics of it ever since, and they have failed in that regard. They have failed in that regard absolutely.

In the limited time I have left—not least because of the outstanding filibuster work of those opposite during my speech—I want to talk a bit about a few hypothetical cases of constituents of mine. There is Sam the student. He lives in Surrey Hills and he currently gets the train to Richmond, then a second train to Huntingdale and then a bus to get to Monash University. That takes an hour from Surrey Hills—an hour. But with the SRL route in place it will be a little trip from Surrey Hills to Box Hill on the train, then you swap trains and you are out at Monash Uni in 25 minutes.

Bev from Burwood has got limited mobility and has regular medical appointments at the Monash Medical Centre. Currently she has to take the route 75 tram to Middleborough Road and then the 703 bus to the Monash Medical Centre, and she needs some assistance getting on high-floored trams—currently 55 minutes. The SRL route, a step-free trip—no steps required—from the Burwood SRL station to Clayton, would be 15 minutes. Gary from Glen Waverley works in Box Hill. The current route and duration is a 20-minute drive; that is what we are competing against. Well, the direct train trip from Glen Waverley to Box Hill will be just 10 minutes. These are just a few examples of why this project and this bill ought be supported.

Mr HIBBINS (Prahran) (18:43): I rise to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. This is a bill that will establish the Suburban Rail Loop Authority as a statutory authority to plan and deliver both the Suburban Rail Loop—the tunnel and the trains and the stations and what have you—and the surrounding precincts for development, which is obviously very critical to this project. It gives the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop and the government very significant planning powers when it comes to those precincts, and it also makes a number of changes to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 which will be in place for all major projects.

The Suburban Rail Loop, as everyone knows, is a massive train line, a massive tunnel, around the city due to be completed at some point around 2050 or what have you, costing between $50 billion and $100 billion—I think those are the estimates. The Greens certainly welcome significant investment in public transport and the aim of this project to create that polycentric city which is often talked about. This project certainly goes to this.

I will make a few points about the Suburban Rail Loop. Number one: the development of this project—this very, very expensive, very grand vision and project—must go alongside continuing, and in fact increasing, the investment within the current metropolitan train network. If this is going to be a train line that connects every other train line in the city or every major train line—and I take the note from, I think it was, the member for Sandringham that the Sandringham line should also be considered a major train line in the city—then no, we cannot ignore the existing network and the existing outdated, unreliable, ageing technology on those rail lines, because there is no point in having the big Suburban Rail Loop with its new automatic trains running at high frequency if the connecting trains are running every 20 minutes or half an hour during the day. That will add 40 minutes to your journey if you have to get on, if you are using one of the examples that the member for Burwood used. That is not going to get people on our trains, nor if there is overcrowding that is preventing people getting on the trains in the first place or if there is unreliability which means that people are not catching them. To get the best out of the Suburban Rail Loop the investment in our existing train lines is going to have to continue. This cannot be used as a reason or excuse to put off the significant investment that is still needed in our existing train network. I would estimate that there is probably about $50 billion-plus needed—probably similar to the initial stated cost of the Suburban Rail Loop—for upgrades that need to happen to the existing rail network over the next 10 years or so. This is for everything, including the high-capacity signalling across the entire network. Obviously it is being introduced on the Metro Tunnel. It does need to actually go across the entire network.

Melbourne Metro 2 again is a highly recommended project by a number of experts—Infrastructure Victoria, the City of Melbourne and a number of other advocates. Certainly this project cannot be delayed any longer. I know a lot of advocates have been pushing for it to start as soon as possible—for the planning to commence and for it to be completed by the end of the decade. That is a really critical project that will unlock capacity across the north and the west and feed into Fishermans Bend. That cannot be put off because of the Suburban Rail Loop. And of course you have got all the other sorts of electrifications and track duplications and more level crossing removals, which I am sure the government loves. They all need to continue. They go hand in hand—

Mr Pearson: Are you opposed to the level crossing removals?

Mr HIBBINS: What are you talking about? Are you even listening?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Suleyman): Order! Member for Prahran, through the Chair.

Mr HIBBINS: Acting Speaker, I just ask that if the member for Essendon is going to interject, he actually listen to what I am saying in the first place. So that is going to have to continue. I was actually saying that they are going to make sure that the level crossing removals continue, which I am sure the government loves. I am actually saying that they should continue.

Mr Pearson: Do you love them like we love them? That’s the question.

Mr HIBBINS: I do not think I could; that is a high standard to set, if I could love them as much as you guys. Send me an invite to the ribbon cutting or something like that and maybe I will. But look, they go hand in hand; a world-class metro goes hand in hand with the Suburban Rail Loop. High-frequency public transport will be needed to ensure that the Suburban Rail Loop actually realises its full potential. That is absolutely critically important.

I think a number of members have come in here and pointed out other public transport projects that they would like to see also being built, and it is a reasonable ask, I think, for communities, for residents, now to say, ‘Look, if you can spend $50 billion to $100 billion on the giant tunnel, well then, those small, easy-to-fix transport issues like your local pedestrian crossing, your tram stop that’s inaccessible to parents with prams or people with a disability or those separated bike lanes that so many people need in the communities—they need to be fixed, and they should be fixed, and they can’t be just left unfixed whilst we’ve got billions of dollars being spent elsewhere’. There are hundreds of smaller projects; I am sure all members could point to them. I think it is fair for people to say, ‘Look, if you can build this giant $50 billion to $100 billion tunnel, well then, our smaller projects’ needs should be fixed as well’.

Now, the development of the Suburban Rail Loop was, let us face it, not ideal—suboptimal, if you could talk in transport bureaucracy. It was developed without the Department of Transport in secret in the absence of an overarching transport plan. It just happened to run through a few marginal seats or the next set of long seats to get, which of course the member for Burwood said obviously voters were very excited about at the next election, and I am sure there were probably a few focus groups involved too. But I would just point out that in developing a project like this—again, as the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office and the Victorian Auditor-General pointed out—in the absence of a plan, again there is the risk of not getting the full benefits of the project itself, the Suburban Rail Loop itself. It must be viewed in the context of an entire statewide plan rather than just an individual project to ensure the full benefits of the Suburban Rail Loop are realised.

It risks of course the big risks of cost blowouts and what have you, and I am concerned that the government now in managing those is looking to de-scope some other projects or not get the best outcome that is possible to save money. That is a concern. And I will point out as well that we also need to look at the bigger picture, the wider picture, of what we are actually trying to achieve here. Is it cutting carbon emissions? Is it mode share—reducing the share of cars on the road? Is it reducing pollution? On the one hand we have got the Suburban Rail Loop. Yes, the statement is it is going to take hundreds of thousands of cars off the road, but then just up the road the North East Link is putting 100 000 cars back on the road—more cars. So which is it: are we taking cars off the road or are we putting cars on the road? And that is where a clear, established transport plan for the state with clear aims of mode share, of emissions reduction, of pollution reduction comes into play to make sure of the benefits and that there is a clear vision and it is not simply individual projects or an individual project but in fact an entire holistic vision for the state meeting those targets.

Now, one of the main parts of this bill is the declaration of land and related precincts as the Suburban Rail Loop planning areas, and this means that areas around the station will be under the control of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority. And this provides for the then Minister for Planning or the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop to be able to approve developments and what have you without the normal checks and balances of environmental assessment or planning laws, and of course this is of concern. Once an area is declared or proposed for development as a loop development area, it is all systems go and powers are handed to the planning minister and the Suburban Rail Loop minister. The authority will be exempt from normal notice and publication requirements that apply to the development of planning scheme amendments if it is deemed warranted or in the interests of Victoria or any part of Victoria to make such an exemption appropriate by the planning minister. And, as is already possible with major projects under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, these planning scheme amendments will not be subject to revocation by Parliament when they are tabled. Now, we are talking about very large areas of land across Melbourne that will be under the control of the minister without the need to go through thorough community engagement, local planning laws or environmental assessments, and this is of concern.

Certainly this is a significant project. The areas around the stations which are earmarked for developments are going to have significant and long-lasting effects on communities, and it is important that local planning laws and local communities are respected. There is no doubt that there is a trend now from this government to centralise planning authority to give themselves more powers over communities. We see it in this development facilitation program, which is happening under the cover of COVID, where the minister is calling in projects. We have got plans to reform the planning scheme to give the planning minister more power and to take away third-party rights for projects it has deemed of state significance. This is of concern, and it is certainly a trend of this government to centralise power when it comes to planning. I just point out to the government that if it wants more certainty, if it wants a more streamlined planning system, it should look at the planning system as a whole and move to one that is more prescriptive, a more mandated planning scheme that gives everyone confidence in terms of what can be developed where and the size and the scale rather than, quite frankly, the porous discretionary scheme that we have now, and not just exempt itself from local planning laws because it does not like them.

Another concern around this bill is the ability to compulsorily acquire land, including recreational land such as cultural, sporting and recreational or similar facilities, which are currently prohibited from acquisition. So there is a concern around the potential loss of valuable community green space. The bill also extends the application of the facilitation act to allow for the potential compulsory acquisition of land that is under native title, which is concerning. It also grants the loop project exemptions from protecting the Yarra River, just as other major projects are exempt. So it allows the project to function without the need to act consistently with any part of the Yarra strategic plan or the Yarra protection principles, which, again, undermines the work that is being done to protect the Yarra. This is, again, part of the pattern of the government wanting to bypass environmental laws and environmental protection when it comes to major projects.

There is in this bill expansion of the powers of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act for all projects. That is a range of measures, but the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act itself is something that the Greens opposed at the time when it was introduced back in 2009. It basically meant that 11 bits of environmental and planning law were subsumed by a new piece of legislation that gave the Premier and the Minister for Planning essentially absolute power. I mean, let us just look at the acts that were subsumed by this, or taken out of the equation: the Coastal Management Act 1995, the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987, the Environment Protection Act 1970, the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the Forests Act 1958, the Heritage Act 2017, the National Parks Act 1975, the Planning and Environment Act 1987, the Road Management Act 2004, the Water Act 1989 and the Wildlife Act 1975—and it is really telling that the government is now making changes to give itself more powers for major projects but it is not acting on the multiple independent recommendations that have occurred over the last decade to strengthen the environment effects laws for infrastructure.

We have some of the weakest environment effects laws in the country. They have been called a rubber stamp—a rubber stamp for destruction. They are not in there to protect the environment but actually just simply to facilitate development that could put the environment at risk. It does not necessarily mean stopping projects, although that should be the power of our environment effects laws. They should be strong laws to ensure that when we have infrastructure it is built in a way that does not significantly or negatively impact our environment. So, as recommended by parliamentary committees in this place and by the Auditor-General, we need stronger environment effects statements, environment effects laws, for major infrastructure. They need to be strengthened. They need to give, yes, powers to stop bad projects, but also when there are conditions put on projects, they need to be binding and with significant penalties for breaches. I think the best example is the North East Link. The EES made some recommendations, and the minister essentially ignored them, with a significant environmental impact upon that project. One would have thought that in embarking on the Big Build the government would have actually taken the time to improve those laws as recommended, as I have stated, many times over the past decade, but I think they have deliberately kept them weak whilst our urban nature dies a death by a thousand cuts.

So, look, we certainly support the Suburban Rail Loop. There is a real risk that it will not reach its full potential if it is developed in the absence of a statewide transport plan. It is critical that to reach its full potential the existing rail network investment continues and in fact increases. It cannot be used as an excuse not to invest in those other critical projects—the high-capacity signalling and the Melbourne Metro 2. In fact those projects are actually critical to making the Suburban Rail Loop work and reach its full potential. Victorians should rightly expect, if we can have the megaprojects like the Suburban Rail Loop, the North East Link, the West Gate Tunnel and the Melbourne Metro Tunnel, that those smaller scale neighbourhood improvements like the safer bike lines, like the accessible tram stops, like the safe pedestrian crossings, also should go ahead and should not be neglected any longer. Certainly I warn against the government’s further moves to concentrate planning authority and their moves to weaken environmental laws, and we will address those concerns further in the other place.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (19:00): I am very excited to rise today to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. This is an exciting bill for our community in Clarinda and for all Victorians. We have heard the Suburban Rail Loop is not just about delivering new infrastructure but about change that is made possible by the infrastructure. This project is critical, and today we have heard many stories of the change and the huge benefits this project will bring to Victoria and for my constituents in Clarinda. The SRL will deliver a new 90-kilometre orbital rail line connecting major metropolitan lines from the Frankston line to the Werribee line via the airport, and it will change how people move around Melbourne, transforming our public transport system and giving people better access to the growing employment, health and education precincts in our middle suburbs. The SRL will also support up to 2400 jobs during the construction of the project stage from Cheltenham to Melbourne Airport and will attract many thousands of jobs to the neighbourhoods associated with new train stations, creating more jobs closer to where people live and more access to these jobs if you live in the middle or outer suburbs or in regional Victoria.

As we know, Clarinda district will be home to a new transport super-hub at Clayton station, which will allow commuters to travel in four different directions, with direct access to key education, health and jobs precincts. Our station platform will sit about 18 metres below ground level. Passengers will be able to seamlessly interchange between the new SRL station and the existing metropolitan station without having to touch off. It is an amazing investment in our community, and the benefit that will flow to my constituents is very significant. Allow me to say that it is expected that by 2025 there will be more than 9000 train transfers a day at Clayton’s super-hub, so some 150 000 boardings at Clayton every day by 2036, comparable to Caulfield station in 2018.

Further, a journey between Cheltenham and Clayton will take less than 10 minutes, creating a direct connection to vital health and medical facilities, including Monash Medical Centre and of course to the Monash hospital. Continuing along the line, by 2035 a trip on SRL east between Cheltenham and Box Hill will take approximately 22 minutes, less than half of what it takes today to travel by public transport. These are really massive travel time savings. What is more, jobs in Clayton are expected to almost triple to around 55 500 by 2056. This is substantial. That is an amazing statistic and one that is extremely welcomed by my constituents, and this statistic is also an example of the ‘more jobs closer to home’ concept. Clayton is one of our city’s greatest multicultural and medical hubs, with its diversity of restaurants, cafes, grocery stores and general value.

This investment is a wonderful opportunity to contribute to, build and progress our community, so together with my friend the hardworking member for Oakleigh we have the privilege to co-chair the Clayton precinct reference group, working together with several local community representatives to provide input and feedback during planning and delivery of the Suburban Rail Loop east. And you can tell how excited the community representatives are to take part in the reference group. It is really important for me to have that meaningful engagement with the community across all elements of the delivery of the SRL. These include the proposed stabling facility in Heatherton, and I know that there is concern in our community about the potential impact of the facility. I will continue to engage with the community to make sure that there is dialogue and consultation so that any negative impacts are mitigated. The environment effects statement, the EES process, is also continuing, and I also made a submission to the draft EES scoping requirements. I encourage everyone to continue to engage in that process. I understand that the EES should be publicly exhibited in late 2021, this year, for anyone to make a submission, and an independent inquiry hearing should be conducted in early 2022.

I will also work with the community to deliver the sandbelt chain of parks, a 355-hectare chain of parks from Warrigal Road in Moorabbin to Braeside Park in Dingley Village, with walking and bike trails and adventure play areas for local kids. We have secured a funding commitment of $24.8 million and are very excited to see the project delivered for our local community. So it is an exciting time for our community and for Victoria.

Just over the weekend we also received the announcement that the Mordialloc Freeway will be ready to go for summer. More fantastic news is the freeway is 90 per cent completed, and its official opening should take place at the end of spring. The Mordialloc Freeway will save motorists more than 7 minutes in the morning peak and 10 minutes in the evening between the Dingley bypass and Springvale Road. Six freeway bridges have been built over Springvale, Governor, Lower Dandenong, Old Dandenong and Centre Dandenong roads and the Waterways wetlands. I am really excited, and it is just another example of this government getting on and getting things done. It is another example of a transport project that is going to change the way we move around, and it is great work by the team at Major Road Projects Victoria. A big thankyou to the team and the Honourable Minister for Transport Infrastructure.

I am also delighted to support this bill and to support the delivery of important projects for our community, namely, the Suburban Rail Loop. The objective of the bill is twofold. Firstly, the bill creates the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, which will plan for and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop program, and it provides the authority with the power it will need to fulfil its functions. The bill defines the objectives, the functions and the powers of the authority and defines the rules and procedures under which the authority will operate. The bill sets out the governance structures for the authority, including its board, procedures and committees and the delegations of its functions, duties and powers. As we know, the existing Suburban Rail Loop Authority has already been established, and this was done as an administrative office in the transport portfolio as an interim measure for the scoping and planning of the Suburban Rail Loop infrastructure and the associated present development that is proposed to occur over the next 20 years.

With the remaining time I just would like to take a quick snapshot of the business and investment case, which will allow me to revisit some of the major findings. There will be more than 430 000 passengers each day and more than 600 000 car trips daily off the road. It will cut travel time by 40 minutes on average for a one-way trip. There will be 24 000 jobs created in construction and more jobs closer to home in addition to jobs in the station precincts. But most importantly there is the $58.7 billion in economic, social and environmental benefit to the state. So you can see this is gigantic. It is once in a generation, and I am wholeheartedly excited with this project. The business and investment case demonstrates the significant benefit the Suburban Rail Loop program can deliver to the Victorian community.

Finally, the scoping and planning work that has been done to date has identified the planning and development functions and power that will be needed by the authority over the life cycle of the project. For that end, this work has informed the content of the bill. It was not possible to determine the content of the bill before this work was done. Lastly, I can say that the bill will make some of the new and modified project delivery powers developed for use on the SLR program available. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (19:11): I rise to make a contribution on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 on behalf of the Liberals and the National Party. The Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 facilitates the planning and delivery of the Suburban Rail Loop program and associated developments, as has been talked about by a range of people in this house. Can I say at the start that I actually support the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Ripon, which is:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government re-establishes a public works committee to oversee all major public works in Victoria, including the Suburban Rail Loop, given the massive cost overruns, serious time delays, contractual disputes and inadequate business cases for the Suburban Rail Loop and other major projects’.

I lament the standard of administration of major capital works projects in this state and particularly lament the job that the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, the former Minister for Major Projects, has done in Victoria. If you think about the cost overruns in this state of the major projects, something in the order of $23 billion, $23 000 million, and you think about what that would buy in our communities collectively—there are 88 members in this house, and most people could come into this house and say they want an upgrade of a health service in their electorate. They would definitely want some upgrades to some schools in their electorate. They would definitely want some sporting clubs to have some upgrades. $23 000 million would do a lot of upgrades in our communities. That is just what the overruns are on the projects; that is not the cost of the projects.

I think the member for Ripon’s reasoned amendment about re-establishing a public works committee across the chambers would be a good thing. If you think back to particularly the 1970s and 80s and then into the 90s, the executive government of this state actually answered to the Parliament—actually answered to the committees of the Parliament. We have found, particularly at the moment with the numbers that the Labor Party have in this house—and I accept they have large numbers in this house—they believe that the executive government does not have to answer to the Parliament. Parliament is a nuisance to the current government. They actually do not really want Parliament to sit. Tragically, with COVID, they have used COVID as an excuse for Parliament not to sit. They have had the numbers in the upper house, with the crossbenchers, to get the emergency powers that we have all seen used indiscriminately across our communities. As the old saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts even more, and we have effectively had a corruption of power in this state. The government believe they can do anything they want.

On this legislation before us, we all support major infrastructure projects and we all support improvements, whether they be in road projects in the state, whether they be metro or regional. We all support public transport projects, whether they be metro or regional, again. But we have seen that the fact is now that the government of the day, the Andrews government, do not believe they need business cases. They just believe they can make a press release, they can set up an authority—as in this case with this legislation—and that is enough. The executive government of the day actually should be answering to the Parliament. They should be bringing the information back to this Parliament. They should be accountable to this Parliament. The minister at the table, the Assistant Treasurer, has made a number of speeches about this issue—about how important the democracy of this state is—and it is important that we actually come back to that.

Again, we see with this legislation there are a lot of pages to it, but it is effectively enabling legislation where all the detail will be done by the authority and where things in the future will be done by regulation. But we do not actually know the detail of what is going to be spent on this project. I believe that we need the Parliament of Victoria to actually take control of the affairs of this state again and for the executive government to actually be accountable to the Parliament again in the future. That is why the establishment of a public works committee of this Parliament, I think, is an excellent idea. You would actually find there was some accountability again. You would actually get the bureaucrats that run this state coming and presenting to a committee under oath, and under oath is an important part.

Mr Pearson interjected.

Mr WALSH: I beg your pardon?

Mr Pearson interjected.

Mr WALSH: Again the minister at the table interjects.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Suleyman): Order!

Mr WALSH: I know, Acting Speaker, it is disorderly to take up interjections, but I actually do have to take up that interjection. The government of the day actually does not treat the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee with the respect it deserves. There are no answers at PAEC anymore. It is a bit like the Parliament. PAEC is almost a nuisance to the government. Because the government has the numbers, because with a group of crossbenchers they can basically get anything they want through the upper house, they believe they can do anything to Victoria irrespective of what the rest of the community think. They show no respect to the Parliament of Victoria. They show no respect to the committees of the Parliament. We have the deputy chair of PAEC sitting here at the table with me, and I think he would agree with me that you do not get answers at PAEC anymore. It is effectively filibustering because they actually do not want to give real answers, and when they come under pressure they just defer to a departmental official to give the answer, which is not an answer in any case. I think we need to re-establish that the executive government answers to the Parliament and the Parliament’s committees rather than the other way round.

When it comes to major projects in this state, from my recollection when we were in government, most projects are developed up on what is called a P50, so 50 per cent of probability being on cost, and once they have been agreed to in principle they go to a P90, where there is more rigour to the costings. If you look at the major projects in this state, they have been done on about a P-50 rather than a P+50 because they have blown out by so much.

I would like to spend a couple of moments talking about a project that was very dear to my heart and very dear to my community’s heart, which was the Murray Basin rail project. The government inherited the project from the Liberal-Nationals when they were in government. It was fully funded, yet somehow they have taken $440 million and made an absolute mess of the project. It is less than half done, it has not been done satisfactorily and all the money is gone. The minister of the day, the minister for major projects, has effectively said now, ‘I wash my hands of it. I am not going to have anything to do with this project in the future. It is a project for a future government to resolve’. That project would have delivered the upgrade and the standardisation of the freight networks of north and west Victoria. That would have been of huge benefit to the industries, the towns and the cities in that area if it had been done properly. But tragically it has not been.

In the short time that I have got left, can I just touch on the West Gate Tunnel Project. The West Gate Tunnel Project started out as a thought bubble back in 2014 about having a diversion off the freeway. It was not all that much money, but then it morphed into the West Gate Tunnel. From memory, I think it was supposed to be opened before the November 2022 election. I will be very surprised if that project even seriously gets started by the November 2022 election, because it has just dragged on for so long and it is now billions and billions of dollars over budget. It is an absolute disaster how that project has been managed.

And what we have before us today is a bill to set up an authority to spend $50 billion, $100 billion, $150 billion—who knows how much money?—into the future. Yes, we support major infrastructure projects in Victoria, but is this the project that we should be actually supporting at the moment when particularly in the COVID recovery we need so much money going to other issues to make sure that our communities are stronger and can recover from COVID and into the future? I support the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Ripon and would actually urge members on the other side of house to support that reasoned amendment, because if they actually believe in democracy, believe in the executive government being accountable to the Parliament, they will support that reasoned amendment to make sure there is actually proper scrutiny over major projects here in Victoria.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (19:21): It is an absolute pleasure to rise this afternoon and speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. We have heard from those prior to me that this bill will go a long way to ensuring that the Suburban Rail Loop Authority has the governance and legislation it needs to operate. This is an absolutely visionary project. Like many on this side of the house, I can talk about where I was when I first heard about it. Like the member for Burwood, I was in the kitchen and jumping up and down because in my community this means so much. But for Victoria this is obviously about a growing city—Melbourne, a city with charisma—and a growing state and changing the way we move around that city now and for the future.

We have heard a little bit about democracy in the last 5 minutes and where democracy is in this state; all you would have to do to find out where democracy is in this state and how healthy it is would be to go back to the last election, 24 November 2018, when this project was resoundingly endorsed by people in Victoria. It was popular for a reason, and that is because it is visionary. It is not too often you hear about a project where you will not have significant deadlines and openings and ribbon cuttings in three- or four-year government terms. This is one, as the Premier said, he is proud to start, but of course he will not be the one to cut the ribbon on this project.

We have heard a lot about what this means to other suburbs, and I will endorse this on behalf of Frankston fairly soon. I would just say, having visited Japan—quite recently, I guess, in a COVID sense—a few years ago, they have got the Shinkansen, or the bullet train. We have got the Snowy Hydro project in Sydney. We have got, just off the top of my head, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There is the San Francisco bridge. I am sure there were detractors for all of these visionary projects. I am sure there were people every day who talked them down and said, ‘We don’t want this’ or ‘There’s something wrong with it’ or ‘We won’t say we don’t want it, but we’re not sure about how to do it’. It is governments like this that actually get off that fence and commit to these things. These are things that if they were easy would have been done a long time before now.

Hearing what I have heard over the last couple of hours from the opposition, it just goes to show there is no vision there. The most vision they have got is in fact to recycle the old leader they had not long ago, who led them to the biggest thumping electorally they have ever had. This government does not work like that. This is a truly game-changing project. I guess let me put it like this: where are the people that talked down things like the Shinkansen bullet train and some of the other major projects in the world? We could talk about Victoria, we could talk about Australia nationally or we could talk about the world—where are those people? You do not hear about them, because no-one cares about them, because they did not have that vision and they did not have that aim to make their communities better.

This is a project where we are talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs along the network. It is a huge ring, and every major developed city in the world has something like this, an orbital ring of rail, whether it be Tokyo or whether it be London. I mean, spending time in Japan really opened my eyes to what we should be doing, and that is why it is such a pleasure to be talking about this today. We are the government that is the catalyst for this project and is getting this project started. In Japan of course they have got various levels of railway, but getting people in Japan to use a modern, effective railway that is on time is very, very easy. It is something that is used every single day. Some people obviously do not have cars, like in many cities we have talked about. That is because it is so handy, it is so easy, it is so well designed and it is so well built.

Now, from a Frankston perspective, I mean, selling this to the Frankston community at election time was pretty simple. People saw this as a no-brainer. So instead of, if you have to go to Monash University, having to go into the city to one of the city railway stations and taking a line back out, you basically get off and swap lines at Cheltenham station, get on the loop and away you go, from 2035 onwards for that section of line. It is really hard work to actually bring this kind of level of commitment to the community. Many, many people—and we have heard obvious examples of that today—do not understand where our community will be in 2035 or 2050. It is really hard to get your head around change. But we need to be creating those systems and putting those networks in place for that change now, because it is going to be too late soon.

You know, again, listening to some people on the other side of politics about this today, I thought that some of them would be embracing this, that some of them would be saying, ‘Yes, I want this kind of vision for Melbourne in the future; I want my kids, grandkids, whoever, to be able to work and live and play in a city that is this well-connected—to be able to live outside the city but still be so well connected with the city’. The way we do things is changing, and we need to change with that, and this project certainly does that. Indeed for I think it was probably 5 minutes there I heard a member of the opposition talking about Herald Sun articles—indeed reading Herald Sun articles. Well, if you want to be the person whose vision is just reading out Herald Sun articles and reciting what a reporter thinks should happen in the future, so be it. But the reporter’s job is really to report what has happened in the past usually. I will every day listen to my community, and my community endorse this to the hilt.

We have people every day on the peninsula—and I am not just talking 140 000 people in the Frankston local government area, I am talking about all the way down the peninsula—who will be able to get a train or a bus to Frankston station and be able to go east, to friends, to family, for education, to health precincts and to education precincts. And to hear people on this side of politics today talking about how exciting that is for their community is just so inspirational.

The people of Victoria spoke at the election. They resoundingly endorsed this. To hear people questioning democracy is just ridiculous. This is one of the largest projects that maybe Australia will ever see, and it will set our state up. Not just Melbourne—it will set our state up for the future, and this is long needed, well needed. I am sure there were people in the Hamer and Bolte years that did not like the fact that there was going to be a city loop, did not think it was necessary. ‘It’s too damn hard. We don’t want to do it.’ People find excuses everywhere not to do hard work, and, well, they usually sit over that side of the benches in my experience. This will be hard work, but it will provide work for many, many people too. There are many, many jobs in this. We are talking 430 000 passengers daily when complete, from Cheltenham all through Melbourne on rail. We are talking a business and investment case of nearly $58.7 billion in economic and social benefits as well as environmental benefits. A significant role will now be played by the Suburban Rail Loop in our post-COVID recovery, with up to 24 000 jobs being provided by this project alone.

And for those who stand up on the other side of politics and talk about how they believe that this side of politics cannot deliver projects, well, I reckon I can almost go to every one of your cities—at least in the metro area—every one of your seats, and look at a level crossing that has been taken away. Nearly 30 level crossings are gone. There is so much that this government is doing, and I look across and I cannot think of one thing at least in Frankston or Victoria that was visionary that actually happened during the term of government of those opposite. It is not surprising, then, to hear them talking this project down. This project enjoys the widespread support of people in Frankston and Victoria, and I commend this bill wholeheartedly to the house and cannot wait to see it start.

Following speeches incorporated in accordance with resolution of house of 14 September:

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate in support of the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021.

I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, her ministerial office and the Department of Transport for what they have done to bring this bill to the house. I would also like to thank them for the mountain of work that is going into building an orbital rail line through the suburbs of Melbourne. This line, crossing from the south to the east, through the north and into the west, will reshape how Victorians can travel, where we can live and work and what services we can all access.

I am very pleased to join my metro parliamentary colleagues in contributing on this bill, especially given how significant and transformative the Suburban Rail Loop will be for so many electorates and communities. This visionary public transport project is our state’s biggest infrastructure project, and I am glad that it will bring benefits close to home for so many of my colleagues.

We committed to the Suburban Rail Loop prior to the 2018 election, and I am proud that we are now getting on with delivering it. The benefits of this project are amazing—creating jobs, linking our hospitals and universities and making Melbourne a fundamentally more interconnected city. And this unprecedented undertaking is providing a huge economic stimulus to our state.

The Suburban Rail Loop is the largest infrastructure investment in Victorian history precisely because it will need to support Victorians for generations to come. Our state is projected to grow to a population of at least 11.2 million people by 2056, with around 9 million in the greater Melbourne area alone—comparable to the current size of the city of London.

The Suburban Rail Loop provides a unique opportunity for us to develop our transport infrastructure in a way which will support this future growth, as well as to shape exactly how and where our city will develop in the decades ahead. To maintain our much envied way of life we need to think ahead on exactly how we want Victoria to grow. This is the way to ensure Victorians will have the opportunity to work near to where they live, and it is also the way to safeguard the vibrancy and accessibility of our state’s capital.

The Andrews Labor government understands that we can’t just keep running more and more trains into the Melbourne CBD, further overloading an outdated hub-and-spoke train network which shuttles all traffic towards the city loop. The type of transformative investment which the Suburban Rail Loop embodies will instead focus on, and even enhance, the character and the functionality of local communities so that they may continue to be safe, vibrant and attractive neighbourhoods as Melbourne’s population grows. We are working with these local communities and will continue to do so as this project progresses towards completion.

The full business and investment case of this infrastructure project shows that the Suburban Rail Loop will support some 24 000jobs across Victoria. And this already impressive figure is dwarfed by the 550 000 people that will be connected to jobs in the areas surrounding the new loop’s stations.

The Suburban Rail Loop will help deliver reduced travel times for more than 80 per cent of Melburnians. It will deliver short, rapid and dependable journeys for Victorians—and more of them at that—while also slashing commuter times across the state.

This very important infrastructure project will change the way that people travel right across Melbourne, with many new destinations and connections for commuters to take advantage of. These enhancements to the train network will help to increase patronage, which will in turn encourage more people to shift from their normal travel routine of cars to public transport. The resultant decrease in traffic congestion will advantage all road users and will have positive flow-on effects for our public transport networks and our broader logistical operations. With the first trains expected to run in 2035 the business and investment case details just how this project will eliminate approximately 600 000car trips every day and how it will slash public transport travel times by an average of 40 minutes for a one-way trip.

The business and investment case also highlights how Suburban Rail Loop east, between Cheltenham and Box Hill, and Suburban Rail Loop north, from Box Hill on to the Airport, will deliver up to $58.7 billion in economic, social and environmental benefits to the state. The rail line between Cheltenham and Melbourne Airport is expected to carry more than 430 000 passengers per day when SRL north is complete, taking thousands of cars off our roads daily. It will connect to a convenient, fast and direct link to Melbourne Airport for the more than 30 000passengers to be carried to and from the airport each day. Planning work is also set to continue for the Suburban Rail Loop west, which will fully integrate with the government’s record transport investments in the west—including the Melbourne Airport rail project.

At this point, and having acknowledged the many benefits the Suburban Rail Loop will provide for Melbourne itself, it is worth stepping back and reflecting on its impacts for all Victorians. Better rail access to more parts of Melbourne–particularly Melbourne Airport—from all of Melbourne’s major suburban areas will also lead to flow-on benefits for regional Victorians, including those in my electorate of Wendouree.

As my constituents and I know only too well, accessing our state’s main airport by public transport currently involves a trip by train right into Melbourne’s Southern Cross station only to transfer across to buses and immediately head back out of the CBD, often battling traffic to boot. It is a long and inefficient trip, and one which hampers the ability of regional Victorians to enjoy full and equal access to air travel. It is for this reason that I eagerly await the new transfer point these projects will deliver at Sunshine in Melbourne’s west.

Residents in Ballarat are also very familiar with travelling into Melbourne by car, whether that be for work, for study, for services or for socialisation. By making rail journeys more convenient and accessible the new Suburban Rail Loop will provide a threefold benefit by reducing our state’s reliance on cars, lowering their environmental impact and forestalling the traffic increases that can accompany a growing population—to the benefit of all transport infrastructure users.

In Ballarat we are huge fans of trains, particularly train manufacturing. We are proudly building 25 X’Trapolis 2.0 trains thanks to a $986 million announcement in the 2021 Victorian state budget. I thank the Premier and Treasurer for their ongoing support of regional manufacturing and secure, well-paid, skilled jobs in Ballarat.

These network trains are designed for Melbourne and will be manufactured in Ballarat. The nearly billion-dollar investment to build trains at Alstom in my electorate of Wendouree was most welcomed by the Ballarat community. The project’s local content requirements will support jobs, training, local businesses and regional Victoria.

I would also like to thank the Deputy Premier—the Acting Premier at the time—and Minister for Transport for coming to Ballarat in May to make this announcement.

I particularly wish to acknowledge the strong advocacy and support of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; the Electrical Trades Union; the Rail, Train and Bus Union; and Ballarat Trades Hall Council for rail manufacturing in Ballarat. I would also like to acknowledge the Alstom site delegates, Ash, Luke, Blair and Robo.

The benefits of the Suburban Rail Loop are widespread and varied, and the Andrews Labor government is getting on with the task of bringing those benefits to Victorians. The Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 is an essential component of this. It establishes the SRL Authority, along with its requisite governing arrangements; it facilitates the necessary planning, development, management and more via amended planning regulations; it defines the process for declaring SRL projects; and it amends the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to pave the way for this infrastructure.

This is important, essential legislation supporting a fundamentally important infrastructure project, and I commend the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 to the house.

Mr BRAYNE (Nepean)

I rise today to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021.

The Andrews government is committed to delivering transport projects that make travel easier and more convenient for all Victorians.

Access to good public transport services is the mark of an equitable society, and Victoria’s public transport network is important to so many Victorians.

Public transport helps us get to work, it helps us access important services and it helps us see our friends and families.

In short, a good public transport network helps to connect all Victorians. And Victorians understand this.

That is why they supported the Suburban Rail Loop and Victoria’s Big Build at the last state election.

And that is why this government has been busy planning, designing and consulting on the Suburban Rail Loop.

This project is not just another transport project.

It is not just another rail line or another way for Victorians to get from A to B.

The Suburban Rail Loop is a multigenerational project that will reshape Melbourne and help us prepare for Victoria’s growth.

The project will transform Victoria’s public transport system and make it easier and more convenient for all Victorians to get to work, to access services and to see their loved ones.

Melbourne is growing, and it is essential that we invest in our infrastructure for future generations.

To do this, the Suburban Rail Loop will connect all the major train lines via the Melbourne Airport.

From the Frankston line to the Werribee line, our public transport network will become more connected than ever.

I know that for many in my electorate of Nepean this project will be welcomed.

So many people on the Mornington Peninsula rely on the Stony Point and Frankston lines to connect them to the city and to the rest of our state.

This new project will make it so much easier for them to get to their destination without having to take the journey into and out of the CBD.

That means less time spent travelling and more time spent doing what is important to us.

It also means that access to housing, jobs, schools, universities and hospitals will be improved and that, more than ever, Victorians will be connected by a strong public transport system that is on par with the world’s biggest cities.

Furthermore, as Victoria recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic it is essential that we are generating a pipeline of work and economic stimulus.

The Suburban Rail Loop will provide 24 000jobs across Victoria and once completed will connect Victorians to approximately 550 000 jobs across our state.

That is the multigenerational change that this government is committed to delivering through this project.

I will now turn to the specifics of the legislation.

The Suburban Rail Loop Bill will ensure that this transformational project proceeds with the statutory powers that are necessary to complete the construction of the 90-kilometre orbital rail loop that will run through many of Melbourne’s middle suburbs.

The bill will also provide statutory powers that are necessary to support the development of the broader precincts that surround each station on the Suburban Rail Loop.

The Suburban Rail Loop is Victoria’s largest infrastructure project and is subjected to 11 different local government planning schemes.

Given its scope the project will need its own legislation to ensure that the new rail line and associated developments are delivered effectively and consistently.

As such, the fundamental purpose of the bill is to establish the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, whose primary object will be to plan and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop project.

The bill will also enable this new authority to operate and manage the operation of the Suburban Rail Loop as well as enabling the authority to undertake projects associated with the Suburban Rail Loop.

To establish the Suburban Rail Loop Authority this bill sets out a range of functions and processes, including but not limited to:

the authority’s functions and general powers;

the establishment of a board of directors and a process for appointing a CEO;

corporate planning and reporting requirements; and

necessary powers to delegate and employ staff.

In essence, the bill brings all aspects of the Suburban Rail Loop together in one piece of legislation and establishes a governing board that is dedicated to coordinating and delivering this transformational project.

As such, this single point of coordination will ensure that the best possible outcomes for Victorians are achieved.

Coordinating with stakeholders and the community will remain a priority for this new authority, and it will continue to work with government agencies, local councils and other key stakeholders as this project is delivered.

I will now turn to the powers that this bill will provide to the Suburban Rail Loop Authority.

The bill provides the Suburban Rail Loop Authority with a range of powers that are necessary to plan and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop project.

In order to provide the authority with these powers amendments to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 are included in the bill. These include but are not limited to:

providing the Suburban Rail Loop Authority with the power to act as a planning authority for land that has been subject to a Suburban Rail Loop planning declaration;

requiring municipal councils to prepare planning scheme amendments in Suburban Rail Loop planning areas to obtain the consent of the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop; and

requiring the Minister for Planning to consult with the Minister for Suburban Rail Loop on matters relating to planning scheme amendments in a Suburban Rail Loop planning area and the establishment of advisory committees in relation to such amendments.

These powers are necessary for the delivery of this project and will ensure that this transformational project is delivered in an efficient and consistent manner.

Furthermore, to support the delivery of Suburban Rail Loop projects the bill provides new powers to be established via amendments to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009.

These include but are not limited to:

the provision of powers to investigate land and plan for the development of the project before project areas have been designated;

the extension of powers relating to land management, land acquisition and land disposal powers;

the clarification and modification of powers that allow the authority to temporarily access and occupy land;

the provision of additional road management powers; and

the provision of powers to remove vegetation that is a risk to the safety of those working to deliver the project.

The combination of all these powers will allow the Suburban Rail Loop Authority to achieve its aim of coordinating and delivering this transformational project for all Victorians.

And Victorians can be assured that a proper process is being followed by the Suburban Rail Loop Authority throughout the delivery of this project.

The government has undertaken business and investment cases that have investigated the benefits that are likely to be achieved from undertaking this project and that ensure that these benefits exceed the costs that the government invested into this project on behalf of the community.

The Suburban Rail Loop project will also be subjected to an assessment of an environmental effects statement. This process will allow the potential impacts of this project to be considered and will help to develop ways of minimising or mitigating any disruption to the environment and wider community.

This bill does not provide any short cuts to delivering this multigeneration investment.

Rather, this bill provides the Suburban Rail Loop Authority with all the necessary powers to deliver a transformational project that will fundamentally change how Victorians travel across our state.

Once again the Andrews government is committed to improving transport outcomes for all Victorians.

Victoria’s Big Build is the centrepiece of these improvements, with the program delivering so many important road and rail projects across our state.

Whether it be level crossing removals, regional rail upgrades, new suburban roads or the Suburban Rail Loop, this government is working hard to connect Victorians to their work, their communities and their loved ones.

With Victoria recovering from the pandemic and growing year after year, the Suburban Rail Loop will give Victorians more access to their jobs, education and healthcare, all while creating thousands of jobs and stimulating economic growth.

Access to good public transport services is the backbone of an equitable society, and the Suburban Rail Loop will provide opportunities to all Victorians, wherever they live.

This bill will allow us to move closer to delivering this project for Victoria’s future generations and ensuring that our state is prepared for the future.

I am proud to say that I support this legislation, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon)

It is with pleasure today that I rise to speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021, a bill which represents the ambition and the boldness of the Andrews Labor government and our commitment to the Big Build program.

The Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 facilitates the planning and delivery of the Suburban Rail Loop program and associated developments. The Suburban Rail Loop program is the program for a new orbital rail line through Melbourne’s suburbs that will integrate with existing and planned public transport and road networks. The program will be comprised of separate and specific Suburban Rail Loop projects.

The bill establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority with a primary object to plan and deliver the Suburban Rail Loop program and associated urban development as well as to enable the authority to operate or manage the operation of the Suburban Rail Loop. The bill provides for Suburban Rail Loop projects to be undertaken by the authority.

The bill will form a new principal act. It will define the objects, functions and powers of the authority and define rules and procedures within which the authority will operate. The bill sets out the governance structure for the authority, including its board, procedures, committees and the delegation of its functions, duties and powers.

The bill also provides for the authority to access powers under other acts, principally by applying the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to Suburban Rail Loop projects. The bill also makes related and consequential amendments to a range of other legislation, including the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and the Transport Integration Act 2010.

The bill also amends the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, particularly part 6 of that act. The bill provides for additional powers in that act that will be available to Suburban Rail Loop projects and other transport projects to which that act applies.

This is fundamentally a bill to establish a new statutory authority and provide it with the powers it needs to plan, develop and deliver the state’s biggest infrastructure project—a project that will play a significant role in Victoria’s recovery from the pandemic, generating a pipeline of work and economic stimulus.

The scale and ambition of the Suburban Rail Loop demands a different approach from government. It’s an unprecedented undertaking and is truly a game changer for this city and state.

The Suburban Rail Loop will reshape Melbourne’s urban form over decades by creating a range of new employment and activity centres, delivering more jobs closer to where people live and providing a critical transport connection between these key health, education and jobs precincts in our suburbs.

The Suburban Rail Loop Authority administrative office, established in 2019 to plan for the Suburban Rail Loop, will become a statutory body corporate with the powers it needs to plan and deliver the state’s biggest infrastructure project and oversee the transformation the Suburban Rail Loop program will activate over the next 20 years.

Victorians are telling us they want the Suburban Rail Loop started, and we’re doing the important work needed to get construction underway by 2022.

Victoria’s Big Build is delivering an unprecedented pipeline of major road and rail projects—level crossing removals, the Metro Tunnel, regional rail upgrades and new suburban and regional roads—to connect Victorians to work, study and each other and deliver jobs for thousands of Victorians.

As Victoria continues to grow the Suburban Rail Loop will make sure that we grow in a sustainable way, creating a city of centres which brings world-class health care, education and jobs closer to where people live. Importantly it will deliver a fairer state by connecting communities and creating opportunities for all Victorians, no matter where they live.

Victorians know how important this project is today and for generations to come. The Suburban Rail Loop is the project our state needs for the future, and the time is now upon us to deliver it.

I commend this bill to the house.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass)

It is with great pride that I speak on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. This is fundamentally a bill to establish a new statutory authority and provide it with the powers it needs to plan, develop and deliver Victoria’s biggest infrastructure project, a project that will generate a pipeline of work and economic stimulus, creating up to 20 000 jobs during construction and kickstarting the careers of 2 000 apprentices, trainees and cadets. The Suburban Rail Loop will not only transform our state but also play a major role in our economic recovery from this pandemic.

While also improving the connectivity of Victoria’s public transport network, the Suburban Rail Loop will also reshape Melbourne into a ‘city of centres’—supporting growth in precincts outside the CBD that will provide more high-quality jobs, greater and more diverse housing options, and better access to services and amenities. The Suburban Rail Loop will link every major rail line from the Frankston line to the Werribee line, via the airport, connecting Victorians to jobs, retail, education, health services and most importantly each other.

For constituents in my electorate and for millions of families in the booming eastern and south-eastern suburbs, this will mean that users of the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines will be able to get to the airport without having to change trains, while the vast majority of Victorians will be able to get to the airport with just one interchange from their closest station.

Victorians resoundingly endorsed the Suburban Rail Loop at the 2018 state election, when it was first announced prior to the elections. Victorians are now telling us that they want and are eagerly waiting for construction on the Suburban Rail Loop to begin and we’re doing the important work needed to getting construction underway by 2022. This is one of many promises that the Andrews Labor government is committed and driven to fulfilling as a part of its broader Big Build project.

Those local to my electorate would have already seen the commencement of major construction for a vital upgrade to duplicate the track along the Cranbourne line as part of a $1 billion upgrade.

With 11 level crossings already removed on the Cranbourne line, work is now well underway to duplicate eight kilometres of track between Cranbourne and Dandenong, using more than 22 kilometres of Australian steel rail and more than 16 000 new sleepers.

The fully duplicated track will allow for trains to run every 10 minutes on the Cranbourne line—which, together with the Metro Tunnel and new bigger trains, will create capacity for 121 000 extra peak passengers every week across the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines.

Across Melbourne, 75 level crossings are being removed by 2025—and the Cranbourne line will be the first to be level crossing-free. The duplication of the Cranbourne line is due for completion by 2023 and will pave the way for planning for a future extension of the line to Clyde.

Likewise, three more level crossing removals have also been fast-tracked—at McGregor Road, Main Street and Racecourse Road in Pakenham—as part of an accelerated construction program to make travel safer and easier, and boost jobs and the economy.

The three sets of boom gates will be gone in 2023/2024 and two new stations will be built as part of a $15 billion investment to upgrade the Pakenham line that will improve safety, reduce congestion and allow more trains to run more often.

The three Pakenham level crossings will be removed by raising the rail line over the roads, introducing new community spaces for locals to enjoy.

A new Pakenham premium station will provide better connections between metropolitan and regional train services along with upgraded facilities and improved security.

A second station will also be built at Pakenham East and the metropolitan rail track will be extended by two kilometres, boosting transport connections for the growing east and paving the way for more frequent and reliable train services from Gippsland.

Currently, Pakenham is a major bottleneck where V/Line and Metro trains merge onto shared tracks, and V/Line trains are often delayed behind Metro trains turning around at the end of the line. Pakenham East will include separate turnback tracks for Metro trains, and dedicated V/Line tracks—avoiding this congestion and improving service reliability.

The new Pakenham East station and tracks will also futureproof the Pakenham and Gippsland lines, allowing more services to be added in the future.

A completed Suburban Rail Loop will see the creation of transport super-hubs at Clayton, Broadmeadows and Sunshine—which will connect regional services to the Suburban Rail Loop, so passengers outside Melbourne won’t have to travel through the CBD to get to the employment, world-class hospitals and universities in the suburbs.

Furthermore, the Suburban Rail Loop will not only be a vital and city shaping rail network, but an opportunity to optimise liveability, productivity and amenity through precincts around Suburban Rail Loop stations.

The Suburban Rail Loop Bill will provide certainty and ensure streamlined planning and construction of the 90-kilometre orbital rail loop through Melbourne’s middle suburbs, and support development of the broader precincts around each Suburban Rail Loop station. The Suburban Rail Loop Authority will become a statutory body corporate with the powers it needs to effectively deliver the state’s biggest public transport investment and precinct development, which are essential as Melbourne grows to a city of 9 million people by 2056. The bill brings all aspects of Suburban Rail Loop together in one place to deliver integrated transport and land use outcomes in line with existing legislation.

The bill also provides for the authority to access powers under other acts, principally by applying the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to Suburban Rail Loop projects. The bill also makes related and consequential amendments to a range of other legislation including the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and the Transport Integration Act 2010.

The bill amends the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, particularly part 6 of that act. The bill provides for additional powers in that act that will be available to Suburban Rail Loop projects and other transport projects to which that act applies.

This legislation will ensure a consistent approach is adopted to achieving the best outcomes across all precincts. Local communities, key stakeholders and councils will be involved every step of the way, with the first meetings this month of precinct reference groups for each Suburban Rail Loop station area—forums to address local issues and to help shape associated development.

The next round of public engagement on further project detail starts this month. There’ll also be opportunities for formal submissions to be made in relation to the rail infrastructure as part of the environment effects statement process, with hearings to be held by an independent assessment panel next year.

This legislation continues on the pattern of reform that the Andrews Labor government has been driving in this state for the last seven years, a pattern of reform that places fairness, social responsibility and the constant improvement of economic outcomes at the centre of this government’s agenda. With this additional reform, the Andrews Labor government continues to show once again that the best interests of Victorian people sit squarely at the centre of our vision for this state.

The Suburban Rail Loop is not a standard transport project. It’s more than a rail line. It’s the way we’ll reshape Victoria’s growth for future generations. I commend the bill to the house, and I wish it a speedy passage.

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh)

The government has been busy planning, designing and consulting on the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) project, a project that will ensure our state has a world-class integrated rail network, worthy of this world-class city.

Local communities across Melbourne will gain better access to the city, and of the city. It will provide Melbourne with enormous economic opportunities.

This multigenerational project will transform Victoria’s public transport system, connecting our suburbs and making travel easier and more convenient for all Victorians.

The SRL will help deliver Plan Victoria’s vision to turn Melbourne into a poly-centric city of 20-minute neighbourhoods—with an integrated transport network—allowing more Victorians to work closer to home, gain better access to essential infrastructure like schools and hospitals, and avoid congestion.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is all about ‘living locally’—giving people the ability to meet most of their daily needs within a 20-minute return walk from home, with access to safe cycling and local transport options.

The SRL will connect every major train line from the Frankston line to the Werribee line via Melbourne Airport, improving access to housing, jobs, schools, universities, and hospitals in Melbourne’s middle suburbs.

The SRL will reduce hundreds of travel hours for Victorians every week. That’s more time for families to be together, to exercise, for going out and supporting local businesses.

The SRL Business and Investment Case released last month shows that SRL will support 24 000 jobs across Victoria and connect people to around 550 000 jobs in the precincts around the stations, with first trains expected to run in 2035.

This project will deliver decades of secure employment, and once completed bring uplift to local communities, providing much needed attention and revitalisation to local businesses across metropolitan Melbourne.

The SRL will also take 600 000 car trips off our roads every day; slash public transport travel times by an average of 40 minutes for a one-way trip; and stimulate $58.7 billion in economic, social and environmental benefits to our state.

The environmental impact alone from taking these cars off the road merits this project, but the efficiency in travel times, the reduction of road accidents, the reduction on impacts on our roads and the increase in economic participation make this project one of the most significant in the state’s history.

The SRL will deliver a new 90-kilometre orbital rail line and strategic land planning and development initiatives in SRL precincts, giving Victorians jobs, cultural and civic spaces and homes closer to a train line and changing the way our state travels forever.

This project is about accessibility and it is about visibility, connecting the great parts of our city together, increasing and encouraging movement and exploration between so many wonderful communities across this city—this, one of the most diverse in the world, this city with some of the best cafes, restaurants and bars in the world.

The SRL east, from Cheltenham to Box Hill, will be complete by 2035 and combined with the completion of SRL north, it will create a long pipeline of work during delivery and attracting more than 160 000 additional jobs to the broader station precincts.

The rail line between Cheltenham and Melbourne Airport will carry more than 430 000 passengers daily when complete, taking more than 600 000 car trips off our roads every day. The SRL will connect to a convenient, fast and direct link to Melbourne Airport; the line will carry more than 30 000 passengers to and from the airport each day.

The current travel time to the airport by car from my electorate is around 40 minutes without traffic, up to an hour with traffic—that’s about $80–$100 in a taxi. The current avenue through public transport, with the support of the SkyBus is an hour and a half in low traffic, in traffic. The SRL promises to drastically reduce that time and cost.

I’m very fortunate to live in and represent a community that has unique assets that are of not just statewide but of national significance. Monash University, the largest university in Australia—the main campus of which is in my electorate right next to where we propose to put the SRL Monash station; the Australian Synchrotron, the only facility of its kind in Australia—brought into existence by another proud Labor government, that of Steve Bracks and John Brumby; and of course the Monash heart hospital—again the first heart hospital in Australia and one of only a relatively small number in the world; and Monash Health—the largest hospital and health network in Victoria. What do these anchors have in common? They are all located adjacent to both the proposed Monash SRL and Clayton SRL stations.

And I haven’t even started on the extensive ecosystem of private businesses that together constitute what I have previously called the Silicon Valley of Australia—the amazing ingenuity, innovation, discovery and imagination that private enterprise and academia collaborate on every day in this incredible part of Melbourne.

It is not accident the SRL route takes in this extraordinary part of Melbourne. It is an enormous economic, jobs and science and academic hub. In fact, it is the largest employment hub in Victoria outside of the Melbourne CBD.

And I haven’t even started on the importance of the precincts that are at the core of the SRL—not just train stations, precincts and hubs of economic and civil life.

While I am parochial about my part of Melbourne and Victoria, the SRL serves a greater part of Melbourne and a greater part of the Victorian community. Everybody has a stake in this project. The Premier has talked about oak tree projects, where the people, the government that planted the seed and nurtured the oak tree in the early years will not sit under its shade. This is the best type of project because it is intergenerational and it is focused on the needs of this generation and future generations rather than on short term political cycles. These types of projects and reforms are one of the hallmarks of our government, the Andrews Labor government. We have planted oak tree seeds in other areas too—Metro Tunnel, universal three-year-old kinder, the mental health 10-year reform that commenced this year in earnest, and that is just to name a few.

I could not be prouder of the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, the Premier and the Treasurer—the whole government—in taking this bold journey and I know the Victorian community is with us on this journey.

This bill seeks to do important work particularly in relation to establishing some of the necessary architecture for this bold intergenerational project.

• The Suburban Rail Loop Bill will provide certainty and ensure streamlined planning and construction of the 90-kilometre orbital rail loop through Melbourne’s middle suburbs, and support development of the broader precincts around each SRL station.

• The declaration of SRL planning areas will provide the SRL Authority and SRL minister with the planning powers needed to develop SRL infrastructure and precincts and protect them from conflicting developments that could impact on the achievement of the SRL objectives.

• The Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) will become a statutory body corporate with the powers it needs to effectively deliver the state’s biggest public transport investment and precinct development, which are essential as Melbourne grows to a city of 9 million people by 2056.

• This legislation will ensure a consistent approach is adopted to achieve the best outcomes across all precincts.

• SRL is Victoria’s largest infrastructure project and the project alignment would be subject to 11 different local government planning schemes.

• The scale, ambition and duration of the project means it needs its own legislation to ensure the new rail line and associated development through Melbourne’s middle suburbs is delivered effectively and consistently.

• The legislation establishes SRLA as a separate state entity with a governing board dedicated to coordinating and delivering this multi-generational project.

• SRL projects will be delivered using existing transport project delivery powers under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act.

• Establishing a dedicated agency to support large long-term projects requiring significant community and stakeholder engagement is not new—this process has seen how successful the Level Crossings Removal Authority has been in utilising these types of powers to achieve great outcomes for the community.

• This process brings together all elements of Suburban Rail Loop into one place, so we achieve the best possible coordinated outcomes in these communities.

• Some changes to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act (MTPFA) are also proposed to support the delivery of SRL projects.

• These changes are proposed to address issues and inconsistencies that were identified following the delivery of projects across the state over the last decade.

You wouldn’t need this bill if you didn’t have imagination and courage; we need this bill because our government has imagination and courage.

I commend the bill to the house.

Mr HAMER (Box Hill)

I am pleased to make a contribution in support of the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021, which is yet another step forward in the delivery of the biggest transport infrastructure that Box Hill, and indeed our state, have ever seen.

The Suburban Rail Loop will enhance Box Hill as a place to live, work and study—freeing our city from the radial network which has constrained us for so long.

From the opening of the Box Hill station in 1882, Box Hill has always been a focal point for economic activity and transfer of goods and services in the east. Box Hill was designated as a district business centre in the 1954 metropolitan planning scheme, and since that time Box Hill has consistently been considered a strategic centre in Melbourne metropolitan planning policy since. This has continued through to the current iteration of the metropolitan plan, Plan Melbourne 2017–2050. In each plan, the important regional role of the centre for the provision of employment, services and increased development has been reiterated.

And anyone who has visited Box Hill in recent years knows that the place is booming. Over the last 10 years, the Box Hill metropolitan activity centre has grown in population from 6400 in 2006 to 8500 in 2016. Over the same period of growth, employment has grown at a rate of 2.3 per cent per annum. Growth in the health and education industry sectors was particularly strong. These sectors added an estimated 2500 and 600 jobs respectively between 2006 and 2016.

By 2036, the population of the activity centre is forecast to grow by between 8400 and 10 100 people above 2016 levels. The resulting employment growth forecasts for the 20-year period to 2036 are in the order of 8400 to 11 000 additional jobs, with the largest employment growth forecast in the health sector, followed by office-based employment.

Box Hill already has one of the highest job densities in Melbourne outside the CBD and has one the busiest transport interchanges outside the CBD. There is no place quite like it, and it is no wonder that so many people are choosing to live or set up their business in Box Hill.

But there is a challenge that needs to be overcome. For too long, Melbourne’s radial transport network has funnelled commuters in and out of the CBD, but has failed to connect our suburbs, especially in the so-called middle belt.

Transport projects, particularly those of the scale of the Suburban Rail Loop, are never an end in themselves. But it is a great enabler—a great enabler of jobs and a great enabler of accessibility to those who wish to partake in the broader economy while not being forced into multiple car ownership.

The Suburban Rail Loop changes the game. It is more than just a rail project—it will transform the Box Hill area for the better, achieving two significant goals.

It means, firstly, that residents in my electorate will have fantastic access across the city without needing to travel into the CBD, whether that is students accessing Deakin and Monash University, healthcare workers travelling to Monash Medical Centre in Clayton or travellers heading to Melbourne Airport for their next adventure.

The Suburban Rail Loop will also ensure residents from across our city can get to Box Hill easily for work, education, healthcare or simply to enjoy one of the excellent restaurants.

The scale of the benefits of the project is difficult to comprehend. The Suburban Rail Loop will generate up to $58.7 bn in economic, social and environmental benefits for Victoria, adding $50 bn to our gross state product. The Andrews Labor government has already committed $2.2 bn in the 2020–21 Budget towards this critical project, and the recently released Business and Investment Case highlighted the return on investment this project delivers for our community.

The Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 is the next step towards getting tunnel boring machines in the ground by establishing the Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) as a body corporate with responsibility to plan and deliver this project.

This significant step forward includes the creation of governance structures, the ability for the SRLA to employ staff and the required financial controls to ensure the effective delivery of the project.

Crucially, the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 amends planning regulations to specify how SRL planning areas are declared and managed, giving certainty to communities, not just in Box Hill, but along the entire alignment.

Furthermore, this important bill defines the process for the declaration of construction stages after the necessary planning, environment and heritage approvals have been obtained.

The Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 is also amended in this bill, ushering in a host of positive reforms for our community. These include providing greater clarity around planning permit requirements, land use management and designation of the SRL project area.

Ultimately, the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021 allows for consistency in planning across the numerous local government areas on the alignment, while continuing to uphold the strong planning, environmental protection and land acquisition arrangements already in force across the state.

These steps are a significant move forward as we deliver the SRL for Box Hill, and indeed our state. I am proud of the commitment of the Andrews Labor government for delivering the bold infrastructure agenda that those opposite say is just too difficult. This bill, and the power of work happening right now, proves them wrong.

SRL is a complex, multi-generational project which runs through multiple local government municipalities. The scale, ambition and duration of the project means it needs its own legislation to ensure the new rail line and associated development through Melbourne’s middle suburbs is delivered effectively and consistently.

Under the Suburban Rail Loop Bill (SRL bill), Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) will move from the Department of Transport and be established as a body corporate for a public purpose with overall responsibility to plan and deliver SRL.

The legislation will allow for consistent planning across the project area, giving SRLA the necessary tools to plan, procure, and deliver this critical project, delivering the best possible outcomes for Victorians.

Stakeholder and community engagement remains a core priority for SRLA and it will continue to work closely with government agencies, local councils and other key stakeholders.

Finally, I do want to touch on some of the fearmongering that has been spread about the provisions that will be used in relation to planning and consultation for this project. Most of the planning provisions that will be used already exist. For example, the project’s environment effects statement, the land acquisition and many other aspects of this project are occurring and will occur under existing legislation.

This legislation provides for consistent planning and certainty across a large project area. It provides the tools to plan, procure and deliver the transport and precinct elements of this critical project—delivering the best possible outcomes for Victoria.

A project area must still be specified or designated before compulsory acquisition can occur, as is currently the case. And the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986 will still apply to compulsory acquisition. Councils can and would continue to be able to claim compensation for land they own that has been divested for the purposes of a declared project. Suggestions to the contrary are simply incorrect and designed to create fear and division amongst our community.

I commend this bill to the house.

Mr McCURDY (Ovens Valley)

I rise to make a brief contribution on the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021.

This bill has various elements to it which I will cover briefly and talk about some of my concerns.

The first part of the bill specifies preliminary matters including definitions, objectives and the commencement provision.

Part 2 of the bill establishes the Suburban Rail Loop Authority as a statutory body corporate. The authority will take over all functions, staff and administrative matters from the Suburban Rail Loop Authority administrative office, which was established in September 2019 to provide interim governance arrangements for the Suburban Rail Loop program.

Then thirdly the bill provides the Suburban Rail Loop minister with the power to declare areas of land that are proposed to accommodate the Suburban Rail Loop infrastructure and related precincts as Suburban Rail Loop planning areas.

There are various other parts to the bill which I won’t go into here.

I do have some major concerns with this build. The total cost will eventually be in the vicinity of $150 billion. That is a staggering amount of money, but if you consider Labor’s track record on building this cost will be at least $200 billion and more than likely much higher. We know Labor cannot manage money, and blowouts and overspend are just part of life of Labor in both Victoria and Australia.

And to justify that let’s look at the current build, or as many call it, Melbourne’s big waste, not because the projects are not needed but because Labor continue to over spend and waste billions upon billions of dollars on every project.

Current projects are $23 billion over budget and growing. Now, let’s be clear: this is not $23 billion in total cost, this is $23 billion over budget.,

In the Ovens Valley electorate we have been waiting for projects for years and in many cases decades.

If we were to divide the $23 billion overrun/blowout across all 88 of the Victorian electorate districts, each electorate would be in line for a $261 million windfall for each district. Now, that could build 20 new schools or eight upgrades to hospitals, and that’s just in the Ovens electorate.

That amount of money would give towns like Wangaratta, Yarrawonga and Cobram facilities like they have never seen before. Myrtleford, Bright and Mount Hotham would also be beneficiaries like we have never seen before.

So you can imagine when you think about a $150 billion to $200 billion spend in Melbourne, that means regional Victoria will miss out on so many much-needed projects.

Yarrawonga needs a new bridge over the Murray River, an upgrade to their hospital, the local community house needs a new building and the final stages of the P–12 college are 10 years overdue, and that is just a tip of the iceberg. Cobram needs a $30 million hospital upgrade, a major upgrade at the secondary college. So when we think about the dollars involved in Melbourne projects that cost billions and projects in the Ovens Valley that are millions of dollars you can see why as a local member in regional Victoria there is more to Victoria than Melbourne.

Wangaratta, which is the main hub of the Ovens Valley, needs a massive injection, but if I were to reel off every project ever dreamt of, including a second bridge over the Ovens River, upgrades of football grounds to AFL standards and of course soccer and other sporting precinct upgrades, we would set up this regional city for the next 10 to 20 years. And of course the largest employer in Wangaratta is Northeast Health. This wonderful health facility has had modest upgrades and small injections by the Labor government, but what this health service needs is a significant upgrade or even a greenfield build to be capable of servicing this growing community.

And Myrtleford and Bright are both communities that this government has left behind, and aged care, hospital upgrades and sporting grounds are needed badly. The Great Alpine Road carries enormous traffic load, and overtaking lanes and other improvements are well overdue.

And so while Melbourne talks in billions of dollars in projects, the Ovens Valley would be thrilled with $250 million plus if the current overrun on Melbourne projects was split across the state.

We know Labor’s costings are always wrong, always underestimating the true cost. Like with the Metro and the West Gate Tunnel they are routinely billions of dollars out. When these factors are taken into account the benefits and costs ratio figures fade to massively negative.

The Auditor-General recently demonstrated why state estimates can’t be relied upon.

The new taxes and borrowings are at the core of the problems with the Suburban Rail Loop.

The figures in so-called scenario A are so bad that the cost of borrowing doesn’t equal state tax receipts until 2077. New babies born today will be grandparents when the debt is paid back.

The total cost in scenario A is so rubbery it ranges between $30.7 billion and $50.5 billion—imagine estimates that vary by 61 per cent.

Scenario B is out there beyond 2083. It’s ongoing, off the end of the graph presented. From $35.1 billion to $57.6 billion—also a 61 per cent variation.

Labor needs to come clean about the special new taxes. Who will pay and how much?

This so-called investment case lacks any real integrity, it’s not worth the paper it is written on.

A further point relates to the proposed intense development, still ill-defined, near the proposed stations with the government proposing tens of thousands of people be located in high-density nodes.

And so I am not one who is opposed to building infrastructure or improving outcomes for Victorians, but we need to ensure that waste and mismanagement is brought under control. The lack of accountability by the Andrews government is a major concern. Twenty-five per cent of Victorians live in regional Victoria, and regional Victoria receive approximately 8 per cent of the budget. There is more to Victoria than just Melbourne, although I fully support Melbourne infrastructure investment, but this Andrews government really must be fair. The Ovens Valley and all other regional electorates are Melbourne’s playground, and investment must keep pace for a well-balanced state. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows)

The Victorian government is defining a multigenerational, multibillion-dollar project while responding to the catastrophic events of our times: a once-in-a-century pandemic, and recovery from the world’s worst recession since the Great Depression.

This bill facilitates the planning and delivery of the Suburban Rail Loop designed to connect Melbourne’s middle suburbs and the long-awaited rail link to the Melbourne Airport.

The Member for Eltham highlighted my advocacy to fast-track Broadmeadows and the people of Melbourne’s north to the airport.

This vision is defined in the Comeback strategy I have proposed for Broadmeadows that reimagines the Broadmeadows town centre and railway station as a catalyst for economic and social development where it is needed most. The Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board 4.0 has unanimously endorsed this plan. In this contribution, I want to define its value and advocate for it to be fast-tracked in budgets or collaborative investments through the Australian government’s election commitment to a city deal for Melbourne’s north-west.

My concern is that history does not repeat, abandoning Broadmeadows.

The Bolte government introduced a bill in 1965 to buy land for a proposed link to Melbourne Airport at Tullamarine. In March 1964, when questioned in Parliament about the estimated cost of implementing the proposed plan to link the Tullamarine jetport by rail to Melbourne, then Minister for Transport, Edward Meagher, indicated the cost would be £1.5 million for the construction of a new railway between Jacana and the airport. Subsequent plans headed in the same direction: go down the Broadmeadows train line and turn left.

We have come a long way since then in cost and consequence. Instead of being first in significance for the rail link to Melbourne airport, the state district of Broadmeadows will be last to benefit from the current plan for the Suburban Rail Loop.

The plight of Broadmeadows must be redressed. Australia turns to Broadmeadows in times of existential threat from wars and disasters to economic peril and pandemic, but too often when the catastrophic event has passed, Australia turns its back, abandoning Broadmeadows like an orphan to entrenched disadvantage and compounding complexities. It is in our national interest to change this predicament, as outbreaks from the pandemic have proved.

The Brumby government reaffirmed the strategic significance of Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s transport infrastructure and economic development.

Planning minister Justin Madden declared in September 2010: ‘Broadmeadows central activity district is set to become Melbourne’s ‘capital of the north’.

The Brumby government underwrote this vision with an $80.3 million investment to redevelop the Broadmeadows railway station as part of a revitalisation plan building key infrastructure, stimulating change and creating jobs.

Many of the ministers who supported this plan are key ministers in today’s government, so I am sure they still endorse the even more urgent need for this strategy to be implemented.

Such investment is even more important because of the one-term coalition government’s reverse Robin Hood strategy against Victoria’s poorest, most disadvantaged community.

Then planning minister, now recycled opposition leader, the member for Bulleen, played Robin Hood in reverse, cancelling the Broadmeadows revitalisation.

He shunted the funding down the train line to secure the vote of then member for Frankston, Geoff Shaw, and to sandbag a seat the coalition still lost.

This triumph of politics delivered a double jeopardy for Broadmeadows, with the loss of this catalyst investment in the community of greatest need.

This decision was a triumph of politics over rational decision-making.

New investments are required for redress. The Broadmeadows metropolitan activity centre was classified as a place of state significance under Plan Melbourne. It needs to be designated a key employment cluster for Melbourne’s north. The Comeback strategy defined how the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board 4.0 can help coordinate funding from the three tiers of government to maximise the opportunity for Broadmeadows to become an employment cluster of state significance. Funding opportunities include:

i. Unprecedented spending in federal and Victorian budgets by May 2021.

ii. The allocation of almost $4 billion in the federal budget to the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) 2020–21.

iii. The Victorian government’s $2.7 billion building works package.

iv. The Victorian government’s $500 million Working for Victoria Fund.

v. The Victorian government’s Jobs Victoria Innovation Fund.

vi. The Hume City Council’s capacity to invest at record low interest rates.

vii. The Australian government’s $1.5 billion investment for modern manufacturing.

An airport rail link would fast-track economic recovery post COVID-19 and the proposed third runway at Melbourne Airport. The Victorian government is negotiating a share of the $10 billion National Rail Program, an Australian government funding commitment to urban rail projects. Funding was premised on a business case highlighting the strategic value of the Broadmeadows station:

• the best rate and integration with existing transport networks;

• easing congestion on the Tullamarine Freeway;

• competition and other modes of road transport, levels of patronage; and

• airport corporation priorities.

These imperatives align. The Australian government made a commitment of up to $5 billion to a half-share in the project to build a rail link to the Melbourne Airport in the 2018–19 budget as the highlight of its infrastructure and job creation in nationally significant projects.

One of the transformative projects for economic recovery and jobs in Melbourne’s north is the Somerton intermodal rail hub. This is a key feature in the Victorian government’s fast-track plans to create a national distribution network. It will complete the metropolitan rail freight network, linking to the $125 million on-dock rail, allowing shuttles to run directly to the port of Melbourne. This hub will enable more efficient movement of goods via intermodal terminals such as Somerton. This is a particularly important project in making rail freight cheaper for businesses and taking trucks off suburban roads. It would play a key role in developing the Australian government’s inland rail project, offering a significant change in the capacity and capability of the national freight rail system. Economic benefits total $22.5 billion for an investment of about $10 billion, according to the case for inland rail prepared by Australian Rail Track Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Their analysis projected an economic benefit-cost ratio of 2.62, which would increase gross domestic product by $16 billion. This is an important next step in how we create the big picture for economic development, particularly in Melbourne’s north, where one in 20 Australians is predicted to live soon. Boasting Australia’s largest concentration of advanced manufacturing, Melbourne’s north also features the highest proportion of undeveloped industrial land in Melbourne, about 60 per cent, defining it as the most sustainable and affordable region to cope with population growth for economic recovery. Proximity to the heart of the city, affordable land and blue-chip infrastructure provide the opportunity capital craves to help economic recovery and stimulate jobs.

The Andrews government subsequently upgraded the Broadmeadows train station after the Brumby government’s $80.3 million investment in the Broadmeadows central activity district a decade ago to help transform Broadmeadows into the ‘capital of the north’” by redeveloping the station, building infrastructure and creating jobs. The opportunity now exists for a more strategic redevelopment. Broadmeadows has similar features to Ringwood station, including three platforms, connection to a bus interchange and a location next to a major shopping centre. Hume City Council has agreed to a similar $60 million redevelopment.

Designation of Broadmeadows as a super hub in Australia’s biggest transport infrastructure project, the Suburban Rail Loop, provides a defining opportunity. Broadmeadows railway station already acts as a link to Melbourne Airport. Travellers from throughout Victoria arrive at the station, then catch the 901 bus to the airport.

Express trains could be scheduled post COVID-19 to run from Southern Cross station to Broadmeadows, connecting with buses designated for each terminal at Melbourne Airport. This service would provide a quick, inexpensive public transport option until the designated rail link to the airport is built via Sunshine. This proposal would benefit most of the airport workforce living in Melbourne’s north. Broadmeadows railway station has the added value of a V/Line service connecting commuters from northern Victoria.

VicRoads and Hume City Council have finalised the deal to remove the loop road at Camp Road. This initiative will provide major opportunities, opening the entrance to the Broadmeadows town centre, the construction of a multideck car park and other facilities around the Broadmeadows station precinct.

Key infrastructure is required for jobs in Melbourne’s north by unlocking the development potential between Broadmeadows and Campbellfield, one of the biggest areas for industrial and manufacturing employment in the region. Connections between the Broadmeadows town centre, the Northcorp industrial area and the rest of Campbellfield are poor. The presence of Pascoe Vale Road and the two railway lines act as a barrier between the east and west of Broadmeadows. These connections deliver infrastructure that will unlock the value and enable employment.

Proposals include additions to the local connector road network from the Merlynston Creek crossing, to a new Campbellfield railway station, a Merlynston Creek road crossing linking the old industrial areas with the modern manufacturing precinct through to Belfast Street nd a pedestrian and cyclist bridge with bus access at Broadmeadows railway station.

Vision, plan, investments and advocacy have succeeded in Broadmeadows being defined as a priority precinct for the proposed city deal for Melbourne’s north-west. Such a deal would redress inequality and deliver new infrastructure, promoting industries and jobs.

This plan incorporates a northern connection via Broadmeadows to deliver all options necessary for the rail link to Melbourne Airport. This adds to the Victorian government’s preferred route via a new super hub in Sunshine, connecting suburbs and regions to Australia’s only curfew-free international airport.

It paves the way for Australia’s biggest public transport proposal, a new underground rail network circling Melbourne’s suburbs. The Suburban Rail Loop is designed to connect every major train line from Frankston to Werribee through Melbourne Airport. Victorians would no longer have to travel into the CBD under the proposal, featuring up to 12 new underground stations and connecting suburbs with major employment centres, universities, TAFEs, hospitals and retail precincts.

It embraces the super hubs, designed to provide better access to jobs, education and health outside the central business district, transforming Sunshine, Broadmeadows and Clayton into 20-minute cities.

It accelerates smart city investments by driving powerhouse precincts, including Broadmeadows and La Trobe University, to provide affordable housing and access to lifelong learning, skills and jobs. The Australian government would become a practical partner where jobs and growth are needed most, preventing rust belts and converting them into brain belts, changing the population mix and turning disadvantage into aspiration, as defined in the Comeback strategy.

It would also add value by harnessing the multiversity partners in Broadmeadows to deliver micro-credentials, just-in-time training for job aspirants, TAFE certificates and degrees while coordinating priorities that fast-track results under the triple-helix collaboration between research, industry and government.

Hume City Council, a member of the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board 4.0 that I chair, make these points.

The location and design of transport interchanges within activity centres have a significant bearing on the centre’s capacity to service community needs and lever further investment and development.

A poor transport interchange, which is difficult to access and not of the highest quality, will affect people’s choice to use public transport or spend time in these centres.

It is essential that the government work in partnership with councils and public transport providers to achieve the best possible outcomes for transport connections, links and interchanges within railway station precincts along the Suburban Rail Loop.

Within Hume, the state government’s plans for the Suburban Rail Loop will make Broadmeadows much more accessible to Melbourne’s other regions and connect Broadmeadows to Melbourne Airport.

Council is seeking these plans to be brought forward. If unable to schedule earlier, the redevelopment of the Broadmeadows railway station should be prioritised and funding committed now.

Hume City Council is seeking the following action:

• The Victorian government to commit to bringing forward investigation of the alignment of the SRL route and location of the super hub planned for Broadmeadows. This is critical to inform the current and future growth of Broadmeadows town centre.

• The Suburban Rail Loop to be integrated with improved pedestrian environments within the Broadmeadows railway station precinct to enhance the quality of the centre’s public realm and consolidate Broadmeadows’s designation as a metropolitan activity centre and as the ‘capital of the north’.

• The Victorian government to work with Hume City Council and public transport providers to prepare a Broadmeadows railway station masterplan which integrates the Suburban Rail Loop into the Broadmeadows metropolitan activity centre.

• Information currently available confirms that the SRL North component of SRL and Broadmeadows railway super hub will not be delivered for more than 30 years, which is an unacceptable time frame for Broadmeadows. Not bringing forward the railway station’s redevelopment will constrain the greater revitalisation of Broadmeadows.

The SPEAKER: Order! The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business.

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (19:30): I move, by leave:

That sessional order 15 be suspended to allow the bells to be rung for 1 minute per division to remain in place until the house adjourns.

Motion agreed to.

The SPEAKER (19:31): The house is considering the Suburban Rail Loop Bill 2021. The minister has moved that the bill be now read a second time. The member for Ripon has moved a reasoned amendment to this motion. She has proposed to omit all the words after ‘That’ and replace them with the words that have been circulated. The question is:

That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Those supporting the reasoned amended moved by the member for Ripon should vote no.

House divided on question:

Question agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Third reading

Motion agreed to.

Read third time.

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.

Register of opinion on motion

Ayes

Ms Addison, Mr Andrews, Ms Couzens, Mr Dimopoulos, Mr Eren, Mr Hamer, Ms Hennessy, Mr Kennedy, Mr McGhie, Mr Merlino, Ms Neville, Mr Pallas, Mr Richardson, Ms Settle, Mr Taylor, Ms Theophanous

Noes

Mr T Bull, Ms Kealy, Ms McLeish, Mr Northe, Ms Ryan