Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Again the response from the Labor government is typical—a lot of fine words, all talk but never any action. By contrast, the coalition in its first few years of office actually spent, from memory, $25 million on a feasibility study for a high-speed rail link between Canberra and Sydney. The result of that very expensive, very lengthy and detailed assessment was that high-speed rail was simply not economically or otherwise feasible, even between Canberra and Sydney.

The coalition does not just talk; we actually took action to look at that very issue. As I said, it did cost, from memory, $25 million. Contrary to what Senator Brown said, his motion did not talk about a preliminary assessment. It just said ‘a feasibility study’. My information is that a proper feasibility study looking at Melbourne to Brisbane or Melbourne to Cairns would cost well in excess of $100 million. In these times, with huge debts run up by the Labor government, we believe that better things could be done with the $100 million. We have always supported investment in rail. There are a number of initiatives—for example, the Darwin to Alice Springs railway was not only an initiative but a completed action of the Howard government and the Australian Rail Track Corporation. We have shown our commitment but we do not believe in wasting money on feasibility studies when we know from the feasibility study we did conduct that it is simply not economically viable.