Suburban Rail Loop
Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:58): (1681) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop. The new budget proudly doubles down on the Suburban Rail Loop, but buried in budget paper 4 is a quietly devastating admission that the Commonwealth contribution to the SRL funding is still to be confirmed. In other words, there has been no commitment for that $11 billion or so, just as there is no mechanism for the value capture component of the funding. I will reiterate again and again that when this project was first budgeted at $34 billion the formula was that $11 billion would come from state borrowing and the balance would come in cash from value capture and from the federal government. Now, the fact is that the federal contribution has not come – it is to be confirmed – and the value capture does not kick in until the project is complete. That means in a practical sense that the whole project has to be funded by debt until such time that either of those two things arrive. What happens if that money does not materialise? What concerns me deeply is that, as the budget itself states, there is no credible contingency if value capture falls short or if the federal funding is not received, and the budget itself notes this.
Victorians deserve true and full transparency on the future of their suburbs, their finances and their open space. All of these are at risk because in the undefined value capture mechanism there are absolutely wild west planning rules being put in place that would destroy local character and destroy quality of life for the people who actually live in those suburbs. But particularly in the context of our budget and the risk to our credit rating, it is simply unacceptable to have ‘to be confirmed’ on critical funding for the largest single project in the state. So the action I seek from the minister is to immediately release a detailed public report outlining the current status of Commonwealth negotiations, a breakdown of value capture forecasts and, critically, a risk assessment explaining what will happen if these assumed revenues do not eventuate.