Victorian transport infrastructure minister Jacinta Allan has called on the federal government to provide the state with its “fair share” of funding after a report found the state was being shortchanged compared with New South Wales and Queensland.
The Grattan Institute report, released on Sunday night, found there was a “consistent pattern” of successive federal governments spending more money on transport in New South Wales and Queensland – where elections tend to be won and lost – than in Victoria.
Victoria has 26% of Australia’s population, but received just 18% of the federal transport funds over the past 15 years. New South Wales received a third of the transport funding, but has less than a third of the country’s population.
Queensland, which has 20% of the country’s population, received 24% of funding.
The disparity could not be explained by population, population growth, size of the road network, share of passenger or freight travel, or what it actually costs the state government to run the transport system, the report said.
It said the inequity is further “compounded” by the federal government “funnelling much more discretionary transport funding to the most marginal seats.
Meanwhile, only one of the 71 coalition major projects worth more than $100m which were promised at the last federal election had a business case approved by Infrastructure Australia. Two of Labor’s 61 promised projects had business cases approved.
Allan said the Victorian government would like to see federal-government investment that was proportional to a state’s population.
“We have always pushed strongly and assertively to any federal government that we should get our fair share,” Allan said on Monday.
“There’s heaps of work going on here in Victoria and yes, the federal government are a partner in some of these projects. But there is so much more that we are doing that they could support us.”
Allan said the state government has committed $46bn on removing several level crossings across the state, as well as constructing the Metro Tunnel and the North East Link. Of the three projects, the federal government is contributing $1.75bn to the North East Link.
“If we were other states and we were getting 50-50, that figure would be around $23bn. So that’s not a fair and equitable outcome for the state of Victoria,” she said.
Allan announced major works will begin in June and will continue throughout the second half of 2022 in Sunbury, northwest of Melbourne, as the level crossing on Gap Road is removed.
Gap Road will be closed to traffic between Evans and Horne streets from 30 May to late 2022 as crews remove the boom gates and build the new rail bridge and road underpass, while buses and coaches will replace trains on sections of the Sunbury, Bendigo, Echuca and Swan Hill lines from 3 to 29 June.
When trains resume, Gap Road will remain closed to traffic for up to another three months while crews work around the clock to excavate 25,000 cubic metres of soil and build the road underpass.
