Melbourne-Sydney fast train a top Labor priority

A fast train linking Melbourne to Sydney and Brisbane will be among the top infrastructure priorities of a Labor federal government, which will restore the High Speed Rail Authority and preserve a corridor along the east coast should it win the election.

A fast train linking Melbourne and Sydney in less than three hours will be among the top infrastructure priorities of a Shorten Government.

Labor is set to ramp up a decades-long vision to plan and build a high-speed rail line from Melbourne to Brisbane — via Canberra and Sydney — arguing the time for talking is over and it’s time to put the project into action.

The Herald Sun can reveal among the first actions of a Labor government, should it win the election expected in May, will be to restore the High Speed Rail Authority and preserve the corridor along the east coast.

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Experts now argue the Melbourne to Sydney link could be completed with a decade but will need both significant private and public funding to reach its potential.

“It would be a real game changer. It is expensive, but nation-building requires vision,” Opposition infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese said.

The Coalition Government scrapped the High Speed Rail Authority in 2014 in Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey’s notorious first Budget.

Labor is expected to make its restoration a priority if it takes office and gather international expressions of interest over the project’s construction from companies with recent experience building high-speed rail in Japan, China, Korea and Europe.

France’s high speed train TGV (Train Grande Vitesse).

A 2013 feasibility study found the project — which has been estimated to cost up to $114 billion — would be viable, with the Sydney to Melbourne leg expected to return more than $2 in economic benefit for every dollar invested.

Infrastructure Australia found in 2017 that protecting and acquiring the corridor as a matter of urgency could reduce the eventual cost of the project by up to $21 billion.

Travel along the east coast of Australia is forecast to grow by about 1.8 per cent every year over the next two decades, more than doubling from 152 million people in 2009 to 355 million in 2065.

The Federal Government is understood to have set aside up to $1.5 billion for three legs of the project, which could be announced ahead of the election.

In March last year, it pledged $20 million towards a business case for a Shepparton to Melbourne high-speed rail line to Consolidated Land and Rail Australia — a consortium which has strongly pushed for the project to help open up vast parts of regional Victoria and New South Wales.