‘You don’t just rush out and start spending money’: Slow going for high-speed rail

Labor’s promised high-speed rail network from Brisbane to Melbourne cannot be rushed, says federal Transport Minister Catherine King, as the opposition slams the government’s progress on the project.

Former Sydney Metro executive Tim Parker on Monday took the helm of the federal government’s High Speed Rail Authority – a body legislated in November 2022 to identify and secure rail corridors while overseeing the construction and operation of the network.

Transport Minister Catherine King said: “You don’t just rush out and start spending money before you know how much a project’s actually going to cost.”Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and King said high-speed rail networks operated around the world and the government remained determined to deliver the “transformative project”.

“What the expectation is this year is the business case will be done, planning work undertaken, geotechnical work undertaken and also recommendations to government about how the project is financed,” King told a press conference in Newcastle on Tuesday.

“You’ve got to get the structures right, the governance right, the planning right, the engineering right. You don’t just rush out and start spending money before you know how much a project’s actually going to cost.”

In the lead-up to the 2022 election, Albanese pledged a $500 million down payment for the Sydney to Newcastle leg of the project, saying: “My vision is for high-speed rail that runs from Brisbane to Melbourne.”

In June 2023, the rail authority replaced the Morrison government’s National Faster Rail Agency, which was created to steer a $4 billion proposal for a fast rail link between Melbourne and Geelong.

During the 2013 election, former prime minister Kevin Rudd pledged to begin planning for a Melbourne to Sydney link that could be running by 2035.

The project never began after Labor lost in a landslide election to former prime minister Tony Abbott, which Albanese said was a pity.

“We had senior people, we’d done the work. It was a $2.45 benefit for every dollar expended on part of that project, an enormous difference, and high-speed rail is now operating in every inhabited continent on the planet,” Albanese said on Tuesday.

Senator Bridget McKenzie slammed the government’s progress on the project.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“There is no reason whatsoever why, because of the population of Australia and its location around the east coast, this can’t be a transformative project. A transformative project for city-to-city travel, but also a transformative project in regional economic development.”

However, opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said she would only believe it when she saw the project begin.

“Nothing has happened to date in 18 months, and the only possible reason the prime minister would have to be talking up high-speed rail is to distract from his inaction on dealing with the high cost of living,” she said.

The progress of the Albanese government project came under fire in October 2023 estimates when Senator Matt Canavan compared it to Utopia – a TV show satirising the Australian bureaucracy – as the rail authority’s then acting chief executive, Andrew Hyles, told estimates it was focusing on getting the plans right.

“From that perspective, we’ve got a whole corporate plan, which is published on our website, that details the work that we’re doing to ensure that we get the planning right and then we’ll kick off from there,” Hyles told estimates in October.

“I reckon we’re going to have a few scripts of Utopia by the end of all this,” Canavan responded.

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