July 2026

Another grand government infrastructure project. Another heroic announcement. Another “nation-building” promise sold to taxpayers as visionary, essential and affordable.

And now, inevitably, another massive cost blowout.

This time it is Snowy 2.0, the pumped hydro project that was meant to be a cornerstone of Australia’s renewable energy future. It was approved in 2018 with a price tag of $6.1 billion. By 2023, that had almost doubled to $12 billion. Now even that figure looks optimistic.

Snowy Hydro has already spent $11.1 billion, leaving almost no room inside the revised budget. A further cost reassessment is under way. More taxpayer money is likely to be needed. The completion deadline of 2028 is suddenly looking very rubbery.

In plain English: the project is over budget, behind schedule and still not properly under control.

We have seen this movie before.

Politicians love cutting ribbons and announcing mega-projects. They love the language of “transformation”, “security”, “jobs” and “the future”. They love the photo opportunities, the hard hats, the hi-vis vests and the sweeping claims about benefits decades down the track.

What they are far less good at is making sure the thing is actually delivered on time and on budget. Indeed, there is a level of ineptitude with these projects that borders on criminal.

The Australian National Audit Office has now delivered a damning report on Snowy Hydro’s handling of Snowy 2.0. Its conclusion is blunt: Snowy Hydro was only “partly effective” in managing the project.

That is bureaucratic language for a serious failure.

The audit found Snowy Hydro failed to effectively manage contractors, failed to hold them properly to account, failed to implement adequate project controls and still does not have a reliable forecast of what the final cost will be.

Read that last point again.

This is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country. Billions of dollars of public money have already been committed. Yet the people running it cannot reliably say what it will ultimately cost.

That is not a minor administrative hiccup. That is a fundamental failure of governance.

Snowy Hydro has repeatedly blamed difficult geology, contractor performance, labour shortages and inflation. No doubt all of those things have played a role. Major underground engineering projects are difficult. Nobody sensible pretends otherwise.

But difficulty is not an excuse for poor management.

The Auditor-General found governance weaknesses and poor risk management persisted even after the project was reset in 2023. That reset was supposed to fix the problems. Instead, it appears to have shifted more of the financial risk back to the government — which means, ultimately, taxpayers.

That is the part Australians should be angry about.

When these projects are announced, the public gets the sales pitch. When they go wrong, the public gets the bill.

Snowy 2.0 was originally sold as a $6.1 billion project. Then it became a $12 billion project. Energy economists have reportedly suggested the true all-in cost could be vastly higher once construction, interest and associated transmission infrastructure are included.

At what point does a cost blowout stop being a blowout and become a deception? And when are those responsible held accountable?

Snowy Hydro’s chief executive has now conceded the 2028 deadline is “not feeling comfortable”. Its major contractor, Webuild, has been described as “disappointing”. The project has faced productivity issues, geological problems, procurement pressures, contract disputes and workforce cost increases.

Workers on the project reportedly secured pay rises taking annual earnings to around $300,000, without explicit productivity trade-offs. That might be a wonderful outcome for the workers, but it raises an obvious question: who was protecting taxpayers?

This is the central problem with badly managed public infrastructure.

There is always someone getting paid. Consultants get paid. Contractors get paid. Lawyers get paid. Executives get paid. Workers get paid. Advisers get paid. And when the numbers blow out, the taxpayer pays again.

The only person without a seat at the table is the ordinary Australian funding the whole circus.

Supporters will say Snowy 2.0 is a “generational investment”. Perhaps it is. Australia needs firming capacity, storage and dispatchable power if renewables are to play a larger role in the energy system.

But worthy objectives do not excuse incompetent delivery.

In fact, the more important the project, the stronger the management should be. The higher the public interest, the tougher the governance should be. The bigger the budget, the greater the scrutiny should be.

Instead, we get the same tired pattern: understate the cost, overstate the certainty, push ahead, blame complexity, announce a review, and ask taxpayers for more money.

This is not how serious countries build infrastructure.

Australia has become far too tolerant of failure dressed up as complexity. We are told these projects are difficult, as though that absolves everyone involved. But the whole point of project management is to manage difficulty.

Snowy 2.0 may still prove useful. It may still become an important piece of the energy puzzle.

But that does not change the uncomfortable truth.

A project sold at $6.1 billion, reset to $12 billion, already almost spent, likely delayed and heading for another cost increase has not been properly managed.

And once again, Australians are left watching a familiar performance: big promises from government, poor discipline in delivery, and a bill that keeps getting bigger.

That is not nation-building.

That is incompetence with a hard hat.