Inland Rail

TOOWOOMBA’S launch of the proposed Inland Railway line is really the National Party’s long-playing, taxpayer-funded election campaign.

It is just the National Party’s public relations con trick to launch a multi-billion ABC Utopia television program-style example of being seen to do something really dramatic to help country people.

The truth is that there is no new freight to justify a duplication of the coastal railway line between capital cities.

However Australia’s largest transport companies will of course, publicly support the inland railway line, as they are gaming or playing the Barnaby Joyce/ Malcolm Turnbull Government as fools.

They know only too well that without very large amounts of new and ongoing freight, that they can demand ridiculously cheap and give-away railway freight rates and line access charges, just to get some freight on the line.

Major freight companies will, at the expense of taxpayers, cut their costs by more than half or two thirds.

Barnaby Joyce claims that this project can be fully funded via an “off-budget” $8.4 billion government equity injection into the Australian Rail Track Corporation.

This is backdoor Public Private Partnership funding is highly doubtful, given the conclusion reached by the Inland Rail Implementation Group chaired by John Anderson in 2015.

Former National Party Leader and former Deputy Prime Minster, John Anderson found that:

“While the economic analysis indicates that Inland Rail will deliver a net economic benefit to Australia, the expected operating revenue over 50 years will not cover the initial capital investment required to build the railway—hence, a substantial public funding contribution is required to deliver Inland Rail.”

Sooner or later, federal parliament will be forced to vote on this unapproved backdoor funding, but parliament’s cross-bench and opposition senators claim that funding approval is doubtful and further cash injections of more than $500 million will be needed to prop-up the inland railway line - that is without freight.

The truth is that a fraction of the $8.4 billion to $14 billion to build an inland railway line - without a freight need, could be spent to solve every single community need in the Toowoomba region and upgrade retirement villages, sports complexes and the hospital.

However Toowoomba’s Chamber of Commerce will naturally support anything to build business and be encouraged to donate to the National Party, even if eventually in eight years time, no business happens for a spectacular project that promises everything and may eventually deliver little or nothing. — JOHN BELL, Former Commercial Manager Australasia, Hartmann Shipping, West Gladstone