Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to be here this evening contributing to this really important discussion about rail in this country. I'm honoured to be the Labor co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Rail group here at Parliament House and, I admit, a true gunzel at heart, growing up with both my parents working in the railways. I'm truly delighted to be here following some of my Labor colleagues on this side of the House who are correcting some, pretty frankly, wild things that are being said about Inland Rail from the other side of the chamber.

Inland Rail is an important investment in our freight and rail industry. It's about getting more trucks off the road and keeping our economy moving as we develop our infrastructure to meet the needs of the Australian community. And, like any major infrastructure project, proper planning and responsible economic management are crucial to its success. But, unfortunately, proper planning and responsible economic management are not words that seem to be in the coalition's vocabulary. The Inland Rail project was bungled by the previous coalition government from the very start. It was costed on the back of a napkin—uncosted, underfunded and underplanned.

Let's start at the start, shall we? When we came to government, we inherited the Inland Rail mess. The Australian Rail Track Corporation, who was building Inland Rail at the time, came to our minister for transport and infrastructure and said that this was going to need a lot more money. When the minister asked them how much, the Libs had done so little planning that they couldn't even tell her. So we decided to do something the Libs and Nats never did. We rolled up our sleeves and we decided to get the job done, drawing up real costings and real planning. We commissioned an independent, wide-ranging review of the project, led by Kerry Schott. This weighed up the costs and the scope of the project.

The outcome of this review was plain and simple. Where the Libs had left things, it was probably going to cost more than $31 billion, and that wasn't even for the full scope of the project. Further actuarial work said it would be about $45 billion. That's more than three times the cost it was originally touted for. We've also confirmed that this project could not have been delivered until at least 2036. There was no way that money was set aside or planned for by the previous coalition government. I don't think they could have fit those calculations on that napkin they were working on. Their failure to do any actual detailed planning works and their immature preliminary designs didn't solve any problems, and it certainly didn't build Inland Rail.

Thanks to the work of our Labor government, the Inland Rail works north of Parkes will continue. We're focusing on the preservation of the rail corridor and protection of sites for future intermodal terminals in Queensland, and our decision not to proceed with the entirety of the project right now is the right decision. An unaffordable project, completely botched by those opposite, should not be coming at the expense of Aussie taxpayers or thriving regional communities. What we are committed to as the Albanese Labor government is investing heavily in passenger and freight rail across the country, like continuing to invest in resilience, reliability and productivity of the ARTC's existing rail freight network.

Being from Melbourne's west, I know a thing or two about the burden freight can have on local roads and on the locals who share those roads with heavy freight trucks on their daily commutes. In my electorate of Gorton, we've got the Western Freeway—a major freight route with over 86,000 people on the road every single day. It's why we're upgrading our Western Freeway between Melton and Caroline Springs with Labor's $1 billion investment. Our Inland Rail investments will mean that, in communities similar to mine with major freight routes, more freight will move on to rail, alleviating the burden on local roads. We're also prioritising the upgrades in the places it's most needed, because Inland Rail and proper planning for major infrastructure works need to go hand in hand. The Albanese Labor government gets that. We get that. I can't say the same for the Libs and the Nats over there. We're making the difficult but sensible decision for the progression of Inland Rail, with responsible economic planning without the cost blowouts. For the communities across Australia, we'll get the job done.

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