Bizarre Sydney roundabout should ‘never have been constructed’, council admits

A Sydney council that has come under fire for spending tens of thousands of dollars on a diamond-shaped roundabout that confused drivers and vanished just days later has admitted it should never have been built.

Complaints about the bungled rollout of the roundabout in Sydney’s south-west, nicknamed the Austral “Diamondabout”, have been lodged with Liverpool City Council. Videos of confused drivers manoeuvring the unusual shape have also gone viral, garnering millions of views online.

Just eight days after it was installed on June 20, the council quietly painted over the roundabout, and give-way signs were erected instead.

At a heated Liverpool City Council meeting on Wednesday night, chief executive Jason Breton conceded the roundabout should never have been built or designed in the first place. He said the council now had the “benefit of hindsight”.

Council papers show the roundabout was originally intended to be oval-shaped, not diamond, and was never tested before it was opened.

“The roundabout, even in its skewed oval design, [should] never have been constructed,” Breton said. “The lesson learnt was swift, it was robust, and the actions in the lessons learnt are already under way.”

Two telegraph poles at the intersection of Twenty Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Avenue were also physical constraints, which meant that even an oval design would not have worked at the site, Breton added. There were also supposedly limitations on the machinery used by the contractor.

“It is clear I have labelled the whole process unsatisfactory. I have conducted an immediate lessons learnt,” Breton admitted.

However, there was resistance at the meeting, calling for greater scrutiny of the roundabout debacle.

While independent councillor Peter Ristevski acknowledged the council had learnt from the mistake, he pushed for the contractor, a long-time supplier to the council, to be blacklisted from future work.

“There needs to be consequences for what has happened,” he said. “This contractor needs to be completely removed from doing any further work with us.”

Council papers also revealed the roundabout cost more than $53,914 to remove, taking the total project cost to $139,937.

Labor councillor Sam Karnib was sceptical as to why the council, instead of the contractor, had to foot the bill for the roundabout’s removal and remediation, which he described as a “huge error and blunder”.

“It’s received probably more coverage than any roundabout in my living memory,” he added.

Breton will investigate and report back on whether it was the fault of the council or the contractor. The council will also explore potential legal pathways to retrieving part of the $140,000 in costs.

Deputy Mayor Peter Harle said the council “should have never attempted it in the first place”.

“That is one of the most complicated intersections on Fifteenth Avenue – to try and put a roundabout there is virtually impossible,” Harle said.

“This is a mistake that’s occurred, we wear it, and I think that’s the end of it. We’ve had enough negative publicity about this to embarrass this council.”

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