The Victorian government has signed its first big contract for works on the Suburban Rail Loop, a week after an integrity agency found the controversial project was developed under “excessive secrecy” and “proved up” by consultants.
The premier, Jacinta Allan, on Tuesday said a $3.6bn contract had been awarded to commence tunnelling on the 90km underground railway line, running between Cheltenham in the south-east and Werribee in the south-west.
The contract, awarded to a consortium of three companies – CPB Contractors, Ghella and Acciona Construction – concerns the first 16km of twin tunnels between Cheltenham and Glen Waverley. Tunnel boring was set to commence in 2026 and expected to be completed by 2030.
The premier said the contract marked a “really big milestone towards getting on and delivering the Suburban Rail Loop”.
“Most importantly, once the construction program has been completed … these station locations are going to be places where people can live, people can access vital education and health services and people can also access jobs,” Allan said.
The announcement comes just six days after the ombudsman, Deborah Glass, criticised how the project was conceived in a scathing report on the politicisation of the public service.
She said the loop was the brainchild of a former ministerial staffer who had taken up a role in the public service and worked on its early stages with a small team at consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), sidelining experts in the transport department.
“[The Suburban Rail Loop] was subject to excessive secrecy and ‘proved up’ by consultants rather than developed by public servants,” Glass said last week.
She also noted Infrastructure Victoria did not recommend the project and was not consulted before the government’s announcement.
Glass was not the only critic of the project. The Victorian auditor general’s analysis of its business case, released last year, concluded the document was “not sufficiently comprehensive, robust or transparent” and did not support “fully informed investment decisions”.
The analysis also noted the early development of the Suburban Rail Loop was “atypical” for the largest infrastructure project in the state because no transport agencies were involved in its planning and development.
Emeritus professor of environment and planning at RMIT, Michael Buxton, who previously worked with Victorian government planning and environment agencies, has repeatedly criticised the project. Marion Terrill, the transport and cities program director at the Grattan Institute, has described the Suburban Rail Loop as one of the “least-scrutinised projects in recent Australian history”.
On Tuesday, Allan said the project was designed to address the objectives of the government’s 2017 Plan Melbourne document, which said the city needed an “integrated 21st-century transport system” to connect people to jobs and services. It made no mention, however, of orbital rail.
She said Plan Melbourne had been worked on “by a range of officials” in the public service and defended the use of consultants, adding that “external advice” was required “from time to time, particularly when you’re working through complex projects”.
“We’re seeing plenty of blockers and knockers when it comes to the Suburban Rail Loop. There are plenty of people for their own – mostly political reasons – who want to stop [the project],” Allan said.
“What that is saying to communities in Burwood, Glen Waverley and Box Hill is that you don’t deserve better rail connections.”
Allan said a second tunnelling contract will be awarded in 2024 for the next 10km stretch of tunnel between Glen Waverley and Box Hill, which would complete the first 26km section of the loop, dubbed SRL East.
The 2021 business case, which deals with both the SRL East and SRL North sections of the project – estimated the eastern section would cost up to $34.5bn and would be completed by 2035. It had forecast about 71,000 daily trips on SRL East in 2036s.
The business case did not deal with the final stage of the project, between Melbourne Airport and Werribee, and Allan on Tuesday could not say how much this part of the project would cost.
So far, the state has committed about $9.3bn for SRL East and the Albanese government has pledged $2.2bn.
The opposition’s infrastructure spokesperson, David Southwick, described the Suburban Rail Loop as a “vanity project” and said he had serious concerns around its cost and viability.
“No one believes that this project will be delivered on time, or on budget, and quite frankly, I’m not sure whether we even believe this project will be delivered at all,” he said.
