Inland rail at risk of becoming a white elephant if infrastructure is not linked, Barnaby Joyce warns
With no guarantees the line will even cross into Queensland, Barnaby Joyce has questioned the project’s purpose if Melbourne and Brisbane aren’t linked.
The $31bn inland rail project between Melbourne and Brisbane is at risk of becoming a white elephant if parts of the line remain isolated from one another, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has warned.
Touted as a nation-building project necessary to meet Australia’s growing freight task when first announced in 2015, the project has since been beset by major cost blowouts, delays and political infighting with doubts it will ever reach the end of the line.
When construction started in 2018, the train line was due to be completed by 2027 and was going to run 1600km, from Tottenham in Melbourne to Acacia Ridge in Brisbane.
Two disjointed sections, totalling about 300km, between Parkes, west of Sydney, and North Star, near the Queensland border, are effectively completed, but sit isolated from the rest of the upgraded line further south.
Further funding is locked in for a 650km stretch from Beveridge, 40km north of Melbourne, to Parkes, with an estimated completion date of 2027.
Mr Joyce, who championed the project when the Coalition was in government,said better governance was crucial to getting the project back on track.
“We have this ridiculous scenario where we have the Parkes to Melbourne inland rail, and then the Newcastle to North Star inland rail, but they’re not actually connected to one another. And I don’t know whether Melbourne to North Star works as a business plan. I thought it was supposed to go to the city of Brisbane, not the village of North Star,” he said.
“It doesn’t work, it’s like saying well I’ve got a ship and a quarter of a ship … the thing won’t float if you get the rest of it and stick it together.”
There are no guarantees the line will even cross into Queensland, with the $14.6bn in confirmed funding now restricted to south of the border.
Mr Joyce questioned the point of the project if Brisbane and Melbourne were not connected, and said if political infighting continued, the line would not be built.
“I was saying to so many people that if you keep arguing about the route, in the end the whole thing will fall over,” he said.
“Well guess what? You are now reaping what you sow, you argued about where it was supposed to go and you never took into account that if there is a change of government it might not go anywhere at all.”
Liberal MP Garth Hamilton, whose federal electorate of Groom covers Toowoomba, said the Nationals failed to deliver inland rail when they had the chance and accused the Labor government of now “taking advantage”.
Mr Hamilton, a backbencher, said he would seek reassurances before the next federal election that the Coalition would commit to funding the project into Queensland.
“I’ll be making hell,” he told The Australian.
“This project could be finished if we hadn’t engaged in the ridiculous conversations about changing the route so many times – foolish proposals like putting it through Warwick.”
Mr Hamilton said Toowoomba residents were “absolutely distraught” at the prospect that the line may not make it into Queensland.
“My local community is going to suffer as a result of (political infighting), not just farmers but there’s huge transport opportunities off the back of this … young kids coming through getting a job.
“I am very unhappy that we didn’t deliver this when we were in government … despite the opposition from the Queensland Labor government, we could have got this thing done.”
Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli also accused the state Labor government of “dragging its heels” on the project, after it was initially reluctant to sign off on a 2019 agreement with the federal government citing community concern about the loss of agricultural land, flood plain issues, noise and social impacts.
“The Queensland government was the reason why the project didn’t start two and a half years earlier,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“The whole idea of this was being a generational bit of infrastructure across multiple states and can you imagine what happens if the state that is the engine room of the economy … was left off.”
A Queensland government spokeswoman said the former federal government had “botched” inland rail and said the state did not control funding, tenders or contracts for the project.
“Nine years in power and they couldn’t even get the line to enter Queensland,” she said.
“David Crisafulli had plenty of opportunity to take this up with his former colleagues when they were in power.”
A spokeswoman for federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King said the commonwealth “agrees in principle that inland rail should extend at least to Ebenezer in Queensland” after work is complete north of Narromine in NSW.
National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke said: “It’s disappointing to hear the project is facing further setbacks and we are unlikely to see trains on tracks anytime soon. It’s time now (for) the government to get serious and invest in our supply chains so farmers and all Australians can benefit.”
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