Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

We have hundreds of coal wagons on an abandoned spur line, connected to the rail system by a mothballed railway line. This is an asset that could be doing something worth while to help improve the performance of Queensland’s rail lines. These lines were once the pride of Australia’s national rail system. Queensland was the first to introduce multiheaded trains and electrified bulk cargo, and it did an enormous amount to open up Central Queensland and the coalmines to the export markets of the world. But, in reality, under Labor this system has been allowed to just drift away. When Premier Beattie was confronted with the fact that his performance—the failure of Queensland Rail to do its job—was costing this nation perhaps $1 billion a year in lost revenue, he blamed the coal companies. It was all their fault: the coal companies are greedy, because they want to export more; they want to earn more export dollars. Here is Premier Beattie taking $1 billion a year in royalties from coal exports from Australia, yet he cannot keep the trains running. They are trains that could be delivering cash into the indebted Queensland government coffers but are stopped because the Labor government cannot keep the system operating, enabling our coal exports to achieve their potential. This illustrates and proves yet again: if you give something to Labor in good working order, it will not be long before it is broken.

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