Anna Caldwell: Stadium cost blowout will be forgotten when a world-class facility is opened
As frustrating as news of cost overruns in major infrastructure projects might be, it is worthwhile remembering the alternative experience when Labor was in charge, writes Anna Caldwell.
NSW
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A major, multi-billion dollar underground road quietly received planning approvals yesterday. As the next piece of this city’s infrastructure boom begins to fall into place, this column can reveal that Planning Minister Rob Stokes signed off on stage one of the new M6 motorway — 4km twin tunnels connecting Arncliffe and Kogarah.
We’ve almost become immune in this city to the announcement and the progress of big projects — we’ve become so used to a government obsessed by infrastructure and getting Sydney moving. Oh, another road? Another train? Another tunnel?
It’s easy to shrug your shoulders and think about how we’ll all be inconvenienced in the construction phase.
But these projects are transforming Sydney, and they change lives.
Stokes says the project will see more than 2000 trucks taken off local streets and bypass 23 sets of traffic lights when it opens in 2025 — and in the meantime it will create thousands of jobs in the construction process.
And the new M6 isn’t just about cars — it will include a cycle and pedestrian pathway through Brighton Le Sands and a bridge linking Rockdale Bicentennial and Scarborough parks.
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It has been close to nine years since voters banished a Labor government that was widely seen as beset by corruption.
Their fate was well deserved.
As well as leaving a legacy of crooks in office, Labor left the state with a crippling infrastructure backlog.
The city of Sydney was growing, but nothing was being built to move people around it.
Premiers Gladys Berejiklian, Mike Baird and Barry O’Farrell have been critical in changing this.
Baird sold off electricity assets so that the state could pay for many of the big projects that are driving us today.
Not only are we seeing the city transform, but the economics of an infrastructure agenda has underpinned this state’s success, creating thousands of jobs that put meals on families’ tables and inject cash back into the state.
We must not underestimate the value of that move. But at the same time, we are right to expect the government to get its infrastructure delivery right and that it doesn’t botch projects and treat people badly along the way.
This week, Berejiklian faced fierce criticism after this newspaper revealed with a front-page story that one of the Premier’s most controversial projects, the Sydney Football Stadium, had blown out in cost by $100 million.
The new price for the world-class stadium at Moore Park came as the Premier signed a new contract to ensure its delivery by grand final season in 2022.
Berejiklian fought a bloody battle at the last election over investing in stadiums. And categorically, she won it.
Every day of the election campaign, then Labor leader Michael Daley stood out the front of Sydney Football Stadium as it was demolished slowly behind him saying he would save it.
But the voters came with the Premier, in the face of an equally loud, whingeing campaign supporting Daley on social media.
Berejiklian unequivocally has a mandate to build the stadium and the government is right to be getting on with building and delivering a world-class facility on time.
The $100 million cost blowout was seized on by her critics as vindication of Labor’s anti-stadium agenda.
This is a false conclusion.
The cost blowout is evidence the government got its pricing wrong for the stadium. It could also be evidence that the government needs to do better with costing or managing its projects — remember the price tag on the light rail project also blew out dramatically.
These events can be seized on by critics to undermine the government’s credibility on infrastructure. They can also undermine public trust in governments in general. That’s dangerous.
But what doesn’t change is the fact that NSW desperately needs the exciting, transformative, economy-driving infrastructure agenda that the government is delivering.
These big infrastructure projects — tunnels, stadiums, trains and roads — create growing pains when they are built.
The government must do all it can to manage the human face of development — the impact of noise, congestion, vibration from big earthmoving equipment and of course those who lose their homes.
But we must not lose sight of the big picture and remember that we are all the beneficiaries of this growth.
One of the great struggles Premier Berejiklian had at the last election was that she contested it without cutting a single ribbon on any of her projects, while being pitched as an infrastructure Premier.
She won the election with voters living all of the pain of development, but not yet experiencing any of the gain. This year already, the Premier has opened big projects like Sydney Metro and light rail.
By the time the next election rolls around in 2023, Sydney Football Stadium will be open for business — according to her schedule.
Critics are right to point out faults in the infrastructure delivery program — delays, cost blowouts, badly handled consultation — because the onus is on the government to get this stuff right.
But in the course of holding them to account we must not lose sight of the end game; big projects are good for this city and have underpinned our economic prosperity in the past eight years.
I predict that when our city opens the world-class stadiums it voted for, the angst will be quickly forgotten.