No additional funding was announced for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop.

No additional funding was announced for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop.Credit:Getty

The centre estimates Victoria will lose a net 40,600 residents to other jurisdictions – particularly Queensland – over the three years to July 2023,before gaining 19,200 people over the following three years.

NSW will be hit with a bigger exodus,with a prediction it will lose 147,900 people to other states over six years.

In a sign that the federal government is not focused on Australia’s second biggest state as it prepares for an imminent election,the budget set aside just $208.4 million in new money for Victorian infrastructure projects. That is equivalent to 5.9 per cent of the $3.6 billion worth of new infrastructure spending announced since the budget update was released in December last year.

It compares with $1.1 billion of new cash for the battleground state of Western Australia,$1.3 billion for NSW,$446.5 million for Queensland and $229.3 million for South Australia.

Of the states,only Tasmania,representing just 2.1 per cent of the national population as compared with Victoria’s 25.8 per cent,will get less,with $185.3 million worth of new spending since the budget update.

The budget includes $1 billion for a Sydney-Newcastle faster rail upgrade,$1.6 billion for Brisbane-Sunshine Coast rail extension and billions of dollars for road upgrades in Perth.

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While the government outlined a total of $3.4 billion worth of infrastructure spending decisions for Victoria,about two-thirds of the money had been announced and factored into the bottom line. As revealed inThe Age this week,the budget includes more than $3 billion for two new freight terminals,one in Beveridge to the north of the city,the other in Truganina,to the west.

Both are eventually expected to take about 5500 trucks off Melbourne’s arterial roads each day,cutting congestion and improving safety.

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The Victorian government argues that a single freight terminal should be prioritised in the western suburbs,pointing out the area handles the same quantity of goods as Brisbane and Adelaide combined.

The budget also includes $109.5 million to upgrade Mickleham Road,$45 million to upgrade the Ballarat to Ouyen road corridor and $23.1 million to upgrade Canterbury Road.

According to the government,the $3.4 billion of total infrastructure spending over the four years to 2025-26 brings the government’s total commitment to transport infrastructure in Victoria to $35.5 billion since 2013-14.

But according to the budget papers,almost two-thirds of the cash has already been factored into the bottom line. That includes a reheated plan from last year’s budget to build a freight terminal to the north.

Victoria has long complained it has been short-changed on infrastructure funding,receiving a share well below its share of the national population. The federal governments says it has different priorities to the state.

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The budget also includes $4 billion to build the East West Link project – two elections and more than seven years after Labor torpedoed the road plan by announcing it would cancel the contract to build it.

The money for the link was not counted on the budget bottom line. Instead,it was factored into the budget’s rainy-day “contingency reserve” as a possible future outlay provided to the first Victorian government that is prepared to build it.

The state government wants the money for projects now being worked on,particularly its behemoth Suburban Rail Loop,a 90-kilometre orbital rail system that would run between Cheltenham and Werribee.

Jacqueline Maley cuts through the noise of the federal election campaign with news,views and expert analysis.Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.

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