Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Friday morning, another milestone was reached in the wonderful nation-building infrastructure project, the Melbourne to Brisbane rail line, otherwise known as Inland Rail. The implementation report that was put down by a committee chaired by the former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, was presented to Minister Truss along with the business plan for this iconic project. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I do not need to explain to you the great importance that this project has for Australia. It is 1,700 kilometres long. It has the ability for every train trip to remove, I think, something like 130 B-doubles from the Newell Highway, which traverses my electorate. The fuel consumption for that amount of freight per tonne is about a third what it is for road transport. The time compared to rail now going up the east coast is being cut by about 10 hours.

Not only will this be a great project to ease the freight congestion on the highway on the city-to-city intermodal route but, for inland New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, there are great opportunities. As the cities back up into the mountains and places like Sydney back into the Blue Mountains, it is getting incredibly difficult, and the land in those areas is getting incredibly valuable. As the urban encroachment comes in on industrial areas, moving manufacturing and logistic hubs to the inland adjacent to this rail line will become a strong possibility. It will become an imperative that will make good business sense.

We will see that places like Parkes, Narromine, Narrabri, Moree and Toowoomba will all have great opportunities to attract new businesses to those areas. Primary producers, agricultural producers, grain producers and the miners who produce minerals and coal which come from inland New South Wales will have different opportunities to get to different ports. We will see, along with the iconic airport that was constructed by the Wagner family in Toowoomba, the possibility of linking the rail line into that airport, and air-freighting fresh produce into Asia on a daily basis will be a reality.

This project has been talked about for some time, and there have been a couple of false starts, quite frankly. But the reason it is going to succeed now is that we have real commitment from this government. Warren Truss was able to secure $300 million. That is being spent now. As you go out in western New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, there are people out there—surveyors, environmentalists and community engagement officers—doing the preliminary work that this project will need to go. We have great support from the leadership of this country. It is just a matter now of finalising a plan for finance. It is going to cost approximately $10 billion.

It will be close to a 10-year proposal. But, if it is done in stages, we will see a benefit much sooner. For instance, grain producers in the Moree-North Star area would benefit immediately from an upgrade of that track back to Narrabri to hook into the Hunter Valley line and to the Port of Newcastle. Already, farmers in my electorate are seriously negotiating to purchase their own train and cut logistics costs by 50 per cent in delivering grain to port.

This is a game changer. This is the Snowy Mountains scheme of the 21st century and a visionary project that we have been waiting for for a long time. A milestone was reached last Friday with the implementation report being handed to the minister. It is now a matter of getting those reports finalised and getting on with the job.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 9.30 pm, the debate is interrupted.

House adjourned at 21:30