The Labor government may have used up its political capital when it axed the Commonwealth Games, but there’s still a way out of this costly mess.
One of the best gifts Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could give Jacinta Allan this Christmas would be an excuse for her to press pause on the multibillion-dollar Suburban Rail Loop.
Since it was hastily announced five years ago, the state government has pressured Canberra for help to fund up to a third of the rail loop, but enthusiasm from successive federal governments has been lukewarm at best.In 2019, then opposition leader Bill Shorten pledged $10 billion for the project if he were to win government that year. He didn’t.
Skyrocketing inflation, surging construction prices, workforce shortages, changed work patterns reducing public transport dependency and mounting debt are all perfectly good and legitimate reasons for the Allan government to reprioritise its infrastructure priorities and take a beat.But this is politics, and even if the Premier was tempted to ditch one of her signature projects, she knows that breaking an election promise rarely goes unpunished.
had forced the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates, to make it seem like it was doing us a favour. The Coalition, too, would be hard-pressed to prosecute a policy retreat given a year ago it also promised to shelve the SRL to free up cash if elected.
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