Melbourne's Big Build hits fresh turbulence: What happened this week on the city's mega-projects

The Suburban Rail Loop Authority confirmed this week that tunnelling beneath Monash University's Clayton campus has reached the halfway mark, a milestone the state government was eager to trumpet even as fresh budget scrutiny closed in from Treasury and the federal infrastructure department. The announcement landed on Tuesday, four days after a leaked internal review estimated the project's first stage — running from Cheltenham to Box Hill — has crept past $34 billion, roughly $4 billion above the figure promoted at the 2022 election.

The timing matters. With the Allan government already defending its fiscal position on multiple fronts — including a lingering argument with the federal opposition over infrastructure cost-sharing agreements — any upward revision to the SRL price tag carries real political weight. The project is the largest public infrastructure commitment in Victoria's history, and the cost-per-kilometre figure now rivals the Sydney Metro West, a comparison infrastructure economists have been making loudly since March.

North East Link and the CFMEU question

Separate tension simmered this week around the North East Link project, where work on the 6.5-kilometre tunnel beneath Bulleen Road and the Yarra River corridor resumed after a 72-hour stoppage last weekend. The CFMEU's Victorian branch confirmed a site access dispute at the Watsonia worksite had been resolved late Wednesday following intervention from Fair Work Australia, though no agreement details were made public. Boral and CPB Contractors, the joint venture partners on that section, declined to comment.

The stoppage drew notice because it was the third work interruption on the North East Link since January — a pattern that has started to worry the project's financiers. The full North East Link is contracted for completion by 2028, connecting the Eastern Freeway at Clifton Hill through to the Metropolitan Ring Road at Greensborough. Any further delays push that date closer to the next state election cycle, which the government is acutely aware of.

On the Monash Freeway widening, which is the less glamorous but arguably more immediately useful piece of work currently underway, VicRoads confirmed this week that the additional lanes between EastLink and Clyde Road in Berwick will open to traffic on August 18. The $530 million upgrade has been under construction since mid-2024. Peak-hour travel times on that corridor during morning runs are measured at an average of 41 minutes from Berwick to the city; the state government's modelling suggests the widening shaves roughly nine minutes off that figure, though independent transport engineers contacted by this masthead put the realistic gain at closer to five or six minutes once induced demand is factored in.

The Outer Suburban squeeze

The week's most pointed local debate came from Melbourne's south-east growth corridor, where Cardinia Shire Council formally wrote to the Department of Transport and Planning asking for a construction start date on the Pakenham East passenger rail extension. The shire's submission, lodged Thursday, noted that the Pakenham station precinct is now absorbing more than 3,000 new residents per year, and that the extension — announced in principle in 2022 — still has no funding line in the current state budget.

Community groups in Officer and Pakenham East have been running a sustained campaign since February through the South East Communities Alliance, arguing that 47,000 people currently live in suburbs beyond the existing rail terminus with no direct rail access to the CBD. That figure is projected to reach 90,000 by 2036 according to the Victorian Planning Authority's own corridor strategy documents.

What happens next is largely a waiting game tied to the mid-year budget update, expected in September. The Suburban Rail Loop Authority's cost position will be central to any decision about which projects get funded in sequence. Residents along the proposed SRL alignment between Clayton and Burwood East should watch for property acquisition notices, which the authority has said will be issued progressively through the second half of 2026. On North East Link, the next scheduled community briefing is set for Bulleen Community Centre on July 22.