Victoria will get a new deal on urban infrastructure if Labor wins the next federal election, with the opposition pledging to make Melbourne’s “critical” congestion problems a national priority.
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With the city’s population rapidly approaching 5 million and transport links struggling to keep up, Labor’s infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese says public transport is the key to tackling Melbourne’s congestion problem.
The high-profile frontbencher told The Age that the state was being “ripped off” by the Commonwealth and that the city’s outer-urban growth corridors, which are seeing the most dramatic population growth, “need fixing".
Labor has high hopes of taking two Liberal-held marginal seats on Melbourne’s outskirts at the next federal election, with both Corangamite in the west and Dunkley in the far south-east considered winnable in the light of proposed re-distributions.
Both electorates have high-population-growth areas and are infrastructure-hungry.
The Turnbull government, aware of the threat, has turned up the heat on Victorian Labor over its infrastructure spend with a $5 billion pledge to fund an airport rail link, and an accompanying political attack on the state government, sparkling a renewed round of squabbling.
But Mr Albanese said a federal Labor government would bring a new approach based on a partnership between Spring Street and Canberra.
“Labor will certainly do a new deal and it will be one based on partnership,” Mr Albanese said.
“We want to work with the Andrews government as we worked with governments of both political persuasions when we were last in office.
“There’s a range of [projects] in the outer-suburban growth corridors that clearly need fixing.
“ We think that tackling urban congestion is critical and the key to that is public transport.
“We announced during the byelection in Batman that we are re-committed to extending the number 11 tram and there are other things that we will do.”
The federal government says Victoria gets more than 19 per cent of Commonwealth infrastructure money and Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher accused the Andrews Labor government this week of hoarding billions in unspent funding to be used when it would give maximum political advantage.
The state says it actually gets less than 10 per cent of the national infrastructure pie and Mr Albanese came down this week on the side of his ALP colleagues.
“Victoria has been ripped off, receiving 9.7 per cent of the federal infrastructure budget even though it comprises 25 per cent of the population and it has Melbourne as Australia’s fastest-growing city," he said.
“On top of that, there’s been a $1 billion underspend in [the Coalition's] first four budgets, that is the difference between what they would said they would spend and what they have actually invested.
“So the Turnbull government has continued the Abbott government’s response, the first thing they did was rip $3 billion out of the Melbourne Metro and $500 million out of the M80 and have a circumstance whereby Victoria is not getting its fair share.
“We allocated $3 billion to the regional rail link project that is now up and running.
“We also invested in the M80, we had the managed motorways program, we invested in rails freight, the Geelong Ring Road, the Princes Highway east and west, we consistently invested in infrastructure.
