MEMBER for Northern Victoria Tania Maxwell has put the botched Murray Basin Rail Project on her $77 million budget wishlist.
The Derryn Hinch Justice Party MP said completion of the Murray Basin Rail Project was vital to remove more than 20,000 heavy-vehicle trips from roads, improve network efficiency and deliver a sustainable freight rail network for the future of the Victorian agriculture sector.
Ms Maxwell has sought $5 million from the Victorian Government to match Commonwealth funding for a re-examination of the project standardisation plan.
“The revised business case of 2020 noted performance issues persist with the network while it remains in a configuration state that was ‘not intended to be permanent’, and is shifting freight from rail to road,” she said.
Swan Hill Mayor Jade Benham said the council was “screaming from the hilltops” for the project to be finished.
“The State Government really needs to come to the party and get this finished,” she said.
“I’m of the opinion that if this was a tunnel project it would have been funded by now, but it’s rail.
“The thing that gets on my goat about this rail project is because the standardisation hasn’t been finished, it means a lot of freight has gone to the road.
“We don’t have enough funding from the other tiers of government to increase our road maintenance program because the volume of bigger trucks on the roads now.”
Cr Benham said the botched program had “gone on that long the business case will still be flawed because all the freight has left rail already”.
“If we could get some of it back on … I’m just not optimistic that we will be able to take, particularly grain freight, back to rail.
“There has been such an over-spend initially, it has just literally been dropped, which is unfortunate.”
Ms Maxwell said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recent stevedoring report showed a decline in freight load into Melbourne Port from 13.9 per cent in 2014 to 6.1 per cent in 2021.
“VicRoads data reports northbound traffic has tripled to 60,000 more trips each year in both directions, from 40 trucks a day in 2009 to 119 trucks in 2020 along the Sunraysia Highway.
“This increased, high-load traffic is impacting regional roads, including damage to shoulders.”
Ms Maxwell said the December 2020 Infrastructure Victoria Infrastructure for the Regions Report stated that freight volumes in regional Victoria were forecast to grow at an average rate of 1.5 per cent each year between 2014 and 2051, and recommended rail as critical infrastructure to support agriculture, manufacturing, mining and energy sectors.
“The Sunraysia Mallee Port Link (SMPL) intermodal project could carry 60 per cent of 80,000 tonnes of annual freight loads in far north-west Victoria – creating jobs, reducing carbon emissions, boosting manufacturing, improving road safety and reducing the cost from paddock to port,” she said.
“This project requires the conversion of the Maryborough to North Geelong line to standard gauge.
“Ouyen Inc, as a stakeholder in the SMPL intermodal project, has provided some recommendations to government to solve issues relating to the Ballarat line that were one of the reasons for the revised business case.
“Examination of these solutions would provide certainty to the north-west farm sector for the future.”
Ms Maxwell also put forward for State Budget consideration $35 million for a Mildura drug court and alcohol and other drugs rehabilitation unit.
