LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Rain and fires

WE’VE had very good rain this spring and early summer and the morning forecast was for a month’s worth of rain for most of Eastern Australia in three days.

This is good now. Everything is growing vigorously. The unharvested winter crops will suffer, and there will be some, not likely major, flooding,

So the east is going to have a huge growth in grass and vegetation.

So what? Remember the fires of 2020, and the tragedies and disasters caused by them. This will occur again unless we start preparing now.

Fire breaks now. Control burning later on before the danger time arrives. Keep clear round our homes and properties.

Rain and the resultant growth aren’t global warming, but simply a natural result following good rains. We just need to be aware and prepare as the time comes. Or suffer the consequences.

There is not much help or advice for those who choose to live in heavily vegetated areas, they will always suffer the result of choosing to live in a high risk situation.

RAY HARCH, Toowoomba

Inland Rail

WHAT a lovely feeling I had when I heard that the ARTC had changed the name of Inland rail to “Our inland Rail!” What a masterful piece of propaganda and persuasion.

The irony of calling it Our Inland Rail is the hard fact that we will be paying for it forever and it will never make a profit.

This is in black and white; the government has had two business cases carried out of which both relied heavily on coal for its sunny outlook for the Inland Rail — it was not “ours” in those days.

With the rosiest situation and the highest coal price along with maximum output, the rail would turn a profit in about 50 years. This was not including in the costs the upgrade to the other infrastructure that was also needed to be built to enable the large number of huge trains required to reach their targets, for example the expansion to the Brisbane port was not included in overall costs including many other projects that are essential.

I failed to mention the fact that the CEO of the ARTC went to the government last year and asked for another $4 billion because there were a few items that they had forgotten to include in the initial costings which at the start was estimated at $9 billion.

You cannot make this stuff up; another nearly 45% increase before a shovel had even hit the ground in Queensland.

So now it looks like the rail will become profitable early in the next century with all the ARTC’s ducks in a line, of course that’s not including the other infrastructure requirements which must be in other budgets.

This wonderful line will try to take the coal from a quarry in NSW to Acacia Ridge in Queensland. This is not a port, it’s in the middle of Brisbane. From there it will have to be reloaded to take it that last bit to the port. The Brisbane port it has been stated cannot increase its throughput much even with maximum expansion to it physically. It cannot be done, the geography does not allow it. It is also a shallow port which means huge ships with deep hulls cannot be entertained at the port.

The other option for the Inland Rail is of course the deep sea port of Gladstone. Getting the train to Gladstone is more miles overland and will inevitably take longer, but here is the rub —— the rail line will cost Australia’s taxpayers less due to the fact it does not require two bridging zones to get it across two flood plains and will also not require a tunnels system to be bored through the volcanic rock of the range to get the train to the port.

The time taken for the journey to the port is further north meaning that the actual ship’s journey will be quicker from the port of Gladstone than Brisbane.

The goods that are required to be carted to the city and not to be exported as Brisbane is to be the final destination can utilise the rail line that is already built running to Brisbane, and of course without the millions of tonnes of coal dragging along the train will much smaller cleaner and will not require hundreds of homes to be made uninhabitable. A win for everybody.

The line does then not need to climb the range to Toowoomba but can stay on a more direct route to Gladstone via a few towns, perhaps giving those towns the boost of more jobs and a constant employment for some rail maintenance crews.

This idea is not my own. It is been banded about a lot but for some odd reason common sense seems to have gone out of the window and “the powers that be” are not entertaining the fact that Brisbane port’s small throughput has no chances of any profiteering whereas Gladstone Port has massive potential for as much coal and goods as you can dream of lots of profits.

So at the moment “Our Inland Rail” will be owing us money even when your youngest children die of old age. It will still not be in profit and once the rains hit it will require massive repairs pushing the cut-even date further down the road.

Or use the line to Gladstone travelling over much less undulating ground and missing off the two flood plains making it a much longer lasting structure. PAUL CLAPHAM, Southbrook