I’ve been laughing all morning at a sketch from the ABC comedy series Utopia where a political staffer tells a bureaucratic boss played by Rob Sitch that the PM needs to launch a feasibility study into fast rail.
The laughter comes after Premier Gladys Berejiklian did just that in real life today - in terms of a meagre $4.6 million commitment to study whether a fast rail line should be built from Sydney to Newcastle; Lithgow, Canberra or Wollongong.
Everyone knows a proper high speed rail line would cost tens of billions.
In the Utopia sketch, Sitch, who plays “Tony”, head of the National Building Authority, protests to the exuberant staffer about the future of fast rail: “I know you’re really keen but I just don’t think we can make a very fast train work. The numbers just don’t stack up.”
The staffer responds: “You’ve got to look beyond the numbers, a vision Tony. If we’d listened to the beancounters we would never have built the Snowy [Hydro Scheme].”
Sitch: “The Snowy was a white elephant.”
Staffer: “Are you kidding me? The Snowy ... forged this nation.”
Sitch: “I don’t think it’s ever turned a profit.”
Staffer: “Hydroelectricity, I did a project on it at school.”
Sitch: “The numbers don’t stack up. Everyone’s done numbers on it, there’ve been like 10 feasibility studies on it in the last decade.”
Staffer: “What does that tell you?”
Sitch: “Stop doing feasibility studies ... if the study says it stinks, we stop.”
Staffer: “You can’t stop now ... the PM’s very keen, the backbenchers are restless. Seriously, he’s got to come up with some 30-year vision in the next three weeks.”
And so it seems for Gladys Berejiklian.
As I understand it, the Premier was urged by some in government to either commit billions to such a project or not announce it at all.
The risk? You could get compared to a Utopia skit. And you can look desperate when you are behind in the polls.
I once had a former federal adviser tell me that he was on the couch watching Utopia when he realised he had been in the meeting which was on screen. And so it seems here.
A feasibility study will find that, yes, a fast rail is feasible. As many other pre-election feasibility studies have. Just hideously expensive.
The comparison to a CBD light rail nobody wants and was Gladys’ vision — and is set to blow out past $3 billion — is excruciating.
Berejiklian launched an ad campaign on Sunday with the slogan “Let’s get it done.”
In this case, it is a matter of “Let’s get things studied” (yet again).
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