Bellowin’ Barnaby Joyce back on the rails, roaring to go

From the conception to construction of the $15bn Inland Rail – one of Australia’s largest-ever infrastructure projects – the Nationals have been pretty much in charge of the entire show.

Clockwise from main: getting to work on the Inland Rail.

The Deputy PM bellows down the line like a bull in the house paddock. “I’m tellin’ ya, I am gunna take it to Gladstone. I am gunna make sure it goes to Gladstone, and that’s that.” He’s not long been back on the good pasture and Barnaby Joyce is on the rampage.

And he’s got a few problems. From the conception to construction of the $15bn Inland Rail – one of Australia’s largest-ever infrastructure projects – the ­Nationals have been pretty much in charge of the entire show. Joyce says that when he and Malcolm Turnbull sat down to nut out an agreement after the 2016 election this was the Nats’ big-ticket item. Joyce says the Liberals wanted money for the second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek. “And I insisted on the ­Inland Rail,” he says. This is ­Barnaby’s baby.

And yet, Joyce admits, there have been some balls-ups along the way. “What I can say on the ­record,” he says, still fuming after some of his off-the-record ­assessments, “is this: There were a range of difficulties that I became aware of when I returned to the ministry and I am working as hard as I can to iron them out.”

Joyce’s solution is to throw taxpayers’ money at these problems, as though the dosh was inherited wealth.

He now claims that for the project to work properly the line needs to also go to Gladstone. “It’s not ­‘either or’, it’s ‘and’,” he says. “It’s Gladstone and Brisbane.” It adds another 500km of track to the project – and a cool $5bn.

What Joyce doesn’t say is that the previous minister for infrastructure and transport, whose dirty laundry he now claims to be washing, and ironing, was ­Michael McCormack, the former deputy PM and the Nationals leader he deposed. McCormack, however, is having none of this. He says that when he took over from Joyce in 2018 the entire project “was basically a desktop route” and that no agreements had been signed with state governments about where the train would actually run. He was the one who signed those agreements that allowed the construction to begin. “I got the thing started,” McCormack says. “I left the portfolio in very good ­condition.”

Fingers are being pointed in all directions – the project is already $5.5bn over budget – and if there are problems with the Inland Rail they are problems entirely of the Nationals’ making. The chairman of the Australian Rail Track Corporation, the government entity charged with building the Inland Rail, is the former deputy PM and former leader of the Nationals Warren Truss. “For anyone to turn around and say that things aren’t going to plan is to besmirch the reputation of [people like] Warren Truss,” says McCormack. “I would never ever question Warren Truss’s passion, commitment and know-how to get a project off the ground. For anyone to point an accusatory finger is to rubbish a whole lot of people who don’t ­deserve it.”

The Inland Rail line near Parkes in central west NSW. Picture: ARTC

‘We should do this’

The Inland Rail is a grand, nation-building project that is set to haul immense prosperity west of the Great Divide. The 1700km of new track, linking Melbourne and Brisbane, joins up with the east-west line from Sydney to Perth at the NSW town of Parkes. When finished the new line will have the capacity to handle double-stacked, 1800m-long container trains that will travel at 115km/h – each train the equivalent of 110 B-double trucks. The nation will ­finally be united by a single-gauge rail line. Hundreds of workers are currently laying tracks in the wheat fields of western NSW around Moree and Narrabri for a project that is due for completion in 2027. The major centres along the route – Albury, Wagga Wagga, Parkes, Narrabri, Moree, Goondiwindi and Toowoomba – are set to boom from the industry it will bring. It will revolutionise the ­delivery of freight in Australia.

But the project has its flaws. One is that the Inland Rail track, capable of carrying the double-stacked wagons, is set to terminate in the southern Brisbane suburb of Acacia Ridge, 30km from the Port of Brisbane. To reach the port, containers will either have to be moved onto smaller trains to ­travel on the commuter line, or onto trucks. Former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader John Anderson says that eventually an underground tunnel will need to be built, linking the port to the Inland Rail.

But, Anderson says, the existing train link, and trucks, will be able to handle the capacity for the next decade or more. Besides, he says, the Inland Rail was never conceived to be principally an ­import/export link. He says it was the big supermarket chains who were pushing for the Inland Rail to ­deliver boxed, or containerised freight. “The economic driver was boxed freight, more than anything else,” he says.

Anderson was formerly the chair of the Inland Rail ­Implementation Group, which pulled together the business case for the project. In 2015 he ­presented this case to Tony ­Abbott’s cabinet, back when Joyce was minister for agriculture. “It was one of the most extraordinary cabinet meetings I have ever ­attended,” he says. “I went in prepared to spend an hour arguing with them and I got through my 10-minute introduction and ­Abbott says, ‘I think we should do this.’ And that was the end of it.”

Engineer John Abbott. Picture: Nick Gibbs

The rail rationale

And now, at the eleventh-hour and as tracks are being laid, Joyce wants to add another leg to the route. It must be pointed out that enthusiasm for the Gladstone leg seems to have heated up since Ken O’Dowd, the sitting member for Flynn – of which Gladstone is the major population centre – announced he would be retiring at the next election. Labor has nominated popular Gladstone mayor Matt Burnett, and he is thought to be in with a real chance of winning the seat back from the Nationals. Burnett, of course, also supports the Inland Rail going to Gladstone.

Joyce’s other motivation seems to be ideological. “It will open up new coal precincts,” he says. “There, I’ve said it, the dirty word – coal.” There are substantial coal deposits in the Banana Shire, south of Gladstone, and in northern NSW, around Ashford, and Joyce says these projects could ­become viable, that is if billions of dollars of public money is spent on a rail spur to Gladstone. Joyce says it’s become politically untenable to take these coal trains through the suburbs of Brisbane – hence the need for the Gladstone link.

Who thinks the 500km Gladstone spur is a dumb idea? Well, John Anderson for one. And ­Michael McCormack for another. Anderson says the modelling he oversaw, just six years ago, found the economic ­argument for Gladstone just didn’t stack up. Anderson says he was surprised at how little money there was in hauling bulk commodities, like coal. He says there was no “viable business model” to take the line to Gladstone. “Not one that I could put my name to in terms of justifying taxpayer expenditure,” he says.

‘Just not viable’

And then, just last year, the Australian government released the Inland Rail Gladstone Link Prefeasibility Study. “An extension of Inland Rail to the Port of Gladstone was found to not be economically viable at this time,” it found. “Not sufficient to justify the capital cost, estimated to be up to $5bn.” McCormack says this was an extensive study, “a deep dive” into the viability of the Gladstone link. “The study took into account freight to and from Gladstone and took into account all the economic and financial and community considerations,” he says. “It found it was not economically viable. That’s why we do studies – to base taxpayer investment on a business case that stacks up … you can’t just build things for the sake of building them. Sure, there will be ­certain benefits for Gladstone, but this is billions of taxpayers’ money.”

Last month Joyce happened to be in Gladstone, to be pictured with Colin Boyce – the Nationals’ endorsed candidate for the seat of Flynn – standing in front of a power station, presumably with a train line lurking nearby. Boyce, who is currently the member for Callide in the Queensland parliament, says the line from Toowoomba to Gladstone should be built ahead of the Toowoomba to Brisbane line. “The link from Toowoomba to Acacia Ridge is problematic and expensive.” Boyce says. “I think it [the Gladstone line] is an important piece of infrastructure that needs to be done.”

There’s a strong view, up Gladstone way, that the Toowoomba to Brisbane leg shouldn’t be built at all. They reckon the tunnel through the Great Dividing Range will be too expensive. And then there’s all those whingeing NIMBYs in the suburbs of Brisbane to contend with. Best to forget Brisbane and go to Gladstone.

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce. Picture: AAP

Competing arguments

Joyce says we should contact mining engineer John Abbott, who is chancellor of CQUniversity, as “he talks a lot of sense”. And so we do. Joyce met up with Abbott on his recent jaunt to Gladstone. ­Abbott takes us through his argument, that it would be cheaper and quicker to bring the containers into the Port of Gladstone and then take them by rail around Australia. He says the ports in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney are reaching maximum capacity. “If you bring it to Gladstone you can put in on the Inland Rail … I can unload a container ship in Gladstone, get it on the Inland Rail and have it delivered to western Sydney before the ship even ties up in Sydney.”

It’s a convincing argument, until you talk to the shipping ­industry. Melwyn Noronha, the chief executive of Shipping Australia, says he doubts the big container ships would ever pull into Gladstone. “Why would they bother paying the additional port charges?” he says. Typically, he says, cargo ships go to Freemantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane – or vice versa. He says it is far cheaper to leave it on the ship, until it gets to, say, Sydney, than unload it at Gladstone and put it on a train – where it will then need to be trucked to its destination once it arrives. Why not just leave it on the ship to Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide and truck it straight from the port? Rather than build new ­facilities at Gladstone, he argues the better option is to spend the money building the underground rail link to the Port of Brisbane.

Not so, says John Abbott. He argues the economic model for Gladstone becomes much more attractive if the Inland Rail doesn’t go anywhere near Brisbane. He advocates taking the train to Toowoomba – which would be the main distribution point for south east Queensland – and then taking the line north to Gladstone. “The cost justification for coming down the range from Toowoomba, through the Great Dividing Range, and then into Brisbane, just doesn’t exist,” says Abbott. It’s just 120km from Toowoomba to Acacia Ridge, and yet that’s ­almost half the cost of the entire 1700km project, as it now stands.

Gladstone or bust

There is considerable anger along the route, particularly in Queensland, from people opposed to the Inland Rail. But, equally, there are powerful business and industry figures who want to see the Inland Rail go to Brisbane. Joyce insists his master plan includes Brisbane and Gladstone. “This is on the ­record. It has got to go to Brisbane and we look forward to the major engineering work to take it down the hill. We know there are certain concerns, but we will work through this. And it will also go to Gladstone.”

Joyce insists he won’t have any trouble getting it through cabinet. “It’s a crucial part of the ­Coalition,” he says. “That’s what I want to do. And that’s what’s gunna happen.” Have you raised it with Scott Morrison? “Yes. He didn’t say no and he didn’t say yes. I said ‘We’ve got to do this’.”

Then he adds: “Just so you know, John Anderson never got the money for the Inland Rail. Warren Truss never got the money for the Inland Rail. Nobody else got the money for the ­Inland Rail. I, as leader of the ­Nationals, got the money for the Inland Rail. Everybody else is piggy­backing on me now, but make no mistake about it, I got it.”

After sports rorts, dodgy car ark deals, sunken treasures in the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, one wonders how much tolerance tax payers will have as they see five billion of their hard-earned stuffed into a streaky-bacon-freight-train bound for Gladstone.