Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Inland Rail is a nation-building project designed to strengthen Australia's supply chains, reduce freight congestion, improve road safety and deliver long-term economic growth for regional communities. From the very beginning, I have consistently advocated for the extension of the Inland Rail to the Port of Gladstone because regional Australia deserves infrastructure that serves an entire nation, not just the capital cities. Yet, in this year's budget, the Labor government confirmed what regional communities feared most and have effectively abandoned the Inland Rail project. Instead of completing this transformational freight corridor and delivering the benefits promised to regional Australians, the Labor government has chosen to cut funding and walk away halfway through this project. This decision is not just short-sighted; it's a direct blow to Central Queensland, to regional businesses, to road safety and to the future productivity of our country.

The Flynn electorate is the economic engine room of Australia—or at least one of the economic engine rooms of Australia. Our highways include the Bruce, Burnett, Capricorn, Dawson and Leichhardt highways, and these are among the nation's most critical freight routes. But they are also under immense strain. The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads' crash data shows that, across these five highways, just within the Flynn electorate, 2,125 crashes resulted in fatalities or hospitalisations. On the Bruce Highway alone, 96 crashes resulted in 112 fatalities, and a staggering 56 per cent of those fatal crashes involved 63 trucks. The Inland Rail was projected to remove about 200,000 truck movements from our roads every year, while saving approximately 280 million litres of diesel annually. And that is why I support the efforts to move more freight from road to rail.

Labor's own Transport Resilience and Capacity Kickstart program acknowledges the importance of shifting freight onto rail networks, yet somehow Labor can't see the value in completing the Inland Rail itself. So I ask: why don't the lives lost on our regional roads factor into Labor's calculations? Why are regional Australians expected to carry the burden while billions of dollars are redirected elsewhere?

While Labor make cuts to Inland Rail, they have handed Victorian Labor a $3.8 billion bailout for Melbourne's Suburban Rail Loop, a project expected to cost more than $200 billion. This government's infrastructure priorities are being driven by political deals in capital cities and not by the economic and safety needs of regional and rural Australia.

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