The North East Link is set to cost up to $26.1bn, up from the earlier budget estimate of $15.8bn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokeswoman for minister King said the federal government wanted the projects delivered and had worked constructively with states and territories in the lead up to last month\u2019s budget to identify funding priorities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThrough the 2024-25 budget, we invested additional funding in a range of existing projects across the country to ensure they could be delivered,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe construction sector has been affected by cost increases, supply-chain constraints and labour shortages, challenges being experienced by industry globally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the $5bn in extra federal funding was redirected from projects dumped following a contentious review of federally-funded infrastructure, such as a Geelong fast rail project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twelve Victorian infrastructure projects were among 50 projects axed by Canberra to claw back $7bn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Ms McKenzie said $4.5bn of the $5bn was just to pay off Jacinta Allan\u2019s infrastructure credit card, with not one additional kilometre of road built for the money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe only way to describe the infrastructure spend is throwing money at Victorian Labor to cover their cost blowouts and debts,\u201d Senator McKenzie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGeelong fast rail was one of the dumped projects. Picture: David Crosling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The figures have exposed a series of cost blowouts on the $4bn Regional Rail Revival, which was a joint federal-state program to upgrade every country railway line in Victoria. As revealed by the Herald Sun in March, the program veered off track, with delays on the Warrnambool, Gippsland and Shepparton line upgrades due to labour and material shortages and signalling problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as the Gippsland line upgrade blowout, the commonwealth documents show the Shepparton line stage three upgrade will cost an extra $14m, and South Geelong to Waurn Ponds upgrades are $41m higher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The state budget did not reveal these new estimates, and listed completion dates as to be confirmed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Victorian government spokesman said the state budget was published before the commonwealth budget so the extra investment was not known at that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Victorian opposition transport infrastructure spokesman David Southwick said the Allan government had been caught cooking the books to cover up its \u00adfinancial mismanagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEvery time projects blow out, it means taxpayers end up footing the bill and missing out vital services,\u201d Mr Southwick said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLabor needs to come clean and release the true costings for each of these projects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HeraldSun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dozens of Big Build infrastructure projects have blown out yet again in budget overruns, costing taxpayers a hefty $83.6m every single day. See the full list here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":58897,"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":[273,8049,163,8160],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-58892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-geelong","category-rail-industry-news-australia-new-zealand","category-suburban-rail-loop","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58892","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=58892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58902,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58892\/revisions\/58902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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