By Paul Sakkal
The federal government will pour more cash into Melbourne’s airport rail link and pledge funding to fix the road network as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fights to hold on to a string of Victorian seats at the upcoming election.
Albanese will travel to Melbourne on Wednesday to announce a $1.2 billion suburban road blitz, according to several Victorian and federal sources speaking anonymously ahead of the visit to detail plans not yet announced.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit Victoria on Wednesday.Credit: Joe Armao
The sources said the two governments, which have been at odds over funding for the contentious Suburban Rail Loop, had also struck an agreement to throw extra money into the airport rail link by building a new station at Sunshine, where the airport line would connect to suburban and regional rail networks.
The cash would come close to fully funding the estimated $13 billion Sunshine alignment project. The airport rail tie-up may be announced on Wednesday, but the timing has not been confirmed by this masthead.
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King had been in a dispute with Premier Jacinta Allan, who has been refusing to sign any infrastructure deal with Albanese unless it included more money for the $35 billion eastern section of the Suburban Rail Loop.
Before the 2022 state election, the Victorian government briefly rebranded the airport project as “SRL Airport” because it would one day link up with the orbital loop.
However, the Sunshine airport rail project is not linked to the sections of the rail loop being built and funded in the near future.
The latest federal funding has been quarantined for the airport rail project, according to Victorian sources, a win for King in the battle over competing mega-projects.
On February 12, the federal government released the $2.2 billion it allocated in 2022 towards the rail loop. The additional money sought by Victoria would not come until the Allan government did more to prove the project’s financial underpinning, King said at the time.
The state government is hoping to convince the federal government to contribute a further $9 billion to the eastern section, known as SRL East. It also hopes to raise another $12 billion from property charges linked to increased land values around the project.
King said at the time that her department recommended that the money be released to the Victorian government only “on the basis of very specific things that it will be going towards”.
But she added that more work needed to be done before there was any further federal investment. “I also need to make sure that I’m getting value for money for Australian taxpayer dollars.”
The standoff over project funding prompted Victorian federal MPs alarmed by a 17 per cent swing against Allan in the Werribee byelection to demand the premier stop “blackmailing” the prime minister for extra money for the rail loop.
After more than a decade of stalwart Labor support, Victoria has become a battleground state at this election as the Coalition targets an outsized number of suburban seats. Federal government MPs want to announce road and rail projects to win the support of disillusioned voters who have gone cold on the federal and state Labor governments.
The opposition is hopeful of winning Aston, Goldstein, Chisholm and McEwen and expects to be competitive in Dunkley, Kooyong, Bruce, Hawke and Holt.
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