“This is financial delinquency on a grand scale,” he said

“No Victorian would go and buy a house without securing the funding ... and yet this is what Premier Allan is doing.”

“For the government to simply say it’s going to proceed with this project as if it cannot be stopped is just a lie – it can be stopped, it should be stopped.”

Italian engineering group Webuild will lead the consortium, which also includes South Korea’s largest engineering and construction firm, GS Engineering, and Construction Australia, which is also working on the North East Link, and Bouygues Construction Australia, which is part of the consortium building Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel.

Allan insisted the $1.7 billion contract was “under the initial benchmark” that was set for the tunnelling, but refused to reveal how much taxpayers had saved on the deal, describing it as an “internal measure”.

“You don’t want to reveal your hand to the market in a competitive process,” Allan said.

“We have set the range of the project for $30 to $34.5 billion ... and the project is tracking very well against time and budget.”

In September, Labor revealed the cost of its Metro Tunnel rail project had blown out by another $837 million, pushing the total bill beyond $15 billion. In May, the Commonwealth agreed to chip in an extra $3.25 billion into Melbourne’s North East Link after its cost jumped by more than $10 billion to $26 billion.

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Allan acknowledged recent challenges faced by the state’s infrastructure projects, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, global unrest and supply chain issues for the cost blowouts.

“Pleasingly here, work that has been done with the authority to date has resulted in a strong outcome in terms of the contract that’s been locked in,” she said. “But more importantly, it means tunnel-boring machines working their way from 2026, and the 4000 workers that will be supported by the project.”

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