Thursday, 6 February 2020

Ministers statements: Metro Tunnel

Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure) (11:15): This morning I had the great pleasure to join the Premier to visit the future State Library site as part of our fantastic Metro Tunnel project, where construction is well underway deep beneath Swanston Street. What was really special about this morning was that you can see that station box, those trains running through that station. You could really see the project taking shape. Importantly, the State Library station will connect with Melbourne Central station. Trains will be running to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west when we get on and deliver the Metro Tunnel project. For half the year—

Sorry, I am just looking at the time. I might have to start again. Can we fix the clock? I will get to start again, and I am delighted to as well. I am absolutely delighted.

Members interjecting.

Ms ALLAN: Because you know what? Two minutes is not enough to talk about how great the Metro Tunnel project is. For half a year we have been excavating 500 tonnes of rock every day with cutter heads that can smash through rock three times harder than concrete, and all this is happening under the ground while the city is moving above the ground. At the same time, over at Arden, Joan and Meg, our tunnel-boring machines, have dug more than 1.5 kilometres of tunnel between them, and down at Anzac station our tunnel-boring machines Alice and Millie are currently being assembled to get ready for work.

Thousands of Victorians have spent their summer working on this project, and it was great to see the work at South Yarra—1.8 kilometres of new track has been installed and a huge amount of excavation work has gone on there that will connect the existing Cranbourne-Pakenham lines to the Metro Tunnel line in the future. And the workers: I would really like to thank the workforce; we met some of them this morning. They have done a terrific job working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and giving up their summer to get this project delivered, and that site was delivered four days early.

Once complete, the Andrews Labor government’s Metro Tunnel project will make room for more than half a million passengers during every peak period, every single week, right across our Melbourne train network—more trains, more often, throughout the suburbs. It will slash travel times by up to 50 minutes a day to those key locations around the city like Parkville and St Kilda Road.

We have seen other approaches, where the only construction on the Metro Tunnel under some was the shelf that they built to store the project on for four long years; that was the approach of those opposite. We take a different approach. We get on with these projects. We are determined to deliver these projects and at the same time employ thousands and thousands of Victorians on these great projects.