The announcement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of additional funding for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) is surprising, given the issues raised by Macroeconomics Advisory’s Stephen Anthony in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review.
This article is not a slight on the great ALP, which gave us Curtain, Chifley, Hawke and Keating as well as in the present-day Malinauskas, Minns and Mookhey. But it has something to do with Victoria.
But if the Prime Minister is going to proceed with his ill-advised SRL funding commitment, he should attempt to restore the public’s trust in the political class by doing two things.
The first is to establish a Royal Commission with full powers to investigate abnormalities relating to Victoria’s Big Build projects.
This is based on irregularities in their origination; land purchases anticipating eventual routes; business acquisitions anticipating policy announcements; planning corridors benefiting vested interests; advance notice of public announcements and “grants” paid to contractors, sporting clubs and educational facilities etc. in return for project support; and the role of and relationship between the Victorian government and the ‘under administration’ CFMEU in undertaking the Big Build program.
The second would be to require Infrastructure Australia to publicly release all the additional information it has requested/required to rubber stamp Federal funding of the SRL. After all, this information has been reportedly requested by Infrastructure Australia to make up for deficient (public) business and investment cases (courtesy of the big accounting firms, again).
