Federal Government accused of breaking promise to upgrade the Marion Rd
Is the Marion Rd upgrade still on the cards? The Federal Government has been accused of breaking its promise to upgrade the busy thoroughfare.
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The Federal Government has been accused of breaking its promise to upgrade Marion Rd during Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s visit to Adelaide on Tuesday.
Mr Albanese stood alongside the busy thoroughfare on Tuesday afternoon, flanked by State Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas, Federal Infrastructure spokeswoman Catherine King and Badcoe MP Jayne Stinson, to slam the Government for seemingly dragging its feet on the project.
Mr Albanese said the lack of progress on the initiative an “indictment on the Federal Government”.
“This site does depict everything that is wrong with the Morrison Government’s attitude towards infrastructure,” he said.
“Not only have we not seen any infrastructure investment in this project, they haven’t even released the study.”
It came almost three-and-a-half years after the then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Boothby MP Nicolle Flint committed $2 million to “undertake planning for the upgrade of Marion Rd”. The pledge was made five days ahead of the 2016 Federal Election.
Options to be considered included transforming a section of Marion Rd into an underpass that would stretch from before the tramline to after Cross Rd and a tram overpass above Marion and Cross roads.
A year later SA’s Transport Department said planning work would begin within months and was expected to be completed by early 2018,
When this did not happen a revised expected finish date was set at mid-2019.
Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas asked “what has the Marshall Liberal Government been doing?” to progress the project.
“The Liberals said this planning study would ‘ensure that the whole project is designed and ready to go’ (but) there’s been no progress in the past three years,” he said.
“The Liberals must come clean about why they have failed to deliver on their promise.”
A State Government spokesman, who pointed out that Labor were in Government, and therefore in charge of the study for about two years before the March 2018 election, said the project was moving forward.
“The Marion Road Planning study has progressed significantly with an interim report drafted and the final report to be presented to the Australian Government for consideration in coming weeks,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Federal Infrastructure Minister Michael McCormack said the report was “currently being amended to address integrated transport issues raised by the SA Government’s Major Project Committee”.