Great SRL Swindle plays us all for mugs

August 26, 2026 — 4:06pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

It was in August 2021, when most of Melbourne was stuck at home in our sixth and final COVID lockdown, that Daniel Andrews, Tim Pallas and their oh-so-clever advisers came up with the Great SRL Swindle.

This was a sham arrangement designed to conceal an important source of funding for the proposed rail loop and to maintain the government’s pretence that one-third of its total estimated cost could be covered by value capture.

Pallas, who by then had served as Victorian treasurer for seven years, understood better than anyone that hypothecating all land taxes from properties neighbouring SRL stations to help pay for the project was stealing from Peter to pay Paul.

To pay back Peter – the general revenue which land tax from those properties would otherwise contribute – they secretly devised a new, unannounced tax, a 1 per cent levy on all public transport fares until 2062. They called it the rail improvement charge.

For five years, the RIC has been the dirty little secret at the heart of the state’s largest transport infrastructure project. Thanks to the diligent work of........

© The Age