Wednesday, 29 October 2025

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (10:33): I rise to make a contribution on the report tabled this week by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) on the 2025–26 budget estimates, and specifically I would like to talk to the recommendations and the findings in the report around the government’s pet project, the Suburban Rail Loop. This is a bipartisan committee. In fact, it is chaired by a Labor government MP in the member for Laverton. I have to say the committee has done excellent work in calling out the lack of transparency around the enormously costly project that is the Suburban Rail Loop and its dubious cost–benefit equation.

Finding 45 of the committee’s report – and I say it again, chaired by the member for Laverton – states that Infrastructure Australia had:

… low confidence in the project’s cost estimates provided in the Victorian Government’s business and investment case and considered the economic appraisal to be overstated.

Recommendation 17 calls on the Suburban Rail Loop Authority or the Department of Transport and Planning to publish an updated cost–benefit analysis of the Suburban Rail Loop. The committee also notes in finding 49 that the government plans to fund a third of the SRL East through so-called value capture mechanisms – in other words, new taxes on Victorians, on households, on renters and on businesses to pay for the big black hole that is the Suburban Rail Loop.

The report urges the government to publicly release details of its value capture strategy, including the fees and taxes it plans to use to raise the $11.5 billion from properties located near the proposed stations, specifically highlighting the fact that it is the government’s intention to fund this project through putting new taxes on Victorians – new taxes on Victorians trying to buy a home in the area, new taxes on renters in the area of the Suburban Rail Loop. Why is that going to be necessary? Because the government has no plans for how to fund the Suburban Rail Loop. With $11.5 billion supposedly from the state government, $11.5 billion from the federal government, of which we have seen about $2.2 billion delivered, and $11.5 billion from Victorian taxpayers, how will this be funded? It will be funded through higher debt and higher taxes once again under the Allan Labor government.

These recommendations in the report from PAEC, chaired by the member for Laverton, are not radical. They are not political gamesmanship. They are commonsense measures that are designed to ensure transparency and protect Victorian taxpayers. They echo the advice of Infrastructure Australia, which earlier this year urged the Commonwealth not to allocate further funding to the project until the costs were reviewed and the funding model was clarified. The committee notes in finding 46 that Infrastructure Australia requires the Victorian government to provide updated cost estimates, a comprehensive financing strategy detailing how value capture will work and an updated cost-benefit analysis. The report questions whether the cost-benefit analysis of the Suburban Rail Loop stacks up for Victorians, specifically calling out that the government should look at other ways to address the issues that this project is meant to fix.

We know that this project was dreamt up by the former Premier with a $30 billion to $35 billion price tag. But since then construction costs have risen and every single government project has blown out and cost taxpayers more, wasting taxpayer money. We know that every single government project has the CFMEU tax on it: 30 cents in the dollar of every government project is going to the CFMEU and organised crime, bullying and intimidation. That is why the credit rating agencies have said to the government that the SRL is an elevated risk for seeing Victoria have a further credit downgrade. Once again this government is disrespecting Victorian taxpayers, wasting their money. It is going to put up taxes and raise debt, costing all Victorians.