Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak today about inland rail and the railway line from Brisbane to Melbourne, for which funding was announced, to the tune of $8.4 billion, in the budget on Tuesday night. This is a project that has been on the books for a long, long time, and there are various reasons it has taken this long to get it to this point. But the point is that we are now in a position where we can start to see construction commence, and I believe that will happen on certain sections of the route—probably on line that already exists—this financial year, with a completion date of 2024.

This line is nation-building, and it has relevance for a number of reasons. First of all, for intermodal traffic, probably about 80 per cent of the traffic on this line will be city to city, Melbourne to Brisbane. One of the largest freight corridors in Australia at the moment is the Newell Highway, which bisects my electorate. The freight task is growing at an astronomical rate. This line will help address that issue with 1.8-kilometre trains travelling at about 110 to 115 kilometres per hour, doing the trip between the two cities in about 20 or 21 hours. They need to do it in that time to compete with road transport, and that is why this line has to be reasonably direct.

The other thing that excites me about this line is the opportunity for industry and decentralisation along its route. I think I have about 600 or 700 kilometres of it through my electorate, and the potential for value adding, for agricultural produce, and for distribution centres is enormous—not only with the 16,000 jobs that are predicted during peak construction, as well as the permanent jobs to maintain and look after this line, but, now, with this announcement, we can start to see real investment by others who can start to purchase land and plan to build intermodal ports, grain terminals, and a whole range of other things. I spoke about this in my very first speech to parliament in February 2008. The people of my electorate are very, very excited about this announcement. The talking is over; it is time for action. The inland rail has now gone from a dream to a reality, and it is a great day for the people of western New South Wales.