Joe Spagnolo: All aboard the Rita Express as the Yanchep line set to open

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, imagine if the woman scorned was Italian — Calabrian, to be exact. Let’s just say the fury would be significantly more. Enter Deputy Premier and Transport and Treasury minister Rita Saffioti. Saffioti has privately been fuming at suggestions the Government has failed to live up to the hype of 2013-2017 when, in Opposition, Labor made huge promises to reshape Perth’s rail system by building new lines to places like Yanchep and Ellenbrook. Like two kids sitting in the back seat of the car, asking mum and dad “are we there yet”, critics of this Labor administration have long been asking when the Yanchep rail extension and the new Ellenbrook line — the centrepieces of Metronet — would be complete. Well, on Sunday, Saffioti officially opens the project, which extends the Joondalup line 14.5km north of Butler and includes three new stations at Alkimos, Eglinton and Yanchep. In the context of a pre-election year, the significance of this rail line opening for Saffioti and Labor is obvious. In 2008, then-Liberal leader Colin Barnett and his strategy team came up with a brilliant ad that basically posed the question: name three things that Labor has achieved since winning government. The not so subliminal message was that Labor had squandered a series of budget surpluses by not building anything significant. Unfair, maybe, given Labor had built and funded the new Perth to Mandurah rail line. But the ad worked a treat, with Barnett pulling off an unlikely victory against then Labor Premier Alan Carpenter. Saffioti was Carpenter’s chief of staff during that period. It’s fair to say there is no love lost between Saffioti and Barnett. Fast forward to 2024, and Barnett is at it again, doing his best to help out his mate, Libby Mettam, by sledging Labor. In an interview I did with Barnett at the end of last year, the former premier made this observation of the current Labor Government: “Where does Labor look for a proven triumphal project or legacy? It ain’t there. “They are lacking a big-ticket item. “They can’t look at something like the stadium (Barnett commissioned Optus Stadium) and say ‘look what we did’.” I’m reliably told Saffioti almost choked on her eggplant parmigiana when she read Barnett’s comments. Delivering the Yanchep rail extension is therefore important for Saffioti and Labor, particularly given this administration is swimming in cash thanks to record iron ore royalties and GST billions — a $5.1 billion surplus recorded in 2022-23, a $3.1 billion surplus projected for last financial year and another $2.6 billion surplus estimated for this year. But while the completion of the Yanchep line is no doubt a significant pre-election sweetener, particularly for people who live in that part of greater Perth, the final costs of this project — and that of Metronet overall — gives the WA Liberals something to attack Labor on eight months out from the next poll. Metronet has changed in scope since the concept was first publicly aired by Mark McGowan just before the 2013 State Election. But just before the March poll, Treasury estimated Metronet would cost $5.2 billion over eight years. The then-Liberal-National government reckoned the cost would be more like $6.4 billion. The latest Treasury forecasts has Metronet heading to $13 billion! The Yanchep extension alone has ballooned from an estimated $386m in 2017 to $1.37b. Rightfully, Mettam is already lambasting Labor over its Metronet blowout, pointing out that the extra money could be better spent addressing serious problems in areas like social housing. Will the good folk of Yanchep and Ellenbrook — and communities in between — remember or give a fig about budget over-runs when they are travelling on the new trains? Probably not. I’d suggest that, coupled with the current poor state of the so-called Liberal-National Alliance, is why Labor doesn’t seem overly worried that Metronet has become this funding black hole that just gets bigger and bigger by the minute.