Jacinta Allan under fire for claiming level crossings delivered within budget

A cost blowout is merely ‘additional investment’, according to Jacinta Allan.

First full day on the job: Premier Jacinta Allan gives a press conference at a level crossing removal site in southeastern Melbourne at Pakenham. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

Jacinta Allan has euphemistically described blowouts on the Metro rail tunnel as “additional investment” and been accused of falsely claiming that the Victorian government’s level crossing removal program has been delivered within budget, on her first full day as the state’s new Premier.

Ms Allan, who has until now had responsibility for transport infrastructure, held a press conference at a level crossing removal site in the outer southeastern Melbourne suburb of Pakenham, following a radio interview with the ABC’s Rafael Epstein.

Asked by Epstein to explain the fact that “no one has presided over blowouts (as) big” as those that have occurred on projects for which she has responsibility, Ms Allan said no one had “presided over a program this big that is transforming our transport ­network”.

“Other governments have looked at them and walked away from them because they’ve been to seen as too hard,” Ms Allan said.

“If you consider that just the Metro tunnel, and yes, that is a project that we have added in ­additional investment to, but this is going to transform Melbourne and Victoria as public transport network at a time when our population is growing,” she said.

The cost of the Metro rail tunnel was confirmed to have blown out by $2.74bn to $12.58bn in 2020, with Victoria’s Auditor-General warning more recently that further blowouts are almost certain ahead of its scheduled 2026 opening.

The state opposition also took issue on Thursday with Ms Allan’s claims regarding level crossing removals, after she told Epstein that the 72 level crossings the government had so far removed were part of a “program that is not just ahead of time but also under budget, under the published budget that’s in the budget papers.”

Opposition Leader John Pesutto seized on the claim, accusing the Premier of getting her “numbers wrong”.

“The new Premier maintains that her level crossing removal program has, according to her own published budget papers, been delivered within budget.

“That’s patently wrong,” Mr Pesutto said.

“Her level crossing removal program, according to her own budget papers as published, show that there is at least a $334m blowout on level crossing removals.

“It was perhaps fitting that the new Premier’s first press conference was before a level crossing which like so many others is over budget.

“First day on the job, not off to a good start when you’re getting things so wrong: in this case, getting the cost of level crossings out by $334m — $300m may not be a lot to the new Premier but Vic­torians are familiar with that figure, given that we lost, completely wasted, $380m on the Commonwealth Games debacle,” Mr Pesutto said.

Until she and the former premier, Daniel Andrews, in July axed regional Victoria’s hosting of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Ms Allan had been the minister responsible for the event.

Asked about her claims that the level crossings had been delivered under budget at her press conference, Ms Allan said the budget for level crossings had “gone up because the number of level crossings we’ve removed has gone up”.

The then Andrews opposition promised to removed 50 level crossings ahead of the 2014 state elections, but has since pledged to remove 110 by 2030, with 72 so far gone.

Contrary to Ms Allan’s claims, the $334m blowout is on top of the money budgeted for the ­additional crossing removals.