Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For a few years now—in fact, since before the last election—the federal government has had $2 billion of its taxpayers' money on the table for the Victorian government to match so that we could end up with a fast train service to Geelong. Nothing has happened, of course, and the Victorian government seems to be hell-bent on spending $120 billion on a suburban rail loop that seems to be totally fanciful. However, the consultancy group Juturna, who have been contracted by the Geelong council to work out the best way to deliver fast train services to Geelong, have come up with a report called Stronger, Together. It offers an opportunity for fast trains not just to Geelong but also to Seymour, Shepparton, Bendigo, Ballarat, the Latrobe Valley and even, on the north-east line, Benalla. This is an opportunity for the 1.5 million Victorians who live outside of Melbourne. It's an opportunity for 200-kilometre-per-hour electric trains to bring around 600,000 of those Victorians within commuting distance of Melbourne.

Right now, if you look at the wealth distribution of Victorians you see some people who are lucky enough and successful enough to live in what you would call inner Melbourne, where they are able to access high-paying jobs and take advantage of what those high-paying jobs bring to their family. You then have another class of Victorians who live on the outskirts of Melbourne, in the suburbs—they travel an hour into work every day and still have access to those high-paid jobs. They are the second class of Victorians. Then there's a third class of Victorians, who are prohibited from accessing these high-paying jobs and the wealth that exists within inner Melbourne. They are the people who live in regional Victoria. There are 1.5 million Victorians who live in regional Victoria, outside of that commuting distance to the Melbourne CBD.

The proposal for this 200-kilometre-per-hour train program has been fully worked through and has a business case associated with it. It simply needs the Victorian government to get on board and start looking at ways in which we could have a proper resettlement plan. In a country like Australia, to have 43 per cent of the nation's population living in two cities is a joke. What we need is a way to get the population to and from our capital cities so that people will be more inclined to headquarter their businesses out in regional Victoria. Bendigo Bank is an amazing organisation. At one stage it very nearly brought its headquarters into Docklands, but it didn't. It stuck with having its headquarters in regional Victoria. Bendigo Bank is headquartered in Bendigo, and 500 high-paying jobs stayed in Bendigo because of that. I'm sure that situation could be replicated many times over if we had connectivity back into Melbourne so we could have genuine two-way traffic.

Having 200-kilometre-per-hour trains effectively halves the travel time of our existing services. All of a sudden Geelong comes inside 30 minutes, Bendigo comes to 45 minutes and Ballarat would probably be around 35 to 40 minutes. Even places like Shepparton become accessible to Melbourne, with a one-hour travel time. What we have here is an opportunity. That money is still on the table. The Victorian government simply needs to look beyond spending $120 billion back in Melbourne to maybe bringing the rest of Victoria along for the ride. Spend a little bit of money in the regions. Connect regional Victoria back to Melbourne and connect Melbourne back to regional Victoria. There are great opportunities out there. The Victorian government simply needs to realise that everybody deserves to be looked after when it comes to infrastructure spending, and not to look just at the projects that are going to benefit Melbourne.

House adjourned at 20:00