Brisbane Metro cost skyrockets to $1.24b

The price tag for Brisbane City Council’s long-awaited Brisbane Metro project has blown out by a huge 30 per cent due to labour and electrification costs.

An artist’s render of what Brisbane Metro will look like.

THE price tag for the Brisbane Metro has jumped to $1.24 billion as skyrocketing labour prices and electrification have forced a 30 per cent blow out in costs.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner had been flagging a possible cost explosion since last year but finally put a number to it when he delivered his second council budget today.

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He blamed the $300 million price spike on a decision to switch to fully electric vehicles, a nearly 50 per cent spike in labour costs and construction changes for the Adelaide St section in the CBD.

“The budget has changed but we don’t expect further changes in that budget - this a project now that we’re getting on with delivering,” he said.

Cr Schrinner said he was upfront before the March election that the project faced increasing costs but it had not been possible to update the budget “until recent weeks” when the council and state government reached agreement on the Cultural Centre Station design.

He also took a swipe at the Palaszczuk Government over the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement struck with unions for construction work on the Queen’s Wharf project.

“Underlying that is an incredibly high increase in labour costs that have flowed through since the business case was developed,” he said.

“Those changes in labour costs have come out through the tender process and are driven solely by the EBA deal struck between the (State) Government and Queens Wharf Brisbane and the unions.

“That project reached a record high EBA agreement and that has set a new benchmark for union worksites and construction flow-on effects across the economy will be felt.

“The labour costs that we projected in the original business case in 2017 are up nearly 50 per cent based on the EBA.”

But he said the recent agreement with the State Government on the Cultural Centre Station had been a “fantastic thing because we can get on with creating those jobs”.

“The critical thing with Brisbane Metro is, this is such an important project not only for the long-term future of our city public transport (but) it creates those 2600 jobs which are critical right now,” he said.