Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (15:48): (1421) My constituency question is to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The most recent Victorian Auditor-General’s report indicates that the upgrading of 4 kilometres of road between Settlement Road and Reserve Road on Barwon Heads Road has blown out from a planned cost in the 2019–20 budget of over $318 million to $365 million today. This is a substantial increase of $46.7 million, which the government has put down to market escalation, no less. Considering that some major project costings remain unchanged in that same period, how can project orders of magnitude smaller in scope have increased by almost 15 per cent? My question to the minister is: how does he explain the multi-million-dollar blowout on this Barwon Heads project and market escalation as the convenient excuse?