Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I can nominate who's responsible for this debacle of a project, and that might be the person who asked me this question and some of his National Party colleagues. The Inland Rail, frankly, is an absolutely and utterly perfect example of why the National Party and their One Nation colleagues should never, ever, ever again be allowed near the Treasury coffers. This is the worst project in the country in the way in which it was developed, and I'm going to talk you through this.

In 2013, we provisioned $1 billion to do the planning work for Inland Rail—the planning work. It was never done. The government went out and announced a $9 billion program, funded by debt—not funded off cash balance, but funded off debt—to build Inland Rail without any planning and without any idea about how it was going to get into the port of Melbourne or into the port of Brisbane. They had no idea about that at all. Instead, they announced $9.3 billion to fund the whole thing. I'm giving you a history lesson here.

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