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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 145 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 17 March 2022 by Mr R.S. Love

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

METRONET — CONSTRUCTION COSTS

145. Mr R.S. LOVE to the Minister for Transport:

I refer to Josh Zimmerman's article from last Sunday that refers to the suite of Metronet projects.

(1) Has the government adjusted its cost expectations for Metronet to reflect two years of ballooning steel prices, critical workforce shortages, and a surge in fuel prices placing upward pressure on the cost of construction?

(2) How much extra does the government expect to spend to complete the suite of projects?

Ms R. SAFFIOTI replied:

I thank the member for that question.

(1)–(2) Of course, today in the second reading debate the member acknowledged just how much support the federal government is giving to Metronet. In fact, I was little bit shocked, maybe I should not have been, when I was in my car listening to an Australian government ad that said, ''The Australian government is delivering infrastructure across the nation, including Metronet and the Bunbury Outer Ring Road in Western Australia''! Are they our ads? No, they are federal government ads. We are delivering a record number of infrastructure and projects throughout Western Australia including Metronet. What we do is to keep monitoring the projects. They are all in different stages of delivery. They have different styles of contracts and some of them have different levels of contingency too. There are a number of variable factors, and as I said today, we have had a significant increase in steel prices and some projects are quite vulnerable to that, particularly if a large component of that structure is steel. For example, bridges, particularly the steel bridge that we announced today, have a large percentage of steel components. There are significant cost pressures. As the Premier said, with rising iron ore prices, you get the rising royalty revenue, but the offset, whether it is schools, or anything that is being delivered throughout the state, is that there are cost pressures. But we continually monitor those. If cost pressures materialise and crystallise, we acknowledge that through the budget process and through midyear processes. That is what we have done. We take a very sensible approach with a very open relationship with contractors, to make sure that we can all work to deliver our projects.