‘Building the plane while it’s flying’: How the government rewrote the story of the Suburban Rail Loop

AdvertisementSaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareAAAThere aren’t many people in Labor circles who can sell an idea like Bill Shannon.

In 1999, it was his eponymous ad agency that came up with the “Labor cares” tagline that helped sink the Kennett government. Today, his We’re All in This Together jingle made for industry super with singer Ben Lee is an irremovable earworm.So, when Jacinta Allan’s government needed to make sure the Suburban Rail Loop was playing well among voters, Shannon was the natural choice for the job.

There was just one catch: he was called in six years after the mega-project was announced and diggers were already in the ground.His first piece of work – a document titled “SRL Narrative Research and Implications” – was handed to the government in December 2024. It surveyed public opinion about the SRL and considered ways to sell it to Victorians, amid rising concerns about the $34.

5 billion price tag of the project’s first stage, the SRL East tunnel between Box Hill and Cheltenham.Construction is well under way on the SRL in Burwood.Joe ArmaoA redacted version was obtained by this masthead under freedom of information laws.

Shannon’s full research, according to insiders who have seen it, did not find the project was overly popular or unpopular. Nor did it justify a claim made privately by Labor MPs over the past two years – that the SRL is “more popular than Taylor Swift”.What Shannon did find, however, was that in the middle of a housing crisis, deliberately tying the project to the homes that would be created around its six stations could help its image.

The way to sell the SRL was to talk less about underground trains than what could be built on top.The Shannon Company’s presentation – shared with Allan’s cabinet and the Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) board – talked of a “change narrative” and “brand refresh”. There were even logos drawn up for Suburban Rail Loop Housing.

AdvertisementBut by May last year, the work to reposition the SRL was abandoned. While Allan still calls it Australia’s biggest housing project, Shannon’s logos never saw the light of day.To some inside the SRLA, it was another false start in a series of missteps that had come to characterise the agency in charge of Victoria’s largest infrastructure project.

They were left to wonder why, with $14 billion in contracts signed, the SRL was still in need of a narrative.While tunnelling is set to begin soon, the SRLA is in the midst of its second restructure in 18 months. Kevin Devlin, its interim chief executive, has been on loan from the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority (VIDA) for seven months.

Staff believe no replacement is coming, and that after November’s election, the two entities will merge.So what is the SRL? In 2018, its architects envisioned an unprecedented urban renewal project to deliver on the long-held ambition to make Melbourne a “city of centres”.

In 2026, even some of its biggest backers agree that ambition has been scaled back.This masthead has obtained hundreds of pages of documents about the project under freedom of information laws, some of which were only released after legal battles stretching over two years as the state government fought their publication all the way to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. This masthead has also interviewed more than a dozen bureaucrats, politicians, stakeholders and experts, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations.

AdvertisementTaken together, they paint a picture of a transport project doing its best to stay within budget, as those city-shaping plans are watered down by an authority forced to reverse-engineer policies to suit government announcements and combat financial pressures.A Suburban Rail Loop spokesperson said: “Melbourne needs an orbital rail line just like London and Tokyo – because it means better connections closer to schools, jobs and universities. The final planning controls for the six SRL stations have been finalised – giving communities certainty on what will get built and where.

“Premier Jacinta Allan at a Suburban Rail Loop site in Burwood.Luis Enrique AscuiBefore an election that could decide the future of the SRL, questions remain about its true purpose. The answer is important.

If the urban renewal element is not fully realised, the project will struggle to justify its already heavily questioned price tag.Five years ago, when The Age investigated the conception of the SRL, a consultant who worked on it said the distinction between precinct project and transport project was crucial.“Because if it is a transport project, there are a hell of a lot of better ways to spend your money,” they said.

Now, in the words of a senior public servant: “I don’t know if it’s got any identity at all.”AdvertisementTransport project or urban renewal project?This is the fundamental tug of war at the heart of the Suburban Ra