Wednesday, 31 August 2022

 Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (12:40): (1956) I have got a constituency question today for the Minister for Transport Infrastructure. It concerns the Suburban Rail Loop, which if constructed is set to run through my electorate. My question to the minister is this: how low would the project’s benefit-cost ratio have to be before the minister concedes that it simply does not stack up? Over recent weeks various pieces of analysis by the independent, apolitical Parliamentary Budget Office have been released that demonstrate categorically that the Labor government’s so-called Suburban Rail Loop simply does not stack up. Most recently the PBO released some analysis that demonstrated that, given that the first two legs alone are set to cost an eye-watering $125 billion, the BCR has fallen to under one; in fact it has fallen to 0.6 to 0.7 per cent, meaning that the Suburban Rail Loop, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office, is a net social cost. The minister somehow continues to assert that it stacks up. How low would the BCR have to go before she changed her mind?