The Hon Catherine King MP
3AW Drive, Melbourne
JACQUI FELGATE [HOST]: We do speak a lot on this program about infrastructure spending in Victoria, so I do very much appreciate the time of the Infrastructure Minister, Catherine King. Good afternoon to you.
CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Hi, Jacqui. Lovely to be with you.
JACQUI FELGATE: Now, you’ve just announced, and I began the program by speaking about this, the $1.1 billion to revamp and fix up the Western Freeway. It is between Melton and Caroline Springs. But can I ask you, why now, given that this road – and we take call after call on the dangerous nature of this road – why now? Why not a year ago? Why not two years ago?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So, the Western Highway’s been a long term project. I’ve been living, obviously, in the west of the state for a long time so I well remember many of the projects we’ve had to do the work on, whether it’s Anthony’s Cutting, the Deer Park Bypass, the duplication beyond Ballarat – we’ve still got work to do all the way up to Stawell. But what we’ve seen has been significant housing growth along that, sort, of Caroline Springs, Rockbank, between Melton and Bacchus Marsh corridor, and the traffic has really been building up over time.
So, just before the last election we announced we’d partner with Victorian State Government to do a business case to try and work out what are the alternatives, what can you actually do? The work that’s being done, obviously on the West Gate Tunnel, will improve things down that end so you’ve got traffic can flow through. But really, how do we manage these new housing estates?
Business case got handed to the Victorian Government just at the end of last year and so we’ve been working with them on, well, now what do we need to actually fund? And that’s why the announcement is happening today of the $1.1 billion.
JACQUI FELGATE: Would you consider the road to be in acceptable condition, especially given you drive down it? What do you think when you drive along it?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So, I think from a safety- you know, there’s good safety from, sort of, a barrier perspective. But when you hit- if you’re travelling really early in the morning I hit normally what should be an hour and 20-minute trip into town is nowhere near that. You end up getting caught when you hit Bacchus Marsh – the tailback now from those big housing estates, particularly as we get a lot of tradies coming on at 6:00am in the morning. So, from 6:00 to about 9:30 it really is quite congested, and then the reverse coming home. There’ll be people stuck in traffic now trying to get on those Melton on ramps, really, it tails back there as well.
It’s also pretty narrow. And also then in terms of some of the surface work, we’ve seen some work being done, which is about containing the road.
JACQUI FELGATE: [Talks over] Is that- you mean potholes there.
CATHERINE KING: Yeah.
JACQUI FELGATE: So, what are the potholes like on the road?
CATHERINE KING: They’ve got better but there’s been a lot of work done. And again, one of the things I’ve been pointing out, which shocked me a fair bit, was the previous government had frozen maintenance money from the Federal Government…
JACQUI FELGATE: [Interrupts] We can’t keep blaming the previous government, though, Catherine.
CATHERINE KING: [Indistinct]…
JACQUI FELGATE: It’s banned on this program.
CATHERINE KING: That’s why I’ve fixed it. So I will say, I’ve taken responsibility now. We’re in government and so we’ve fixed that and put more maintenance money in. But what this does, it does a few things. So, the business case has come up with a whole range of options, whether they’re from widening at some areas, whether it’s into better interchanges, whether it’s diamond interchanges, it’s come up with a range of options.
Now we’ve put the money on the table it allows the Victorian Government to go, okay, which project do we need to do first? Where are we going to go with this money particularly to really get that Caroline Springs to Melton area as resolved as we possibly can, because it’s just had such huge growth. So, that’s what’s happened today.
JACQUI FELGATE: There is understandable frustration amongst the community, particularly from those in Victoria in the West, and some critics, myself included, would say that this is, basically, pork barrelling. Only now does the seat of Hawke and all of those seats that are now potentially going to swing the other way – only now do you come up with the money, because you’re in danger of losing those traditional Labor voters in the west.
CATHERINE KING: Well, that’s a comment. And what I’d say is that we’ve recognised there’s a problem. We’ve been in government just on three years, or just under three years. Business case got handed to us at the end of last year, now’s the time to say, well, now how do we actually then work out what- we’ve actually worked out what we need to do to fix it, now we’re committing the money.
What I would point out is it’s been Labor Governments consistently that has invested in the Western Highway. As I’ve said, I’ve lived down here for a long time and I’ve seen Labor Governments and I advocated I remember when Martin Ferguson was minister, to actually get Anthony’s Cutting done and the Deer Park Bypass funded. The duplication of the road as well, again, that’s been really strong advocacy by Labor Governments to get this done. And really, that’s what the investment is about today.
JACQUI FELGATE: Political support, both at a Federal and State Labor level has sunk over the past 18 months. You know, how worried are you that Victoria is going to be the state that becomes the battleground state this election?
CATHERINE KING: Well, my job as Infrastructure Minister is to look after the whole of the country, and Victoria is no different. I am investing in the East, I’m investing in the North, the South and the West to make sure that Victoria has the infrastructure it needs.
When we came to office the spend for infrastructure for the Commonwealth Government to Victoria was $17 billion. It is much higher in other states. We’ve managed, in the three years we’ve been up to- in office, to get it up to $24 billion with these announcements certainly finishing today, and that’s been really important. Because Victoria, frankly, has pretty much for the last decade had to go on its own when it came to infrastructure building. And really, that wasn’t good enough, and that’s what we’ve tried to do.
So, everywhere matters to me, every community, every suburb. I grew up in the east of the state, spent most of the first half of my life there. I’ve seen huge growth there, and I now live in the west of the state. Everywhere matters to us.
JACQUI FELGATE: And just on Sunshine. Speaking of the West, you would have seen the reports about the station up to $4 billion. Like, how can you spend $4 billion on a train station? It doesn’t…
CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well, infrastructure. Infrastructure is really expensive. I wish it wasn’t. I wish was not expensive to build.
JACQUI FELGATE: [Talks over] Is government infrastructure more expensive than private infrastructure?
CATHERINE KING: No, it’s just the cost. It’s really- like, we’ve seen labour costs, the cost of steel, the cost of cement, the amount of time it takes for engineering, there’s shortages of labour, all of that. It is just really costly and it’s like that all around the country. So, I get- I got asked a very similar question in Queensland: why is it more expensive in Queensland to build. Well, you know, it’s not. It’s expensive everywhere.
So, what’s- the station is actually a really big project and it’s quite a few things. So, one of the things it does is it creates an entire new set of lines so that you’ve got- you separate completely the country trains out, and so that’s a big piece of infrastructure. You think about, we’re building Southern Cross, we’re literally building Southern Cross at Sunshine Station. It’s a big project, so it will cost lots of money.
JACQUI FELGATE: Okay. I guess the frustration of people though is that government projects, whether they be federal or state and whether they be a Liberal or Labor project, they always blow out and they never finish on time. Certainly that is the experience in Victoria at the moment.
CATHERINE KING: Well, one of the things we’ve been trying to do and it’s why I’ve had a lot of work done to reform Infrastructure Australia and also reform the way I make decisions about what we invest in, so you often see me announce, and sometimes people criticise me for this, but you often see me announce planning money first. And everyone goes, well, why are you doing that? Why don’t you just build it? The reason I invest planning money first is because I want to know how much is this going to cost? Can we do the geotechnical work, you know, dig in the ground first, find out whether there’s hard rock there, what is there, and then actually get a much better understanding of the costs.
The other- and do that first before we commit construction money. So often, I will do that first and do that business planning work, which is what we’ve done with Western Highway. I’ve done that planning first. Everyone would have liked me three years ago just to fix the road but I wanted to know. I’m not an engineer. I need expert advice to tell me what are the treatments we need to do to actually fix this rather than just making the problem worse, which we sometimes can do when we put new lanes in, it just makes [indistinct]-
JACQUI FELGATE: [Interrupts] What problems have we made worse?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So, sometimes what happens when you actually say, okay, I’ll widen the lane, here, I’ll widen this road, it then narrows further down, it just moves the problem further down. So, some of the congestion busting that we saw in past years hasn’t always fixed the problem of actually getting congestion moving, or you just see new, more housing developments keep growing out. So, you’ve got to really think about how you do the planning work and then actually making sure you deliver the construction. And that’s what we’ve tried to do and tried to reform and working really closely with states.
States are now required to give me a 10-year pipeline of the projects that they think they’re going to need so that we’ve got a line of sight of where those investments need to be made. And we’ve worked really hard to try and make sure we build in things like more apprentices, more training, more of that staff.
JACQUI FELGATE: [Interrupts] Yes. And speaking- can I just ask speaking, because I know I’ve only got you for a certain amount of time?
CATHERINE KING: That’s all right.
JACQUI FELGATE: But just on suburban rail and that 10-year pipeline, is that still a priority for you? And can you afford to do both airport rail and the first stage of suburban rail between Cheltenham and Box Hill? Do you have enough money?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So, Suburban Rail Loop East is under construction now. We’ve put $2.2 billion in that. Infrastructure Australia has assessed that project for me which has allowed me to release that $2.2 billion. We’ll assess further requests as they come forward, they’ll need to go through Infrastructure Australia as well.
But what we’ve said, and the Prime Minister announced recently, is that we also think that that will go under construction, Victorian State Government has entered into contracts and it’s doing that. We also think that the airport rail, it is time that we actually got this off the books. We’ve had, both of us, have had $10 billion sitting on the table, literally not productively being used and we want to actually get this project done. So, we’ve now unlocked that by putting the extra $2 billion into Sunshine Precinct. We’ve been working really constructively with the airport and that’s been a bit of a deadlock between the three parties. And we’ve got- we’ll have a bit more to say about that shortly.
JACQUI FELGATE: You talk about contracts. You mentioned the word that the state government had allocated contracts for Suburban Rail Loop, and then you just previously spoke to me about the importance of planning and the importance of allocating money where it should go in the right way. Given that the state government has already allocated contracts going forward that you are yet to put funding in, can you guarantee, like, are you still going to fund what has been contracted? Because the state government can’t do it all on their own.
CATHERINE KING: Well I mean, Suburban Rail Loop East, we’ve been pretty clear. The commitment we made was to deliver $2.2 billion to that project, and we have now done that. Any further requests will need to be assessed by Infrastructure Australia, and that really is- I’ve been pretty firm about that. But obviously, the Victorian State Government is progressing that project, early works have been done. The tunnel boring machines, you’ll start to see those, I think, later this year, that’s been committed to. And we will consider further requests as they come in.
JACQUI FELGATE: Do you like that project, the Suburban Rail Loop?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Well, I grew up in the East. I grew up catching the train from Syndal Station into the city. Glen Waverley, that was my stomping ground from all my teenage years to my 20s, and I can absolutely recognise how difficult it is to get across and then what you’re trying to do at Monash, so trying to actually get public transport to Monash.
JACQUI FELGATE: [Talks over] So, have you driven a lot from Cheltenham to Box Hill?
CATHERINE KING: Yeah, I have done, to be honest, on occasion. And then I was trying to get, because I grew up in Syndal, from Syndal to Monash and through there was always really difficult. But the other thing it unlocks is, if you live down Gippsland Way and you need to get your kid to the Children’s Hospital at Monash or you’re going to university, it also unlocks that. So, it’s actually got some really terrific benefits.
It’s also about building. If you look over- if anyone’s been over to WA, they’ve built this unbelievably huge Melbourne metro system which is unlocking new housing, new suburbs, new industrial precincts, and that’s what they’ve done there in recognition of the growth that is occurring. And so, that’s really what suburban rail sort of does. It provides that loop and that housing.
So, I think it’s a really- it’s seen as a necessary project. Infrastructure Australia says it’s an important project for the state. But there’s a little bit more work the state needs to do around the value capture proposition to convince Infrastructure Australia about where, how the money and the funding is all going to work together, and they’ll do that work over the course of the next year or so.
JACQUI FELGATE: One would hope. Catherine King is the Infrastructure Minister. Always appreciate your time.
CATHERINE KING: Always happy to be with you.
JACQUI FELGATE: Thank you.