Federal Budget 2018: Victoria to get majority of new national infrastructure spending
THE Turnbull government will commit $24 billion in the 2018 Federal Budget to road and rail projects across the country but NSW will largely miss out, picking up a tiny slice of the infrastructure pie. We reveal where every dollar is headed.
NSW
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THE TURNBULL government will commit $24 billion in road and rail projects to bust congestion and bring down the road toll, with a new Pacific Highway bypass and the first injection of funding for the North South Rail Link from St Marys to Badgerys Creek.
But NSW is getting the short end of the stick in Tuesday’s federal Budget, securing only $1.5 billion of new national infrastructure spending, with Victoria getting the lion’s share.
Treasurer Scott Morrison will today announce:
• $400 million for the Port Botany Rail duplication between Mascot and Botany, and the construction of a passing loop at Cabramatta to shift freight from road to rail;
• $50 million for a business case into a rail link from St Mary’s to the Western Sydney Airport, and;
• $971 million for a Coffs Harbour Bypass on the Pacific Highway, which will bypass 12 sets of traffic lights and create 10,000 jobs.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Morrison said the North South Rail Link was a “congestion-busting piece of infrastructure”.
“It’s about congestion-busting in our big cities and obviously in Sydney but it is also about making our roads safer,” the Treasurer said.
“This is laying down the tracks, literally in this case, to ensure that the city is better connected and works better for everybody. As is, indeed, the Port Botany rail duplication between Mascot and Botany.
“This is all about getting stuff to port, it’s all about the interconnections between the different modes of transport that makes the city more efficient.”
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The Coffs Harbour Bypass on the Pacific Highway was important to bring down the “tragic road toll”, Mr Morrison said, adding that the project has sat as an unfunded government priority for a long time.
“Most importantly, (it will) mean safer travel both for people who live locally up around Coffs, but also for those making the trip up the coast or down the coast, which everyday they are coming,” he said.
“The only downside to the Coffs Harbour bypass is you won’t be able to drive past the Big Banana anymore.”
The $24.5 billion in funding to be announced by the government will not all sit on the Budget balance sheet for the forward estimates.
Instead, it will be spent over the next decade and is part of the $75 billion plan announced in last year’s federal Budget.
Mr Morrison denied our state was getting the short end of the stick, despite Victoria boasting it was getting more cash than any other state.
“In previous years the complaint from the other states was that NSW was getting much more and so these things are done over 10 years, and phased over different periods,” he said.
“I always used to say, that you went up into southern Queensland, if you wanted to know where all the earthmoving equipment is, it’s down in NSW building roads courtesy of what was then the Baird government and now the Berejiklian government.”
Locked in Canberra for the past week finalising the Budget with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, Mr Morrison was in high spirits yesterday.
During the interview with The Daily Telegraph he joked, seemed optimistic and was confident ahead of Tuesday’s federal Budget — his third as Treasurer.
He did not rule out bringing the Budget back to balance a year earlier than currently forecast, in 2020-21.
Mr Morrison said the government had made returning to a balanced budget a key priority “for five successive statements now, and it will be true in the sixth; we’ve been very clear about bringing the budget back into balance by 2021. Now we stuck to that. It hasn’t moved.”
Marketing co-ordinator Holly Lucas, 22 welcomed an increase in roads and rail spending, saying she looking forward to seeing fewer trucks on the state’s roads. “You’re always concerned what if the truck breaks down or something goes wrong,” she said.