● Watson Foundation rams Norwegian krill trawler in Antarctic waters   ♦ Murdoch empire holds 70% of print circulation   ♦ Australia gave away $300B in gas — Norway built a sovereign wealth fund   ♦ Kerry Stokes: mining magnate, media owner, political donor   ♦ Negative gearing costs taxpayers $6B per year   ♦ How they killed the mining tax   ♦ The revolving door between politics and media

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THE RORT · THE DRAIN

The Roads Rort

The wealth The Roads Rort moves offshore.

Gas revenue foregone · since 2022/07/01
A$68,017,708,800
▲ ~A$537/sec · Punter's Politics / Rort tracking, since 1 Jul 2022
Hover the offshore nodes · click to open a dossier
THE RORT · LIVING MODEL OF POWER · CASE FILECASE OPEN — TRACKING
CASE FILE · CORPORATEARTICLES · 8

The Roads Rort

STATUS · Ongoing · unresolved

One company started with a single toll road in 1996 and now holds full or partial ownership of every major toll road in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane — a legal monopoly created and maintained by government.

01 / The evidence chain

01The toll02The model03Transurban: the monopoly04The fuel price cycle05The political connections06Who owns the roads07What the media covered08What would fix it

02 / Who's named

TransurbanCOMPANY · TOLL ROADS · 8Sydney AirportCOMPANY · INFRASTRUCTURE · 4The ACCCFEDERAL REGULATOR · 3The Revolving DoorMECHANISM · 2ColesCOMPANY · SUPERMARKETS · 1WoolworthsCOMPANY · SUPERMARKETS · 1

03 / The money

10–20 cents/litrethe difference between the cycle peak and the cycle trough in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide — documented in ACCC quarterly reports for over 20 years. Perth, with mandatory price disclosure, does not have the same cycle.SOURCE · ACCC petrol monitoring reportsThe fuel price cycleA$9.5 billion+annual fuel tax credits — the largest single fossil fuel subsidy in Australia. Mining and agricultural companies reclaim most of the excise on off-road fuel use. The household driver pays the full excise.SOURCE · Australia Institute, 2025The fuel price cycleA$23 billion+estimated total public investment in WestConnex — including federal and state grants, concessional loans, and existing publicly owned motorways bundled into the saleSOURCE · The Conversation / Credit Suisse analysisThe model34 centsper dollar of public investment — the estimated net return to government from the WestConnex sale, after accounting for all public inputs including grants, concessional loans, and existing road assets bundled into the transactionSOURCE · The Conversation, 2018The modelConcentrated interests beat diffuse interestsThe toll road privatisation model has bipartisan support, decades of history, and the structural support of the infrastructure investment industry, the superannuation sector, and both major parties’ donation records. The only constituency that consistently loses is the one paying the tolls.SOURCE · The Conversation / academic infrastructure policy analysisThe political connections75.1%EBITDA margin reported by Transurban for the year to June 2025 — the margin of a monopoly infrastructure company collecting inflation-linked fees from captive users with no alternativeSOURCE · Transurban FY25 ASX releaseThe toll128%toll increase on the WestConnex M4 from 2017 to 2025 — approximately four times faster than CPISOURCE · iSelect / ABS CPI dataThe tollA$2.676 billionTransurban FY25 EBITDA on A$3.73 billion proportional toll revenue — 75.1% margin. Market cap A$30.9 billion. 2.5 million average daily trips. Concession life weighted average: approximately 25 years remaining.SOURCE · Transurban FY25 ASX release / MorningstarTransurban: the monopoly

Nobody wrote this page. It assembled itself from the 8 investigations that make up The Roads Rort, and it deepens automatically each time The Rort publishes another in the series. The named actors, the sourced figures and the evidence chain stay in lockstep with the archive.

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