Opinion: Labor’s rail land buy-back clever politics but policy con job
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s promise to revive Rockhampton’s rail workshops is clever politics but she voted to sell them off in the first place, writes Steven Wardill.
Opinion
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Annastacia Palaszczuk’s promise yesterday to revive Rockhampton’s rail workshops was clever politics.
The region has lamented their loss ever since Aurizon closed them in 2018 after 141 years of operation.
However, as far as policy goes, the Premier’s commitment was a complete con job.
For a start, the only reason why the workshops were owned by Aurizon to begin with was because Labor flogged them off for cash during the Global Financial Crisis.
Now Labor reckons part of the solution to recovering from Queensland’s latest economic troubles is to spend public money buying them back.
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Under Palaszczuk’s great rail revival, the workshops will be used to manufacture and maintain Queensland rollingstock.
“Trains will be built in Queensland, by Queenslanders, for Queenslanders,” Transport Minister Mark Bailey reckoned.
Yet just a few week back, Bailey had to hose down a hairbrained idea by Labor’s Hinchinbrook candidate for light rail between Ingham and Townsville by saying there was no demand for more passenger rail. So where are all these locomotives coming from that suddenly need servicing in central Queensland?
The Island of Sodor?
The Palaszczuk Government has already thrown $1 billion worth of untendered work at Maryborough-based Downer to try and keep the facility afloat.
That included $10 million to upgrade the facility to cater for the New Generation Rollingstock fleet when taxpayers had already paid for a maintenance centre to service them at Wulkuraka, near Ipswich.
And clearly Aurizon saw no need for the Rockhampton-based facility when the company moved its maintenance to other Queensland locations so it’s unlikely to be a customer.
Maybe Palaszczuk should have argued that she’s future-proofing train building in Queensland by proposing to buy back the same land she voted to sell.
Who knows? It could be ready in time to service those fast trains politicians have been talking about for the past forty years.
Originally published as Opinion: Labor’s rail land buy-back clever politics but policy con job