Federal funding boost for Murray Rail project

THE Federal Government has announced a significant injection of further funds into the Murray Basin Rail project.

Just over $195 million for the continuation of the project in north-west Victoria was committed by the Commonwealth Government mid-last week.

Member for Ripon Louise Staley said although the new money is welcome, it won’t be enough to finish the job and attacked the State’s handling of infrastructure upgrade.

“This was meant to be a 50/50 project between the State and Federal Government, but Jacinta Allan fouled up how she built this project so comprehensively that the Federal Government’s funding will only fix her errors,” she said.

“There’s problems all way along this project… eventually the [State] Government ran out of money… today the [Federal] Government stepped back in with a significant investment.

“We still won’t get the full project which we need to get the benefits from this project.”

Additionally, to the almost $200 million, the Commonwealth is also set to supply $5 million to further plan for the standardisation of the Sea Lake and Manangatang lines.

Ms Staley said it’s imperative that the State Government matches this investment to ensure the adequate continuation of the project.

“There will be additional funding required, the Federal Government has said they want to have that planned for properly because getting the full project done is vital,” she said.

“The Victorian Government need to go further and step up with a further $200 million of their own to make sure lines like the Sea Lake and Manangatang are standardised but also the Ballarat to Maryborough lines.

“The original $440 million that was meant to cover the entire project, now won’t deliver half of it.”

After receiving news of the Murray Basin Rail project funding boost, Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan said she was pleased the Federal Government was committed to resetting the project.

“We submitted the revised business case to the Federal Government on this project in May,” she said.

“This project needed to be reset and reset in a way that continued to see improvements in the rail freight network in the north and west of the state.

“We’ve already seen some improvements made in travel times and improvements in availability of freight paths, there is more to be done in this network and that is what this next package of works will do.”

Speaking to challenges with the Murray Basin project, Ms Allan said they were due to it being an out-of-date business case and not reflecting what the rail, passenger or freight network looks like now.

“There have been problems with the original scope of this program, this project was born in a business case that’s nearly nine years old and there were significant deficiencies with that,” she said.

“We’ve had to make modifications along the way… we undertook a big reset of the project, we revised the original business case, we looked at what we could learn from the delivery of the early stages of the project and applied that to the business case.”

For the continuation of the project, Ms Allan said she was unable to confirm the State Government’s funding intentions at this stage.

“In terms of the scope of works that’s been outlined in the revised business case, the Victorian Government had additional funding in its recent State budget,” she said.

“We had been waiting for the Federal Government to advise us of their contribution to provide for these packages of works.

“However, I’m not in a position today to indicate whether the Victorian Government will match that funding.”