Tuesday, 24 May 2022

McKoy Street–Hume Freeway, Wodonga

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (18:04): (1931) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and this question takes a bit of a detour part way through as I got distracted writing it. The McKoy Street–Hume Freeway intersection upgrade at Wodonga appears to have been overlooked in this year’s Victorian budget. I was hoping to see funding allocated in this year’s budget to improve the safety of traffic flow through the current poorly thought out intersection. With an expected construction commencement time in 2023, I was disappointed to see no allocated funds for the project at all—disappointed but not surprised. This Melbourne government’s obvious disregard for northern Victoria continues to be on display for all to see.

The original cost of this project was projected to be $60 million. The previous federal government had committed to contributing $168 million to this project back in 2019 as the budget blew out. Due to this government refusing to prioritise the project and dragging its feet over the planning, that money may now be gone along with the change of government. The estimated cost to the project is now sitting at an extraordinary $210 million. We are not talking about the Shepparton bypass here; this is a bridge over the highway and the railway line. I have heard of gold-plated solutions, but this one must be being built out of solid platinum.

There is a problem with public works projects in the state blowing out, and this overpass must be a textbook case of the problem. On the weekend I was talking to someone about the huge levels of waste going on with the concrete fabrication for the West Gate Tunnel works taking place in Benalla. Nobody cares or tries to rein it in because it is all at the taxpayers’ expense. Victoria cannot afford to pay 300 to 500 times the actual cost of infrastructure projects. We have a government embarked on running up hundreds of billions of dollars in debts for the Big Build, and we need to control costs. I have called for more transparency in these projects before. We need to do better.

I was going to ask a question about what is happening with the McKoy Street intersection upgrade—and I may still do that this week—and when it is going to happen, but the cost blowouts on this overpass have derailed my train of thought. The action I am seeking is for the government to open this entire overpass planning process up to open source—designs, costings, the works. Let the interested but without a vested interest people who know what they are talking about come up with a plan for a bridge over the highway at the McKoy Street intersection that will not end up costing us $250 million, and then continue the process of open sourcing scrutiny throughout the build. And let this be the start of a new way of planning and managing the process for infrastructure in Victoria that will not slug taxpayers with costs that are multiples of what they should be.