Wednesday, 3 December 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (19:31): (2202) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, and the action that I seek is for the minister to immediately release both the Wollert transport corridor study and the Wollert rail feasibility study. Extending the Mernda rail line from Lalor to Wollert is essential within the next 10 years as Whittlesea council expects the local population to almost triple, with the number of people in Epping North and Wollert going from 35,000 in 2019 to 95,000 in 2041. In 2017 a rail corridor from the existing Lalor station to a proposed Wollert station was identified and incorporated into the precinct structure plan. In that same year the government published the Victorian Infrastructure Plan, which committed to commencing the Wollert rail feasibility study within five years. At the end of 2017 the state government also announced it would spend $3.8 million acquiring land for the rail corridor, and now the land sits empty and unused, a stark reminder of Labor’s unfulfilled promise. In 2019 Jacinta Allan promised the City of Whittlesea that the state government would conduct a feasibility study into the Wollert rail extension by 2022, and in 2022 the federal government got on board and contributed $250,000. The Victorian government was expected to provide a matching contribution and carry out the study, but due to Labor’s obsession with Big Build projects and its neglect of the northern growth suburbs the idea never progressed.

In 2024 the study was two years late, and the Allan Labor government had still not provided its half of the money for the study. The project seemed permanently stalled, so in May last year, as traffic congestion continued getting worse and the rail extension was becoming ever more urgent, I demanded that the Minister for Transport Infrastructure finally allocate funding for the feasibility study. The minister replied in August 2024, saying the Department of Transport and Planning would soon commence the Wollert transport corridor study. This study began in September 2024, and the Labor member for McEwen also announced that the Wollert rail feasibility study will be completed by early 2025, but that deadline was also missed. In October this year the Albanese government updated its webpage for the Wollert rail feasibility study, which now says the expected completion date is late 2025. Well, it is December, and you cannot get much later than that in 2025, so I can only assume that the feasibility study is finished. For years this project has been stuck, just like the commuters in Epping North and Wollert who get trapped in standstill traffic because the Labor government has abandoned the northern suburbs and completely failed to plan for growth and invest where it is needed. A resident of Wollert contacted me recently to express his ongoing frustration with the Labor government for its lack of progress on this vital infrastructure project.