Around the corner from my Brunswick St office, at the RNA showgrounds, work is underway on the Exhibition station upgrade so it’s ready for Cross River Rail, Brisbane’s new subway system. This appears to have necessitated traffic control on Gregory Terrace, the latest of many disruptions associated with the mega project. With all the disruptions, cost blowouts, and the possibility public transport usage won’t recover to its pre-COVID trajectory–it’s now at only 80-90% of pre-pandemic levels according to the Brisbane Times–it’s legitimate to question whether Cross River Rail was a good investment of public funds. It’s looking more likely the critics were right about the project, which could ultimately cost in the order of $10 billion. 

As questionable a project as Cross River Rail is, at least it’s not as bad as the $100 billion Melbourne suburban rail loop the Victorian Government green-lighted and which is receiving billions in federal funding, despite the state government not submitting a business case to Infrastructure Australia (see Daniel Andrews’ Suburban Rail Loop proceeds without business case). 

Clearly we can do better in infrastructure decision making across Australia, and one positive step toward that was suggested by Allegra Spender and her fellow Teal MPs last month when they proposed to legislate for compulsory disclosure of estimated costs and benefits of any major project proposed for Infrastructure Australia’s priority list (see Allegra Spender’s tweet below). This seemed eminently sensible to me, so I was aghast it was knocked back by a Government-Opposition team up. Both major parties have a mutual interest in continuing the current system which provides insufficient protections against pork barreling it seems.

This inglourious episode in national politics prompted a conversation between me and Nicholas Gruen on our new Policy Provocations podcast (see the YouTube video above). Nicholas’s big idea, which he applies in a wide range of public policy areas, is to use the wisdom of crowds to get better public policy outcomes. He thinks randomly-selected citizen’s juries or panels could help us make better infrastructure decisions and I agree. 

At the time Cross River Rail was being advanced, multiple experts were questioning the net benefits of the project and it would have been good to convene a public forum or citizens’ jury of some kind to elicit a wide range of perspectives and to subject the project to real scrutiny. Given the projected strong growth of SEQ, it may well make sense to build something like Cross River Rail one day, but I am sceptical regarding whether we need it now. Given Queensland’s various health, youth crime, and housing crises, there are arguably more important priorities. 

Please feel free to comment below. Alternatively, you can email comments, questions, suggestions, or hot tips to contact@queenslandeconomywatch.com. Also please check out my Economics Explored podcast, which has a new episode each week.