Victoria’s transport minister, Jacinta Allan, believes the appointment of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister marked a “new direction in the dialogue” between the state and the federal government, a relationship which has been strained.
Unlike the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, Turnbull appeared open to funding major public transport infrastructure in the state, including the Melbourne metro rail project, Allan said.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has been struggling to unlock more than $1.5bn of federal funding that Abbott promised to the first Victorian government to build the $11bn East-West link toll road, a project Andrews scrapped shortly after being elected in November.
“It is very welcome to have a prime minister talking positively about all modes of transport, and particularly in our case, here in Victoria we’ve got some really important major projects that we’d welcome a new direction in the dialogue with the federal government about,” Allan said on Monday.
“The new prime minister has made no secret of his support for public transport, and indeed when he was here in Melbourne recently he was out and about on our public transport system.
“[It] does provide a new opportunity for us in Victoria to continue work we’ve been doing in advocating to Canberra that the Melbourne metro project is a major public transport project that is going to transform our system.”
The project, with an estimated cost of between $9bn and $11bn, requires significant funding from private investors and the federal government to be a viable alternative to the East-West link.
Allan’s comments follow those made in Canberra last week by Andrews that “hopefully we can get a much better deal from this prime minister than we had been getting”.
The relationship between the two governments was strained by Andrews abandoning the East-West link project, which he described as a “dud project” given it would have taken 56 years of toll revenue to repay the capital cost of building the tunnel. Money was better invested in building a strong public transport system, Andrews believed.
But Abbott stood by his comments that federal funding could not be reallocated towards public transport projects. He said it was “insane” and “reckless” not to build the East-West link because it would create up to 7000 jobs and ease congestion.
Andrews then defiantly refused to return $1.5bn in federal government funding already given to Victoria for the East-West link project.
“I think it is fair to say Tony Abbott and I didn’t agree on too many things,” Andrews said last Tuesday.
However, in May Abbott indicated he might be prepared to direct some of the money towards building the $5.5bn western distributor, proposed by developer Transurban to link the West Gate freeway and the port of Melbourne.
Allan said the Victorian government would discuss these projects with Turnbull in “coming days”. Andrews returns to Melbourne early next week after a trip to Beijing, where he is announcing a series of cross-cultural partnerships.
