Thursday, 29 May 2025

Suburban Rail Loop

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:20): (937) My question is for the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop. Minister, you have only received $2.2 billion of the $1.5 billion that you are gambling on from the Commonwealth. This week Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles again was quite clear on 3AW that there are no forthcoming funds for the Suburban Rail Loop. Will Victorian taxpayers be picking up the other $9.3 billion?

Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (12:21): Thank you, Mr Mulholland, for that question. I would invite you to perhaps go back to Hansard and maybe correct what appears to be an inversion of the figures there in relation to the 1.5 of the 2.2.

Members interjecting.

Harriet SHING: Okay. I will leave you perhaps to correct the record on that one, Mr Mulholland. What I would say to you is something that I have said to you on a number of occasions now in this place and what I have said more broadly elsewhere. What I have said to you here is also consistent with what the Prime Minister has said, what the Treasurer has said, what the Commonwealth infrastructure minister, Ms King has said, what Infrastructure Australia has said and what the business and investment case also says about the Suburban Rail Loop being a necessary nation-building project that is part of making sure that Victoria grows well as our population grows to being the size of London by the 2050s.

Mr Mulholland, despite all of the efforts from you and your colleagues to talk this project down, it is a project that is supported by communities. It is a project on which you would be wise to do some further work to better understand, because if you understood a little bit more about this project and about the process whereby Minister King has released $2.2 billion, you would understand, like any major project, particularly a project –

Evan Mulholland: On a point of order on relevance, President, it was a simple question about whether Victorian taxpayers will be picking up the missing $9.3 billion. The minister has not come near that question.

The PRESIDENT: I believe the minister has been relevant to the question from the outset.

Harriet SHING: Again, I reject the preamble of your question, Mr Mulholland. This is not money that is missing. This is a long-term project, but it is a project which is on time and on budget. You hate hearing that because this is a project that you have never supported, that you do not support and that you will never support, but you do not have the guts to admit that you do not actually have any solutions when it comes to dealing with growth. Your slogan, when your mate over there handed down the shadow budget this week, was to talk to a recycled component and concept of going for growth. You do not want to grow well. You just want to grow anywhere but Brighton, right?

Members interjecting.

Sonja Terpstra: On a point of order, President, I cannot hear – I cannot hear a thing – and the noise is coming from over the other side of the chamber.

The PRESIDENT: I uphold the point of order. A lot of noise has been coming from all parts of chamber, but I think when the side of the chamber that asks the question then starts drowning out the answer it makes it very difficult for the chamber. The minister to continue, hopefully in silence.

Harriet SHING: The Shadow Treasurer, who lives in Brighton, wants housing everywhere but Brighton; everybody else who lives in the peri-urban fringe wants more investment in infrastructure; and we know that Victorians need more housing, so we are going to keep working with the Commonwealth on a project that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and the infrastructure minister have made very clear they support and that needs to be built.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:25): Minister, thank you for that non-answer. Is this embarrassing failure to secure the federal funds required the reason why the Suburban Rail Loop funding is listed as ‘TBC’ in the budget and across the forward estimates?

Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (12:25): Thank you, Mr Mulholland. What an embarrassment that you do not know how to read budget papers – yet again. You did not read the 2019–20 allocation, which referred to $300 million for the Suburban Rail Loop as a further measure of just how significant this work is and how it is on time and on budget, with tunnel-boring machines in the ground next year and trains from Cheltenham to Box Hill via Monash by 2035. Mr Mulholland, the work in the budget links back to negotiations, discussions and work with preferred proponents as part of delivering a nation-leading contract. If you are proposing that we publish the progress of commercial-in-confidence negotiations, which are about extracting the very best value for the taxpayer, then heaven help anybody on the other end of an investment from a coalition government – beyond the closure of the New Street, Brighton, level crossing, which is the only one that you ever delivered when you were in – because Victorians will not be getting a good deal under you. You are yet to form a position on the Suburban Rail Loop because you are too gutless to do so.