The Project Both Sides Own
Snowy 2.0 began as a Coalition promise and became a Labor burden, leaving both parties caught inside the same unfinished story.
Some projects do not simply cross the landscape. They cross governments, reputations and political memory.
A note on context: This essay follows Andrew Probyn’s Sydney Morning Herald article, Snowy Hydro bracing for 10-fold cost blowout, published on 15 May 2026, and builds on my previous post by looking at the political ownership of Snowy 2.0.
Introduction
In the previous post, we looked at Snowy 2.0 through Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner’s How Big Things Get Done. The argument was that Snowy 2.0 may still prove useful, but it also shows the danger of building before knowing: turning early confidence into public commitment before cost, risk and delivery reality have been properly understood.
But Snowy 2.0 has another layer.
It is not only a mega-project problem. It is also a political problem.
That is because Snowy 2.0 does not belong neatly to one side of politics. It was announced under Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government with a $2 billion price tag and a 2021 completion date. It is now being carried forward under Labor, with official estimates already far higher and reports suggesting the final construction cost could move towards about $22 billion.
That creates the political trap.
The Coalition created the promise. Labor inherited the problem. The public carries the risk.
And neither side can now stand far enough away from the project to attack it cleanly.
The Origin Trap
The first promise is often the one that lasts longest.
The Coalition’s problem is that Snowy 2.0 began as its story.
The project was presented as a practical answer to energy security, storage and renewable integration. It drew on the old Snowy legacy and offered a simple public image: a large hydro-battery for a changing grid.
That was politically powerful. It was also politically binding.
The Coalition’s position is difficult for three reasons:
It owns the first frame: The $2 billion figure and 2021 completion date were not passing details. They became the benchmark against which later cost increases and delays are judged.
It owns the early confidence: If the project was announced before enough detailed work had been done, then responsibility for that early certainty sits with those who turned the idea into a public promise.
It cannot attack the blowout without reopening the beginning: Every criticism of today’s cost invites a reply about the original scoping, assumptions and announcement.
This does not mean every later problem belongs to the Coalition. Projects change, conditions shift, and delivery responsibility moves over time.
But politically, the first promise matters because it sets the story everyone else is forced to live inside.
That leads directly to Labor’s problem: inheriting a flawed project does not remove responsibility for what happens next.
The Continuation Trap
Inheriting a problem does not mean escaping responsibility for its next chapter.
Labor’s problem is different.
It did not launch Snowy 2.0. It can point to the early assumptions, design weaknesses and project framing that existed before it took office. That is why government language about a “poorly scoped” or “poorly designed” inherited project is politically understandable.
But Labor has also chosen to continue.
That creates a second kind of ownership.
The government’s position now rests on a difficult balance:
It can blame the beginning: Labor can argue that it inherited a project whose early cost and timing assumptions were not realistic.
It must defend the continuation: Once a government keeps funding and supporting a project, it becomes responsible for the current judgement to proceed.
It owns the next explanation: Any revised cost, schedule or public justification now becomes a test of present oversight, not only past decision-making.
This is the sunk-cost problem in political form.
Stopping may look wasteful. Continuing may look weak. Blaming the past may be true, but it becomes less persuasive with every new decision made in the present.
Labor may have inherited the hole. But it is now helping decide how much further to dig.
That is why Snowy 2.0 is not a clean government-versus-opposition story. It is more uncomfortable than that.
The Bipartisan Trap
When responsibility is shared, accountability can become harder to see.
Snowy 2.0 is politically unusual because both major parties have reasons to keep the story from becoming too simple.
The Coalition wants to focus on current cost and delivery.
Labor wants to focus on original design and announcement.
Both arguments may contain truth. That is what makes the project difficult to discuss clearly.
The political structure now looks like this:
The Coalition owns the origin risk: It announced the project, set the early expectations and attached its reputation to the promise.
Labor owns the live delivery risk: It is now responsible for oversight, funding decisions and public explanation.
The public owns the exposure: Whatever the political argument, taxpayers and electricity users ultimately carry the consequences of cost, delay and opportunity cost.
This is where Snowy 2.0 becomes more than a partisan dispute.
Large projects cross election cycles. They outlive ministers, slogans and press conferences. By the time the full cost is visible, responsibility has often been stretched across too many hands to feel direct.
That diffusion is politically convenient. It is also democratically uncomfortable.
But Snowy 2.0 carries more than shared responsibility. It also carries symbolic weight, and that makes the politics even harder.
The Symbolic Trap
A project with a famous name carries more than engineering risk.
Snowy 2.0 is not just any infrastructure project. It borrows symbolic power from the original Snowy Scheme.
That matters because the Snowy name carries ideas of nation-building, engineering competence, migration, public ambition and long-term national benefit. The new project benefits from that memory. It is also judged against it.
The symbolism creates three political complications:
The Snowy name raises the standard: The original scheme gives Snowy 2.0 emotional authority, but it also makes failure harder to explain because the project is measured against a national myth of competence and delivery.
The legacy narrows the attack: Political criticism has to separate the old Snowy achievement from the modern project’s delivery problems. The safer argument is not that Snowy itself was wrong, but that the Snowy legacy deserved better discipline.
The personal associations sharpen the discomfort: There is some irony and symbolism around Lady Eileen Hudson, Angus Taylor’s family connection to the original Snowy legacy, and Malcolm Turnbull’s continuing association with hydropower. These details do not prove wrongdoing, but they show how Snowy 2.0 carries political memory as well as infrastructure risk.
This is why the politics cannot be reduced to a simple cost argument. Snowy 2.0 is attached to a national story, and national stories are harder to revise than budgets.
That leads to the final issue: if the symbolism makes blame harder, accountability becomes even more important.
The Accountability Trap
When everyone can explain their part, no one may fully own the whole.
The hardest issue is not blame. It is accountability.
Blame asks who can be criticised. Accountability asks who is responsible for making the next decision well.
Snowy 2.0 now needs that second question more than the first.
A clearer debate would separate three forms of responsibility:
Responsibility for the promise: Who first presented the project, the cost, the timing and the level of confidence?
Responsibility for the continuation: Who now judges whether the project still stacks up at its current cost and schedule?
Responsibility for the public explanation: Who tells citizens what has changed, what remains uncertain and what alternatives have been considered?
This is where the first post connects to the second.
If Snowy 2.0 may not be a failed project but a failed promise, then the political task is not only to finish the project. It is to rebuild the public case for it under changed facts.
That requires more than saying one side started it or the other side must now finish it.
It requires a refreshed explanation of why this version of Snowy 2.0 still makes sense.
Conclusion
Snowy 2.0 is now caught between two political stories.
For the Coalition, it is a reminder that announcing a large project is easier than living with the assumptions behind it.
For Labor, it is a reminder that inheriting a flawed project does not remove responsibility for continuing it.
For the public, it is a reminder that infrastructure promises often survive longer than the governments that make them.
That may be the most useful way to see Snowy 2.0 now. It is not simply a Coalition mistake or a Labor burden. It is a bipartisan reputational hostage: too advanced to abandon easily, too costly to defend simply, and too symbolic to discuss honestly without touching political nerves on both sides.
The project may still deliver value. It may still help the grid. It may still become an important part of Australia’s renewable energy system.
But the politics around it reveal something uncomfortable.
The first government got the announcement. The next government got the invoice. The public got the risk.
The hardest projects to govern are not always the ones no one believes in, but the ones everyone has too much invested in to question clearly.