Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The current plan for the coalition's boondoggle project, the Inland Rail, ends at Acacia Ridge in my electorate. This will mean more trucks on suburban roads in Moreton. There will be more congestion on our roads, more noise and more air pollution, as A-double trucks—in fact, trains—bringing in coal from New South Wales will be driving through the southern suburbs of Brisbane. There will likely be an extra 3,000 A-double trucks each day on our suburban roads, and that number is expected to increase to 11 million truck movements per year by 2040.

So, the LNP, 'Team LNP', have announced a half-baked plan to build tunnels from Acacia Ridge to the port of Brisbane. I say it's 'half-baked' because there's no detail and no costings. What we do know is that the shortest route from Acacia Ridge to the port of Brisbane is 30 kilometres. The Cross River Rail comprised twin tunnels, six kilometres in length, at a cost of $5.4 billion. Tunnels for double-stack trains—because that is what the Inland Rail is about—will need to be bigger than the Cross River Rail tunnels, leaving aside the important fact that the cost of building 30 kilometres of the same-sized tunnels to the port of Brisbane, based on the Cross River Rail costs, will be about $25 billion to $30 billion at today's prices. That's not even allowing for the cost increases over time, because it will be about 10 to 20 years before the tunnel is actually dug.

The LNP are saying they want two eight-kilometre long tunnels going to the port. The LNP have said that. That would mean double-stack trains going above ground through suburbs in my electorate. Even on the LNP's crazy plan, the tunnels alone would cost at least $13 billion to $15 billion. To put this into perspective, the total cost of the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Acacia Ridge, which isn't the port of Brisbane, is $15 billion, and that's for a 1,700-kilometre long track. That's about $9 million per kilometre of track. Importantly, the most expensive part of the project is getting the track down the range from Toowoomba to Acacia Ridge.

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