{"id":54326,"date":"2024-05-27T21:03:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T11:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=54326"},"modified":"2024-05-27T18:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T08:07:27","slug":"victoria-accuses-melbourne-airport-of-holding-rail-link-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=54326","title":{"rendered":"Victoria accuses Melbourne Airport of holding rail link \u2018hostage\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Victorian government says Melbourne Airport is holding a proposed rail link from the city \u201chostage\u201d, with the state and the transport hub owned by some of the country\u2019s biggest infrastructure investors now in external mediation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airport, which is owned by private investors including property group Dexus<\/a>, IFM Investors and the Future Fund, has been locked in a stalemate with the state over the location of a train station on land leased to the airport by the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas has accused the airport of wanting a \u201cgold-plated\u201d underground station and compensation for disruption during construction. He prefers an above ground, believing an underground station would create more disruption, take almost two years longer to build and cost more than $1 billion extra.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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An artist\u2019s image of the kind of underground rail terminal Melbourne Airport would like to build.  Melbourne Airport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cMelbourne Airport continues to hold the airport rail project hostage, delaying the project\u2019s completion date by up to four years and wasting billions of dollars,\u201d a government spokesman told The Australian Financial Review. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe airport has deliberately frustrated the process every step of the way by trying to extort hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from the state \u2013 refusing to contribute a single cent towards the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe look forward to the Commonwealth progressing matters with their appointed mediator to help resolve the unreasonable demands of its tenant, Melbourne Airport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the airport, which supports a rail link, says it wants to \u201cfuture-proof\u201d the airport station so that it is easy for travellers to get to in bad weather and so that land above ground can be used to expand terminals in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn April, Melbourne Airport offered to explore potential funding opportunities to help deliver a future-proof airport station,\u201d an airport spokesman said. \u201cThis offer was reiterated to government following May\u2019s state budget. To date, the state has refused our requests for a meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Four years delayed\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The airport was part of a consortium, Air Rail Melbourne, that in 2019 offered up to $7 billion to build an underground airport station and express rail link to the CBD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposal was rejected by the state. But the airport believes it could put together a competitive funding proposal if a feasibility study on an underground station was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Victoria and the Commonwealth have each committed $5 billion of funding to the project, which was projected to cost up to $13 billion in its 2022 business case<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early April, the federal government appointed Neil Scales, a former director-general of Queensland\u2019s transport department, to try and resolve the stoush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King told a Committee for the Economic Development of Australia conference in April that \u201cthe challenge we\u2019ve obviously got is making the decision about where the station box goes and that dispute we have with the airport, trying to get that settled\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Mr Scales is understood to have held initial meetings with the airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokeswoman for Ms King declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2021, the Victorian government said it expected to start construction on the rail link in 2022 with a forecast completion date of 2029. Contracts for early works on the project, such as relocating transmission towers and telecommunications, water and electricity services are continuing, were awarded and started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by early last year Premier Jacinta Allan was describing talks with Melbourne Airport as \u201cchallenging\u201d and Mr Pallas confirmed in his budget speech in earlier this month that the rail project was \u201cat least four years delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victoria\u2019s opposition has used the dispute to attack Labor, claiming the government has wasted $67 million<\/a> demobilising contractors \u2013 who are due to complete early works this year \u2013 until the dispute with the airport is resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberal public transport spokesman Matthew Guy said it was astounding that planning and design issues remained unresolved after the state government launched the rail link project six years ago. \u201cAt this rate, teleportation will have been invented before Melbourne Airport rail is commenced,\u201d Mr Guy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unions claim that the airport is putting profits before people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile Melbourne Airport gouged $106.2 million in car park profits in the last financial year, airport workers on meagre wages and conditions are struggling to commute to work on top of cost-of-living expenses,\u201d said the Victorian state secretary of the Transport Workers\u2019 Union, Mem Suleyman, adding the airport needed skilled workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has gone on long enough, we need to see an airport rail link installed without further delay, and urgent measures taken to introduce additional bus services to provide immediate assistance to workers doing it tough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Australian states have taken different approaches to building airport stations. Perth\u2019s new airport rail link was paid for by the state government and has an underground airport station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is linked to the airport\u2019s terminals by an above-ground entrance and a \u201cskybridge\u201d and travellers pay regular train fares of just $5.10 to get from the airport to Perth\u2019s CBD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sydney Airport has underground stations at its domestic and international terminals that were privately funded and travellers have to pay an access fee of $17 for a single trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brisbane Airport\u2019s Airtrain rail link, which is above ground and was privately funded, costs $21.90 one-way to travel from the airport to Brisbane\u2019s CBD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Queensland government is in talks with Airtrain, owned by a UK pension fund, Universities Superannuation Scheme, to end its contract early so it can reduce fares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melbourne Airport\u2019s rail link\u2019s business case assumed airport travellers would pay a \u201cpremium\u201d fare to use it but did not specify the cost of fares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Victorian government says Melbourne Airport is holding a proposed rail link from the city \u201chostage\u201d, with the state and the transport hub owned by some of the country\u2019s biggest infrastructure investors now in external mediation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":54330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,513,163],"tags":[993,7,8],"class_list":["post-54326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-melbourne-airport","category-rail-industry-news-australia-new-zealand","tag-melbourne","tag-transport","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54331,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54326\/revisions\/54331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}