WA rail plan cheaper than doing nothing: Saffioti

Labor’s $2.3 billion transport vision for Perth may be a lot cheaper than the alternative, WA minister Rita Saffioti says.

Rita Saffioti. Picture: Colin Murty

The McGowan Labor government’s ambitious $2.3 billion transport vision for Perth may turn out to be a lot cheaper than the alternative, West Australian cabinet minister Rita Saffioti has indicated.

Ms Saffioti, a former economist tasked with rolling out the McGowan government’s signature Metronet rail plan, told The Australian’s Better Cities forum in Perth last week that there were significant challenges for her government as it worked to fulfil its election commitments and put the state on a path for growth.

Metronet is a blueprint for a web of passenger rail lines across Perth that relies heavily on the McGowan Labor government’s ability to extract money from the commonwealth.

WA Labor took Metronet to the 2013 state election and lost but in March it swept to power in a landslide, with the public transport vision — and local jobs to build it — at the forefront of its campaign.

The federal government has agreed to fund the bulk of the projects, provided business plans for the infrastructure stack up.

“It is about getting that co-­ordination between transport planning and land-use planning,” Ms Saffioti, who is state Planning, Lands and Transport Minister, told the Better Cities event.

“We are committed to doing that to ensure that not only we get some great housing affordability outcomes — but it’s recognising that in this day and age … finances are difficult and infrastructure spend is tight.

“Therefore, every dollar of infrastructure that we spend, we don’t just don’t get that transport outcome; we get the wider outcomes, the housing affordability outcomes.

“That is the key point. Every dollar we spend, we want to maximise that outcome. So as part of the future business cases, we’re looking at integrating that as part of our business case — not only looking at the transport, but the overall outcome.”

Not only does Ms Saffioti propose to factor in the financial benefits of building public transport each time she presents a case to Infrastructure Australia, she is also contemplating ways to factor in the costs of not building public transport in all state government decisions.

“We know we’ve got to build a rail line or there’s a road that’s going to be congested but we don’t actually acknowledge that, and as a result, the choices for government have been skewed to the lower cost, which has normally been to just allow new suburbs to be build, because you’re not making the conscious choice,” she said.

“So I have an idea, which I haven’t implemented yet, but there’s another idea I have

“You actually have those choices at the front end so governments can make that real choice.

“… So do we allow these suburbs to keep growing at this point in time, or do we invest that into purchasing land?”