Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have shown a keen interest in this agreement. It is an important part of the history of Federation. I am sure that the Western Australian government will be pleased that they can pay back the $1.6 million before 2041. I only hope that they have enough room in their budget to find such a princely amount.

The Kalgoorlie-Perth railway line is merely one example of the way investing in rail transport is an investment in building our nation's future. The track primarily linked Kalgoorlie and Perth and was critical to ensuring the flow of people and goods between the two major cities. It was essential to the development of the iron ore industry in Western Australia. In fact, it was BHP Billiton who initially requested the track be built. It was a key part of their agreement to expand iron ore operations in Western Australia.

The construction of this track was also a part of the standardisation of rail lines in Australia—a longstanding and noble cause. The variation of rail gauges in Australia has hobbled our nation's infrastructure since before Federation. I have to cop some responsibility in this respect as my great-great-great-grandfather was the minister for public works in the first Queensland state government that built the railway from Brisbane to Spring Bluff. The rail gauge issue so annoyed Mark Twain upon his journey to Australia in 1897 that he made a point of mentioning it in his summary of Australian life. He called the switch from narrow to standard gauge 'the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australia can show'. Twain lamented:

Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders.

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All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no-one is benefited.

The standardisation of the railway line between Perth and Kalgoorlie allowed this problem to be resolved in one small part: no more rivalry between Australia's Fat Controllers and Thin Controllers; Thomas, Edward, Rusty and Duncan can live alongside each other on the same tracks.

The standardisation of the rail gauge also allowed for a railway to stretch from Perth to Sydney, allowing both our western and eastern shores to be linked by rail. It led to the commencement of the Indian Pacific service, one of the few truly transcontinental train routes in the world, taken by 55,000 people each year. The first Indian Pacific journey arrived in 1970 in Perth to a crowd of over 10,000 people. It allowed the movement of people and freight from our eastern to our western coast without relying on trucks or ships and was a project that looked to Australia's future and sought to develop it by connecting our sprawling nation. This is because an investment in rail is an investment in nation building.

We see another example of nation building in the Melbourne Metro project in Melbourne. This proposed metro tunnel was to be located in Melbourne's CBD, travelling from Melbourne's inner west, where my electorate is located, through to Melbourne's inner south. This was a project that looked to our nation's future. It looked at how to make our aging metropolitan urban rail system work even better for the 415,000 Melbournians who use it every day. It looked to the projected rise in patronage on Melbourne's public transport infrastructure for the future—patronage has already risen by 70 per cent in the last 10 years. The Melbourne Metro rail project was designed to address these problems specifically. It would have untangled our crowded city loop, allowing more trains on all lines to run during peak hour—a city loop that was funded by those known socialists in the Victorian state government, Henry Bolte and Dick Hamer. In addition, the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel would have opened five new underground stations located at North Melbourne, Parkville, CBD north, CBD south and Domain. Importantly, it would have improved the efficiency of our broader transport network by taking also take commuter traffic off our roads.

Melbourne is a great city; it is both an economic engine for the nation and a liveable urban environment for its residents. Melbourne Metro was the kind of long-term, strategic infrastructure investment that is needed to keep it that way. That is why Labor saw the need for this project and made it a top priority for federal government investment.

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