The timeline around the delivery of a crucial element of the Ballarat West Employment Zone remains a mystery despite federal government support being secured half a decade ago.
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The federal government announced $9.1 million for stage one of the BWEZ freight hub in 2013 as part of the National Building Program, which was to be staged across four financial years.
While the final payment is expected in this year’s budget, the project still does not have a successful tender applicant to deliver the works.
The-then Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss called for expressions of interest to lease or purchase land for the construction of the freight hub in 2015, however no further announcements have been made since.
In a statement Development Victoria chief executive Gregory Anderson said “work is continuing on the delivery of the Freight Hub component of (BWEZ),” but declined to offer a timeline around when works within BWEZ were likely to begin.
Former Ballarat City mayor John Phillips, who was mayor between 2014 and 2015, said he expected “things would have been underway” on the freight hub by now.
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“I would have hoped BWEZ would have been moving a lot more, but the freight hub in particular.”
In council’s 2015 Ballarat Strategy the freight hub was listed as a short to medium term priority.
Of the $9.1 million pledged by Canberra $100,000 has gone to the EOI process, with Development Victoria and the Ballarat City Council contributing $50,000 each.
In 2013, then-Committee for Ballarat chair Judy Verlin told The Courier the freight hub would be key to attracting jobs to BWEZ, saying “when the first shovel goes in it is still a long time before we see those jobs”,
“To make it happen we have to start turning a sod,” Ms Verlin said at the time.
Ballarat City mayor Samantha McIntosh said council would hope to secure funding from the state government in the 2018/19 budget for further stages of the freight hub.
The hub is anticipated to be delivered across four stages.
“We would love to see it delivered as soon as it possibly can be, it is a significant part of the BWEZ project and we want to know we have aviation, road and rail working very strongly for our regions to make sure freight delivery is operating at the highest level,” Cr McIntosh said.
“We’ve needed $120 million worth of Ring Road to be delivered to make sure the facility can provide the appropriate road access and we’ve needed millions of dollars in the ground to make sure the delivery from the site can respond to the requirements of such a significant project.”