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Melburnians could be forgiven some confusion at the news late last week that the construction cost of the North East Link has mushroomed to $26 billion. Another major transport project, another cost blowout in the billions of dollars.
But what this pattern is starting to reveal is significant failings in our system of politics and planning, and indeed our democracy.
A dramatically widened Eastern Freeway – shown here with more than 20 lanes – is part of the North East Link project.Credit: Victorian government
The North East Link is one of a large suite of major projects pursued by the Victorian government since 2014, including the Melbourne Metro Tunnel, the West Gate Tunnel, the airport rail link and perhaps the grandest of them all, the Suburban Rail Loop.
Of these projects, the West Gate Tunnel and Metro Tunnel have both faced multibillion-dollar construction cost blowouts, while the North East Link has already soared from its original $10 billion budget. Despite being endorsed twice at Victorian elections, the cost of the Suburban Rail Loop remains unclear, with initial estimates of $50 billion being superseded by more official Parliamentary Budget Office costings of $150 billion.
These projects are notable for being either election campaign promises not subjected to
detailed investigation, or government announcements generated ad-hoc with little
preceding technical appraisal or public debate over benefits and costs.
In large, complex cities, democratic participation is central to making good decisions that reflect the wider public interest. When decisions are made outside a clearly informed and participatory process, the results will probably fail to reflect public preferences on the expenditure of billions of dollars. Poor outcomes also raise doubts about democratic processes and can bring the legitimacy of government into question.
In the case of infrastructure planning, there is key information that needs to be visible to the public so informed decisions can be made about what projects to proceed with. The benefits of a project are most usually known, but the costs, whether urban impacts or in financial terms, are often unknown. If the cost of a project is miscalculated or misrepresented, the former of which appears to be the case with the North East Link, then the public’s ability to make well-informed decisions is seriously imperiled. That is a democratic failing.
When governments make decisions to proceed with projects on the basis of scoping
studies or preliminary appraisals only, and with incomplete or inaccurate costings, the public doesn’t know what exactly it is supporting when it votes for a government to implement such projects. This has been the pattern in Victoria since 2014.
The politicisation of major projects so they become vehicles for governments to proclaim their credentials as practical managers, rather than being subject to deliberative public consideration and evaluation, is a serious risk to good government. When this becomes a pattern of behaviour, the competence of a government must surely be brought into serious question. To allow one poorly conceived project to experience a major cost blowout might be bad fortune, to repeatedly allow projects to suffer such fate, at the cost of tens of billions of dollars, seems like bad management.
What is the alternative to ad hoc decision-making and the costly outcomes it generates? At any moment, there are multiple potential projects that could be pursued. Ideally, major infrastructure projects would not be proposed without a wider consideration of the city’s future needs. What those needs are, and how to respond to them, requires a participatory and transparent planning process.
Melbourne has had mixed experiences with metropolitan strategy-making. The Melbourne 2030 strategy released in 2002, for example, undertook wide-ranging public consultation. That consultation found public transport was overwhelmingly favoured by citizens. Yet the main project selected by the Victorian government was the Scoresby Freeway (subsequently EastLink), while also reprivatising the public transport system.
The Victorian government last week announced a new iteration of metropolitan strategy for Melbourne, within the context of planning for Victoria overall, to be prepared during 2024. This plan needs a wide-ranging and transparent process that includes public participation, preparation, revision and endorsement. It requires far more transparency than has been the case since 2014.
Moreover, the new Victoria (and Melbourne) plan needs to incorporate transport infrastructure planning. The government should already have prepared a transport plan under the stipulations of the Transport Integration Act 2010, but no plan has appeared. The auditor-general castigated the government in 2021 for its failings on transport planning. The new Victoria plan is an opportunity to rectify that failing.
Given its legacy, the capability of the state government to prepare a plan for Victoria that is more than a political document used to give cover to predetermined decisions remains in doubt. If the new plan, including transport elements, is to be a genuine attempt to consider Victoria’s (and Melbourne’s) future, the centralised and opaque decision-making and political manipulations of the past decade need to be transcended. Not least because Victoria can’t afford another decade of multiple billions in costly blowouts of ill-chosen and miscalculated projects.
Jago Dodson is professor of urban policy and director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT.
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