John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commence by commending the member for Cowper for bringing this motion to the attention of the chamber. To have his support on great infrastructure matters almost tempts me to write to our great Institution of Engineers in Australia and have him entered as an honorary member. It is nice to have recognition of the challenges that confront the nation with regard to transport.

It is worth while reflecting on the legacy left to our generation by our rail system. It was developed in a colonial fashion, with the rail system radially heading into the capitals of each of our major states, and, worse than that, it was even deliberately established with different gauges. The founding fathers of the day did not want the trade from other states impacting on their own markets.

Now we are paying an enormous price for that in that it has a negative impact on our economy, because it means that we do not have a rail system for our great continent that is north and south and east and west oriented in a network, such as you see in the economies of Europe and the United States. Even Europe had the foresight to at least establish rail systems that crossed what were then national borders, and they are much better positioned. Consequently we have far too much bulk freight on roadways, which of course creates other challenges to keeping our road system safe and capable of the huge load demanded of it.

It has been a great relief over the years to see the attention the government has been placing on creating what we should have had in the first place—that is, north-south and east-west freight routes—so that we can convey the commodities produced in regional Australia, which the member for Shortland made reference to. When you think about the way in which the rail systems were established 100 years ago, we have silos and railway stations with roughly a horse-dray drive separating them and around which communities developed. Those communities have become the villages, if you like, of regional Australia. So the member for Shortland has got that right, but we need to do much more.

It is a delight to see now that AusLink, which the government’s white paper established in 2004, is now getting to the stage of implementation with $2.4 billion to upgrade rail infrastructure before 2009. This massive injection of capital will overcome our timidity of years back when we, to the credit of the former government before the coalition, attempted to but did not commit the significant amount of funding that was needed. I can remember the conversion of the east-west Melbourne to Adelaide rail link. Included in that were substantial north-south links in my electorate to standard gauge, which gives the valuable freight of grain another option of two ports other than in Melbourne: in Geelong and Portland. But it was undercapitalised. Near $20 million was spent on those north-south links. To this day, the replacement of sleepers has not occurred. There was a transfer of the rail inwards of six inches to meet the standard gauge measurement. Nothing else was invested. That is now creating enormous pain in my part of the world because it was not done properly.

At least the commitments that now come through AusLink include significant capital and will entice partnerships with private enterprise across the nation. The member for Cowper has made reference to examples that are in his part of the world. The $2 billion worth of horticulture and produce that is produced in Mildura heads south for its first journey. Ultimately it has to go north to the thriving markets of Asia. The idiocy is that its first journey is south. We badly need those commodities—which are precious and need to get to markets as quickly as possible because they are perishable—heading north directly from Mildura, crossing the Murray River, all the way up to the ports. Darwin is a new port up there. So I am delighted to see this. I congratulate the member for Cowper for bringing up this resolution for discussion. I will be working hard to make sure that that particular ingredient of $2.4 billion gets well spent on rail. Of course, there is the additional challenge of the road system as well. (Time expired)

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