Reports today have revealed the cost of the NSW Government’s City and Southwest Metro has ballooned by at least $2.2 billion.
 
These latest figures will take the total cost of the project to over $17 billion.

This comes on top of recent reports showing the true cost of three of Sydney’s road projects – the M6 Stage 1, the WestConnex Rozelle Interchange and the Sydney Gateway surged by $1.4 billion in the last financial year.
 
Last year it was revealed the Metro West line would also blow out its budget, reaching $27 billion and arriving almost a decade after it was first promised. The follows the CBD Light Rail final cost being disclosed at $3.3 billion, more than double the original estimate.
 
The NSW Government needs to come clean about where the money will come from to cover the massive blowouts across its major transport infrastructure projects, and how it plans to get them under control.
 
Shadow Treasurer, Daniel Mookhey said:
 
“This section of Sydney Metro is on-track to report a massive blowout.  
 
“Every extra dollar we spend to compensate for the government’s poor management of this project is a dollar of borrowed money. NSW is running out of the money needed to bail the government out of mistakes of their own making.  
 
“This government habitually hides the true cost of major projects. 
 
“They use absurd arguments to cloak the cost of major projects in a veil of secrecy as they try to cover up their incompetence.  
 
“The military is more open about the deployments of Australia’s armed forces, than the NSW Government is about the cost of building a rail-line.
 
“The government needs to come clean about the true cost building this stage of the Metro. 
 
“If the public is paying to build it, the public deserves to know what it is likely to cost.”
 
Shadow Minister for Transport, Jo Haylen said:

“The massive cost blow outs in the Sydney Metro budget jeopardise the vital public transport projects we will need to build in the future.
 
“It’s clear that the Government has lost control of the transport portfolio. Their procurement policies have failed, they can’t run existing train services and now can’t manage their infrastructure budget.”
 
“This is spending that needs to be earmarked for future transport projects. People in growing communities will need the transport infrastructure and our economy will need the investment and the jobs.
 
“If the money to fund the transport infrastructure pipeline is used for budget blow outs then none of this can happen.”