Pesutto vows to pause and review Suburban Rail Loop

The Victorian Coalition say they will pause work on the $34.5 billion Suburban Rail Loop if elected in 2026 and may ditch the project if its impact on other funding priorities is too significant.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto announced the move on Sunday, but the policy will not be formalised until it is voted on at shadow cabinet on Monday. He said he had “no concerns” the proposal would not be successful.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto says his party wants to pause the Suburban Rail Loop.Credit: Darrian Traynor

Pesutto said a government he led would honour existing contracts, which already total billions of dollars, but “we reserve our right on the entirety of the projects”.

In the motion to be debated, the Liberals and Nationals will call on the Allan government to pause the SRL, a 90 kilometre orbital rail loop from Cheltenham to Werribee, and publish the contracts already signed. It will note that they reserve the right not to complete the loop.

The Coalition will also move to set up an infrastructure committee in Victorian parliament overseeing expenditure on projects and will request the Parliamentary Budget Office cost the impact of SRL on Victoria’s current and future budgets.

This is the second time the opposition has vowed to pause the rail loop if elected, with then-leader Matthew Guy making the commitment a key point of difference at the 2022 election.

The Suburban Rail Loop would connect Melbourne’s middle suburbs.Credit: Fairfax Media

“We will pause and review the project on coming to office,” Pesutto said on Sunday.

“We reserve our position to look at how we can best accommodate the urgent infrastructure needs right across our state.

“Jacinta Allan is recklessly and irresponsibly signing us up as a state to one single project that will cost much more than $200 billion.

“If we proceed with this one single project, by Jacinta Allan, everything else is off the table. And as alternative premier, I can’t stand for that.”

Premier Jacinta Allan has maintained the government’s commitment to the rail loop in the face of rising construction costs and significant blowouts on other projects, saying it was taken to both the 2018 and 2022 polls which Labor won with large lower-house majorities.

One Liberal MP, speaking anonymously to discuss internal party matters, said the new policy had raised eyebrows given the party had failed to regain seats in its traditional stronghold of Melbourne’s east, including along the path of the SRL, while pledging to shelve the project.

But the MP said they didn’t believe there was significant support for the SRL in the party room.

Pesutto said they would take a “responsible and prudent” approach to work underway by 2026, the year tunnelling on the rail loop is set to begin. He did not detail how this would work if tunnel boring machines were already digging and future stations were being excavated.

“The project according to the government will have only just started. So we don’t expect any more contracts to be signed and no more should be signed,” Pesutto said.

“We will look at the situation when we come to office, we’ll pause and review it ... We will look responsibly at all of the state’s infrastructure needs.”

The Herald Sun on Sunday reported that a similar position, but without a commitment to honour existing contracts, was rejected by shadow cabinet before Christmas.

Pesutto did not confirm the details of this meeting but said that since then, there had been ongoing discussions about the policy.

“In the weeks that have followed that meeting, a lot of internal work has been going on, and we’ll make a formal position known tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m pretty confident that that decision will be formalised tomorrow. I have no concerns about that.”

An artist’s impression of one of the new loop stations.

Opposition transport infrastructure spokesman David Southwick said the government should release the details of the SRL contracts.

“Suburban Rail Loop is a pet project of Jacinta Allan that hasn’t been costed, that hasn’t had a business plan and that hasn’t had any single individual, independent body that has said this is a good idea,” he said.

The SRL stance is the latest in a series of Coalition policy announcements made in January that put it in direct conflict with the Allan government’s agenda. Earlier this month, the opposition withdrew support for a treaty with Aboriginal Victorians and said it would oppose efforts to raise the age of criminal responsibility.

An Allan government spokesman said the loop was needed as Melbourne grew to be the size of London over the next three decades.

“The Liberal Party is completely irrelevant to delivering the transport system Victorians need — it has opposed every single major transport project that’s currently being delivered in this state,” he said.

“Victorians have endorsed SRL twice, we’ve awarded the first contracts and we’re getting on with building it.”

“If John Pesutto’s Liberal Party wants to continue to pursue a position on SRL that has been twice rejected by the Victorian public and labelled as ‘insane’ by their own party room, that’s a matter for them.”

Speaking before the Coalition’s announcement on Sunday, Treasurer Tim Pallas, said the Victorian government had learnt its lesson from the toxic soil saga that delayed the West Gate Tunnel following reports in The Sunday Age the SRL’s first stage would dig up 1 million cubic metres of contaminated material.

“Having been a little bit more conservative about how we manage it, having experienced and learned from the lessons of the West Gate Tunnel, I think people can have a fair degree of confidence that we’ve got this covered,” he said.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.