News live: Melbourne’s final Metro Tunnel station complete; Australian wins prize at world porridge championships

October 5, 2025

News live: Melbourne’s final Metro Tunnel station complete; Australian wins prize at world porridge championships

State Library station – the final of five stations to make up Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel – has been completed, marking the end of construction on the long awaited project.

After the premier, Jacinta Allan , and infrastructure minister, Gabrielle Williams , on Sunday announced the completion of Town Hall station, they will today visit State Library station to confirm it is also complete. Anzac, Arden and Parkville stations were handed over to Metro trains in April.

State Library station is the deepest and most complex to be built under Melbourne’s CBD, as the tunnel needed to travel underneath the existing City Loop. It sits 36m below ground, and will have a 42m-long escalator, which is 12m longer than the escalators at Parliament station, which until now was the longest in Melbourne.

The station’s main entrance at La Trobe and Swanston Street features 12m-high columns topped with massive, 70-tonne, 18m beams, reflecting the classical architecture of the nearby State Library Victoria. A second entrance opens on to Franklin Street, right outside RMIT.

It also includes an underground underpass that will allow commuters to transfer between State Library and Melbourne Central, without tapping on or off. The $13.48bn Metro Tunnel will connect the Sunbury line in the west to the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines in the south-east via five new underground city stations, forming a single 97km train line.

Now in its third term, the Labor government is pinning its hopes on the tunnel delivering political capital before the November 2026 state election. It will now be under pressure to announce the date it will open to commuters - so far they have only said it will open by the end of the year.

In a statement, Allan said the announcement marked “ one small step for a commuter and one giant leap for Victoria”. She continued:

The end of major construction means the start of a new era for Melbourne, where you can get to uni, work and retail faster and easier.

Here’s how to vote in the 2025 Australian bird of the year poll

In exciting news, you can now vote in the 2025 Australian bird of the year poll! Matilda Boseley explains how the voting works, while definitely not at all encouraging you to vote for a particular bird.