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Orange arches above the crowded platform at Town Hall station in Melbourne's Metro Tunnel
Waste

$70k

Reported cost of replacing Metro Tunnel plaques after a wording error

$70,000 to fix the wording on Metro Tunnel plaques

Commemorative plaques for the Metro Tunnel were replaced after errors were found in their wording, at a reported cost of about $70,000. Nobody has said who got it wrong or who paid.

Aussie Outrage · · 2 min read

Commemorative plaques for the Metro Tunnel were taken down and replaced after errors were found in their wording, at a reported cost of about $70,000.

$70k

Reported cost of replacing the Metro Tunnel plaques Source: Parliament of Victoria petition 792, citing public reports

The questions nobody has answered

A petition to Victoria's Legislative Council asked for an independent investigation into:

  • who approved the wrong wording
  • whether the mistake was the contractor's, a department's or someone else's
  • whether the contract made the contractor fix it at their own cost
  • why about $70,000 was spent replacing them
  • whether any public money can be recovered

The petition said the circumstances, approval process and contract responsibilities "have not been fully explained". It closed without a government response.

Why it matters

A plaque is a small job. When a government gets one wrong, the fix should come out of the contractor's pocket or a proofreader's pride, not the public purse.

Top photo: the platform at Town Hall, one of the Metro Tunnel's new stations, on opening day in November 2025. Photo: The Kora Person, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

  1. Parliament of Victoria: Petition 792, Investigation into the Metro Tunnel plaque replacement (opens in a new tab)
  2. Cockatoo: Victorian Government criticised after spending $70,000 replacing plaques (opens in a new tab)

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