House debates

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Grievance Debate

Inland Rail

6:00 pm

Photo of Ken O'DowdKen O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I wish to talk about the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail project. The design of the Inland Rail needs to be reconfigured to include a link from Toowoomba to the Port of Gladstone. There are four advantages for the Gladstone link. Firstly, the Port of Gladstone has unconstrained growth capacity, which does not exist at the Ports of Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, and is several days less sailing from Asia than Melbourne. Gladstone can handle the largest of container ships. On time-saving, it's 10 hours by sea from Gladstone to Brisbane, two days and two hours from Gladstone to Sydney, and four days and 10 hours from Gladstone to Melbourne. A truck can travel much quicker than that on the highway. There is going to be a net reduction in capital expenditure on the project by about $4 billion. That is backed by figures from proper sources. Economic analysis shows that it has substantially improved the project's economics. With the handling of freight, potential for economic growth is up to $10 billion in Central and Western Queensland.

There are three different freight tasks for the Inland Rail. For capital to capital freight tasks, Inland Rail is relying on winning the business from the long-haul trucking industry, which has been established over the many years. Our roads are very busy with trucks, as we all know, from Melbourne all the way through to Cairns. The second freight component is the import-export task—a land bridge concept. Forecast growth should happen in the landlocked ports of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, which have limited area to grow. The Port of Gladstone has virtually unlimited growth potential and can manage the largest of container ships. The coal freight task is the third freight component, to send all existing and future coal from the Surat Basin to the Port of Gladstone, which has existing capacity available to export this coal.

There are challenges for a freight corridor into the Port of Brisbane. Firstly, descending the Toowoomba Range requires 13 bridges, 6.2 kilometres of tunnel and three crossing loops. Secondly, crossing the Lockyer Valley floodplain has its own issues. Thirdly, connecting to the interstate rail, which links the Melbourne leg, we have 27 bridges, one kilometre of tunnels and four loop crossings. Of course, it will cause major community and housing issues all the way down to Acacia Ridge and into the Brisbane Port, and the bottlenecks will occur at the Brisbane Port. Overcoming these challenges represents 50 per cent of the cost of the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane but only look after 10 per cent of the distance. I'll repeat that: for 50 per cent of the cost of Inland Rail, it will only cover 10 per cent of the distance, because of the difficulty in getting the line from Toowoomba to Brisbane.

The Gladstone link could eliminate coal trains passing through the suburbs of Brisbane and Logan. Gladstone is the port that has untapped potential. This Inland Rail extension will help build stronger and more confident regions of Queensland. Thank you.