It is one of the most expensive and ambitious Australian projects with any election campaign that brings in more taxpayer dollars – but some say it is a white elephant.
A $ 50 billion-plus new Melbourne railway line is one of the scores of dubious Australian infrastructure projects that are either announced or given more funding during election campaigns that could potentially never be built.
A horrific new report from the think tank Grattan Institute has marked most projects – happily announced by MPs or ministers weeks before election day as “poorly regarded, premature and risky”.
Not only are there railway lines – there are also motorways and commuter car parks that have sprayed money on them as politicians hit the ballot box, but their business costs often do not rise.
The new report also found that marginal seats benefit by making commitments for tens of millions of dollars more infrastructure cash during elections than secure seats.
With the 2022 election possibly in May, it is almost certain that more brilliant road and rail projects will be announced without being properly scrutinized to see if they deliver a decent return on their investment.
“Politicians who insist on pork are wasting taxpayers’ money, and the biggest losers are people living in safe seats or states with few marginal voters,” said Grattan Institute Transport and City Program Director Marion Terrill, who wrote the report. has.
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Announcement of brand new projects or extra funding for infrastructures – such as railway lines or stations; Parking lots at ports; Highways and Bypass – is a favorite for politicians of all stripes during elections.
But in its analysis, the Grattan Institute found that electoral infrastructure commitments were “often particularly poorly thought out.”
In the 2019 federal election campaign, of the coalition’s 71 transport pledges worth $ 100 million or more, only one had a business case approved by Infrastructure Australia, the governing body that measures the value of major projects.
Of Labor’s 61 promises, only two were fully appreciated.
$ 50bn plus transportation project raises eyebrows
One of the most dubious projects that received an expensive commitment from taxpayer cash in the 2019 elections was the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop (SRL).
This would see a new railway line being built in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, connecting Sunshine in the west with the airport, and Doncaster and Cheltenham in the east.
The big project, one of Australia’s largest ever seen, was announced by Daniel Andrews’ state government in 2018.
Federal Council then engaged Labor $ 10 billion in taxpayer money for the SRL during the 2019 federal election if it wins.
Originally budgeted at a total of $ 50bn, according to some estimates, it could now cost up to $ 67bn to build just two-thirds of the railway line, it was reported. The Age.
But the project was never fully evaluated on its merits by Infrastructure Australia (IA). A study on improving Melbourne’s overall rail network capacity is listed by IA as just an ‘early stage proposal’.
A number of transport analysts have questioned whether the SRL offers a significant enough economic return on its large investment.
Similarly, both major parties promised $ 5 billion in the last election for the Melbourne Airport Rail Link with $ 5 billion promised by the state government.
The project was listed as a “priority initiative” by IA. While this may sound big, IA defines priority initiatives as “requiring further development and rigorous evaluation to determine if they are the appropriate solution”. In fact, it’s far down the IA list of new transportation projects that need to be.
The new train line promises a journey time of “about 30 minutes” from the CBD to Tullamarine. That is $ 10 billion spent on a service no faster than the existing airport shuttle service.
The report also raised questions about 2019 election commitments for the Melbourne East West Link road project, the Sydney railway links with the new Western Sydney Airport and the Adelaide North South corridor.
Mega projects being built that should not be
During the 2016 election campaign, the coalition promised nearly $ 200 million to duplicate a section of Princes Highway in Victoria, a project IA refused to do.
“Over time, the level of expenditure on transportation has increased, but not the quality,” the report said.
“Most promises are considered bad, premature and risky.”
The analysis found that 80 percent of the projects, estimated at $ 20 million or more and engaged since 2001, are built with politicians who do not want to see their promises broken.
Asked if this would mean building some road and rail projects, which simply did not have to be the case, Ms Terrill said that was exactly what had happened.
“Unfortunately, governments almost never go back and see if the projects have actually delivered the benefits that were hoped for them to invest at the time of the decision, so that the public does not find out.”
Coalition ‘Slush Fund’ Transport Pot
One of the more bizarre pots of federal money is the $ 4.9 billion Urban Congestion Fund, a large portion of which goes to commuter parking lots.
The report said it was “the clearest case of a sleep fund” with marginal seats receiving the most benefits.
“Marginal seats clearly receive a larger share of the funds than safe seats. And seats held by a coalition member attract a larger share of the funds than seats held by Labor, the Greens, other small parties or independence parties. be held, “the report said.
The average marginal city seat received $ 83 million from the Federal Urban Congestion Fund, while the average safe coalition seat received $ 64 million and the average safe labor seat $ 34 million.
A survey by the Australian National Audit Office published last July found that 77 per cent of elected parking spaces were in coalition elections, reported. The Guardian.
At the time, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said “the Australian people had their chance and voted the government back”.
The Grattan Institute raised the question of why federal funds toward relatively small fringe infrastructure projects such as commuter parking lots, which were outside Canberra’s “turf” and should be left to state governments to fund.
The report recommends that federal infrastructure funds be limited to projects of national importance and that for every project over $ 100 million a proper analysis of Infrastructure Australia be completed.
None of these proposals are all new, the authors of the report admitted. Coalition and Labor politicians have been talking for years about tightening infrastructure decisions.
But little has happened. If that happened, it would probably mean that less publicity about expensive infrastructure projects could be pulled out of a hat in the middle of an election campaign, Ms Terrill said.
“It’s not necessarily the case that pork fat will lead to more votes in the next election, but as long as politicians believe it does or could, it does not seem likely to change.”
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