Opinion: Queensland Rail probe amounts to Dunny Door Inquiry
ON TOP of the drawn-out and costly saga of Queensland’s next-genereation rail fleet, the Government is about to drop millions more on a Dunny Door Inquiry, writes Des Houghton.
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THE new passenger trains said to be unfit for use in Queensland are running quite safely in several European and American cities.
They are 1400 similar single-deck electric multiple-unit Bombardier trains already in use in Europe and Canada.
Details on the Bombardier website show the trains are running, or set to run, in New York, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa and the UK.
Rail bosses at the tech-savvy Austrian and German networks have just ordered more of the Bombardier trains, so I think it is safe to say that Queensland transport chiefs made the right call in recommending the purchase of 75 sets (each with a locomotive and six carriages) for $4.4 billion.
In Queensland Rail jargon, they are “above rail assets” or NGRs – New Generation Rollingstock.
On straight tracks in Europe they can achieve speeds of 151km/h.
The trains set for use in Queensland will have a top speed of 140km/h, according to the specs.
Although QR employs about 6500 people, many highly skilled engineers, I’m told they had little input in the project. It was run by the Transport Department.
The deal was put together by the Beattie-Bligh Labor governments, but approved by the Campbell Newman government when it came to power in 2015.
Newman was ridiculously criticised for not choosing a local manufacturer.
It was a bit rich, considering no local manufacturer tendered for the project.
Now a stumbling block to the smooth entry of the trains in Queensland seems to be that the dunny doors aren’t big enough. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The on-board toilets fail federal disability access laws, Jackie Trad admitted when she was transport minister.
I’m told wheelchairs cannot fit through the toilet doors and adjustments have to be made.
This may cost up to $150 million. That is wasteful.
There were about 52 million city train journeys last year, so any delays inconvenience millions of commuters.
In September last year, Trad said: “We will redesign the layout of the toilet modules to enhance access for people with a disability.”
The rectifications could take two years.
At the risk of inflaming the disability lobby, I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. There are no toilets on the existing urban fleet. And there are plenty of toilet facilities for the disabled on station platforms, so I don’t think there is a burning need to squander such large sums on repair work.
Nevertheless, we need to know who was responsible for this blunder.
And the Government is about to waste perhaps $2 million on the Dunny Door Inquiry.
Retired District Court judge Michael Forde has until the end of the year to get to the bottom of the procurement process and nail the dunny door dunderheads.
Bombardier declined to be interviewed but accepts no blame.
“Bombardier maintains its original position that the NGR trains have been built to the specifications provided at the time,” it said in a statement.
The controversy was back on the radar last week after some searching questions at Parliamentary Estimates by shadow transport minister Steve Minnikin.
Neil Scales, the director-general of Transport and Main Roads, told Minnikin he stood by his previous statements that the right trains were ordered.
This followed an interview with Steve Austin on the ABC in late 2016 when he said problems with the new fleet were exaggerated.
Scales was a member of the New Generation Rollingstock Program Steering Committee, formed after the project contract was signed in December 2013.
LNP deputy leader Tim Mander tells me he is disappointed there will be no public hearings. Forde will even have the final say on what should or should not be made public.
Mander urged Forde to interrogate chiefs of the Rail Tram and Bus Union, and to make all his findings public.
He says the LNP is co-operating fully with the inquiry, and as a gesture of goodwill has agreed to release all Cabinet documents from the Newman era relating to the deal.
However, Mander is concerned the Labor Government is already attempting to shift blame.
“The terms of reference have been manipulated by Labor to avoid embarrassment to Annastacia Palaszczuk,” he says.
“The Premier is the ultimate cover-up artist. This inquiry is a farce and a witch hunt, and will slug taxpayers millions with no tangible benefits.”
He says Palaszczuk was transport minister in the Bligh government when the deal went ahead.
“We are also concerned that this inquiry won’t look at the Premier’s role as transport minister when the only Australian tenderer to build the trains pulled out of the process in 2011.”
Transport Minister Mark Bailey declined to be interviewed.
In a statement he said the government “deeply regrets the errors made during the procurement process which resulted in the purchase of non-compliant trains”.
It would make sense for Forde to quiz the Premier and her deputy and make their answers public. Otherwise there will be accusations of a cover-up, real or imagined.
Meanwhile, QR confirmed up to 15 trains are already in use on some services from Central to the Gold Coast, Nundah and the airport and back.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has granted QR a temporary exemption from the disability standard. It should extend the exemption indefinitely.
ALP’s WELCOME MAT FOR THUGS
HAVE the Bandido bikies managed to sidestep Queensland’s two-year-old criminal consorting laws?
Certain federal crime fighters fear so. Kicked out of Fortitude Valley, some motorcycle gang members are now turning up at a certain restaurant in nearby Teneriffe. There is little doubt that bikies are on the comeback trail, just as Crime and Corruption Commission chairman Alan MacSporran warned two years ago.
Part of the blame must go to the Labor Government for watering down Campbell Newman’s tough but sensible VLAD laws that sent the two-wheeled miscreants scurrying interstate.
We must not forget how Labor and the unions complained the Newman laws were too harsh and a breach of the poor gangsters’ liberties. The State Government said as much in the “explanatory notes” attached to a Serious Organised Crime Amendment Bill tabled in Parliament.
There are now 700 patched bikies in Queensland, police say. There are 67 bikies facing trial on assorted charges. Regrettably, 57 have been released back into the community on bail.
Parliament was told the number of bikies hit with police consorting warnings jumped from 230 last year to 570 this year. Yet there has only been one conviction in 12 months. Why? It’s not that police aren’t trying.
It is just that the laws have been weakened. Labor is habitually soft on crime and these figures show it.
OUT WITH A BANG
RETIRED Boireann winemaker Peter Stark has gone out in a blaze of glory, scoring 98 points for his shiraz-viognier blend in the annual James Halliday wine rankings.
I can’t recall a Queensland wine achieving such a high score. Boireann Granite Belt Shiraz Viognier 2016 ($65) won its class in a three-way tie with 2016 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier ($120) and the 2017 Serrat Shiraz Viognier ($44), also on 98.
Peter and Therese Stark sold their pocket-handkerchief Granite Belt vineyard about a year ago to a Brisbane-based Hong Kong family. Winemaking duties fell to Brad Rowe, a former environmental scientist and mining industry metallurgist.
Rowe, 34, tells me he had not made wine before.
He says he was lucky he was able to call on Stark for advice. Together they made the 2017 vintage.
Rowe is a fan of Italian varietals and believes nebbiolo has a huge future on the Granite Belt.
This year’s wine results, published in the James Halliday Wine Companion 2019 (Hardie Grant), show five Queensland wineries maintained their five-star status. They were Boireann, Symphony Hill Wines, Heritage Estate, Golden Grove and Witches Falls.
CILENTO ON NOSE
I’M TOLD that some older members of the medical fraternity have for years been unhappy about the decision in 2014 to name the children’s hospital after Lady Cilento, the pioneering medico who also wrote the Medical Mother column in The Courier-Mail.
Despite her good deeds, Lady Cilento had some weird ideas, wrongly suggesting vitamins could cure cancer.
Also, she and her husband Sir Raphael Cilento are said to have favoured eugenics, the “science” of selective breeding.
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