Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan quashes hopes of Melbourne airport rail in the next decade

The Victorian government’s reluctance to expedite the Melbourne Airport rail project comes after it booked a $5bn saving in its May budget by declaring the project had been delayed by at least four years.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. Picture: David Crosling

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has quashed hopes of a Melbourne Airport rail link being completed in the next decade, despite the airport backing down from a demand for an underground station, and expressing hope a skyrail version could be built as soon as 2030.

Melbourne Airport chief executive Lorie Argus on Monday said the airport was prepared to compromise in the interests of expediting the project, which state and federal governments agreed to fund with $5bn each in 2019. The project had faced delays because of the airport’s preference for the more expensive underground option, as well as then premier Daniel Andrews pausing it in last year’s review of federal infrastructure funding.

Renders of the proposed Melbourne airport rail link project.

The May state budget indicated the state government now believed the project, initially to be completed by 2029, had been delayed by “at least four years”, deferring the expenditure of at least $5bn at a time when Victoria is headed for record debt.

The airport’s announcement comes after an independent mediator, installed by the Albanese government, in June recommended the airport do its own business case on an underground station if it still wished to pursue that option.

Asked to respond to Ms Argus’s hope that a rail link could be in place in time for the planned opening of Melbourne Airport’s third runway in 2030, Ms Allan welcomed the airport’s “acknowledgement … that the unreasonable demands they’ve held for a number of years now, do not stack up.”

“The construction timeline we outlined in 2019 was a very aggressive one, so we could deliver that big piece of infrastructure as quickly as possible; the completion date then was 2029,” she said. “Here we are in 2024, with years of delay caused by the airport’s ongoing insistence for a more time and expense costly underground station solution.”

She said the airport’s ongoing demand for compensation from the federal government for the use of land it leases from the commonwealth which will be required for the project represented another “unresolved issue” that could lead to further delays.