On May 1, 2023, the Commonwealth Government announced a review of its 10-year, $120 billion infrastructure pipeline, the Infrastructure Investment Program (IIP).
The program principally funds road and rail infrastructure and Victoria’s North East Link Project is on the IIP list with a promise of Commonwealth funding of $1.75 billion.
The review is stated to assess whether larger projects, such as the North East Link, have proper cost-benefit analyses and whether projects are actual priorities.
On these rather straightforward grounds, the North East Link Project should be denied the $1.75 billion in Commonwealth funding.
Stop North East Link Alliance wrote to the responsible Commonwealth minister, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Catherine King, to highlight why the project should be denied Commonwealth funding.
We did not quite put it this way, but the project would struggle to meet tests of viability expected of ABC TV’s Utopia.
See our submission: