On the road to nowhere in Victoria

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 12 years ago

On the road to nowhere in Victoria

By Shane Green and Josh Gordon

Barry O'Farrell's vision splendid for New South Wales involves ribbons of new rail tracks and long stretches of bitumen that carry traffic smoothly rather than serving as slow-moving car parks. The state's new leader wants to be known as the Infrastructure Premier, but Barry the Builder has a certain ring to it.

Listen to Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu and you might think he is just as enthusiastic about meeting Victoria's infrastructure challenge. Yet the reality is that we have so far learnt little of his specific plans for Melbourne, despite his mantra that his government will ''fix the problems''.

Two new conservative governments in the two biggest states will invariably produce comparisons. And what they deliver in terms of big projects will be a benchmark measure of success. Both states face the challenge of providing the infrastructure to cope with burgeoning growth on the fringes of the capitals.

Get it right and economic benefits flow. Failure is political death, as witnessed in NSW a fortnight ago with the landslide defeat of the Keneally Labor government.

A big difference is that the Liberals in NSW knew they were going to win - the size of the victory was the only variable. Mr O'Farrell has already released his 100-day plan, and major projects are a big part. ''The infrastructure backlog we inherited is the biggest single challenge facing my government,'' he told The Saturday Age.

This week, preliminary work began on two key projects: the widening of the M5 motorway in Sydney's south-west, and the $7 billion rail link for what Mr O'Farrell calls the ''forgotten people'' of Sydney's expanding north-west.

Tellingly, the Jeff Kennett era is being invoked by some - particularly the CityLink project of the 1990s. Dr Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy and chief economist at AMP Capital Investors, said the key to getting industry going and attracting business was good infrastructure.

''Infrastructure projects are a bit like a beacon,'' he said. ''When Victoria was building, particularly the freeways, it was like a sign: Victoria was back in action, things were happening again, which ultimately engendered a positive business attitude towards Melbourne and Victoria.''

Since Mr Baillieu was elected in November, the Coalition has either shelved, delayed or hived off for review billions of dollars of Labor's infrastructure programs. It was only this week that Transport Minister Terry Mulder confirmed a new regional rail line through Melbourne's western suburbs would go ahead, although it is expected to take an extra two years to complete, while a cost blowout of up to $700 million has pushed the bill to $5 billion. Other election promises include planning for rail links to Melbourne and Avalon airports.

Business and infrastructure lobbyists are tetchy.

Advertisement

The crux, as the experts see it, is that state government investment over the past two decades has failed to keep pace with Melbourne's runaway population growth. As a result, the city's roads, public transport networks and hospitals have become increasingly choked. Housing affordability has fallen sharply, with insufficient land being released to accommodate the estimated 1500 people flooding into Melbourne each week.

Water and environmental assets are under strain. The cost of moving freight around the city is set to rise sharply, thanks in part to an antiquated and overburdened rail network and port limitations.

The magnitude of the challenge is scary. As reported in The Age last week, metropolitan Melbourne has expanded by more than 600,000 people in the past nine years - a growth rate suggesting it could overtake Sydney within 20 years.

Worse, growth has been strongest in outer suburbs where infrastructure is least advanced. The four fastest-growing municipalities in 2009-10 were Wyndham, Melton, Whittlesea and Cardinia - all on Melbourne's fringe.

According to infrastructure guru Sir Rod Eddington, the need for new investment in infrastructure in Victoria is acute, particularly since major projects often take up to a decade to finish. Sir Rod, who led a 2008 investigation commissioned by the former Labor government examining options for connecting Melbourne's eastern and western suburbs, warns the state government should quickly release a list of major infrastructure projects for public discussion, and - like NSW - begin to think about how it might attract investment from the private sector to help pay for them.

''[The Baillieu government] needs to address some significant problems and the time scales are substantial,'' Sir Rod told The Saturday Age.

In what could be a big change in the way projects are funded, there is anticipation that next month's federal budget could tap into the nation's huge reserve of superannuation funds to pay for big projects.

Central to Sir Rod's vision for Melbourne was a controversial 18-kilometre cross-city road connection extending from the western suburbs to the Eastern Freeway (providing a much-needed alternative to the West Gate Bridge) and a 17-kilometre rail tunnel linking the fast-growing western and south-eastern suburbs.

The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive, Wayne Kayler-Thomson, warned that Melbourne's current ''substandard'' infrastructure was selling the state short. He urged the government to use the May 3 budget as an opportunity to clarify its position on a range of projects, including an east-west road and public transport link, and a metropolitan ring-road and a regional superhighway between Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton and the Hume Highway.

Loading

Bob Birrell, co-director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, is pessimistic about how Victoria might meet its infrastructure challenges. He warned Victoria was now receiving a disproportionately large 28 per cent share of Australia's foreign migrant intake, up from about 27 per cent when the recent surge began six years ago, with little thought being put into the broader ramifications.

''When it comes to those big-ticket items like the Eddington proposal - road tunnels and a massive expansion of the public transport system - these things are desperately necessary, but they are beyond the capacity of the state government to provide, and even if they were, it would be a decade before they are finished,'' Mr Birrell said. ''As long as these numbers keep going, it is going to get worse.''

Most Viewed in National

Loading