Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

High-speed rail represents an incredible opportunity for Australia. We are the last continent that hasn't got high-speed rail—other than Antarctica. It's good to see that we may be moving away from the station, because there is a real threat that the penguins will get to high-speed rail before we do in Australia!

The Greens have been advocating for high-speed rail for a very long time, for a whole range of reasons. High-speed rail is critical to reducing emissions from air travel. High-speed rail will connect our regional centres with the capital cities. It will connect the capital cities—the big cities—with each other efficiently and allow us to have zero-carbon transport between those cities. It will also enable us to deal with the issue of unsustainable flight noise around airports in our big cities.

As I said, the Greens have been campaigning for high-speed rail for a very long time, so we are pleased to be supporting the High Speed Rail Authority Bill 2022, which will set up an authority to actually get those wheels turning and move us away from the station. At the 2010 federal election, we took policy commitments on east coast high-speed rail to the electorate as part of our vision for a 21st century transport system. Following that election, the Greens made support for high-speed rail a part of our minority government agreement with the Gillard government, and we secured $20 million for the feasibility study for high-speed rail. That wouldn't have happened except for the negotiations with the Gillard government in 2010. We know from that feasibility study that high-speed rail really does stack up for Australia. So it's been very frustrating to see that high-speed rail actually has been stopped at the station since then. We're very pleased to see action happening.

At the 2022 election, the last federal election, our platform had a policy of committing $17.7 billion over the next four years for the initial stages of high-speed rail development and construction. It's about actually spending the money and setting up the authority, yes, but it's then about committing to start spending the money. This is a critical investment in the future of Australia. It's the type of investment that we need to be making—that is going to have transformational impacts on the shape of east coast Australia.

The Labor government, in now setting up this authority and in their commitments to high-speed rail, have so far committed only half a billion dollars rather than our commitment of $17.7 billion. The 2010 feasibility study estimated that the cost of the overall project from Brisbane to Melbourne would be $114 billion, which is, in 2022 terms, $135 billion.

There's a real concern that this bill has no provision for ensuring that this project stays in public hands. This High Speed Rail Authority could end up overseeing developments that mean you've got a privatised system delivering it through public-private partnerships that put the interests of those private investors ahead of the public. With Labor at this stage committing only $500 million for a $130-plus billion project, our fear is that most of it in fact will be delivered through private financing operations that will undermine the project. Crucial infrastructure like this should remain fully publicly owned, from construction to service delivery. Partial or wholesale privatisation of high-speed rail will lead to chaotic and slowed project delivery, higher prices for passengers, downward pressure on rail workers' wages, and cost cutting and corner cutting on regulations on the environmental and social impact. And it will mean that the project is not necessarily being delivered in the best interests of good regional planning.

The last iteration of high-speed rail that we saw from the private sector, the CLARA development, which was all going to be paid for by property uplift, was a case in point of what can happen if you have a private sector approach to high-speed rail. That project—and I'm not sure where it's up to at the moment; I hope that it is now in the dustbin of high-speed rail history—was going to basically take rural land, turn that into the centres of those cities and pay for the development by the uplift in the value of that land. The big problem with that is that those centres were some 15 or 20 kilometres away from the major regional towns. So what would happen is that you would have this centre that, for example, was 20 kilometres away from Shepparton, which would end with complete devastation and downturn in the existing regional centres. You might have the private developers doing very well out of property development costs for the new regional centres, but how about the people who have successful businesses, and their whole town, that have been set up in the regional centres that are being bypassed?

We want to see high-speed rail that's publicly owned and developed in the public interest, that makes sure that the stations of those regional centres along the route are right in the heart of those regional cities. It becomes a very efficient way for people from Melbourne to get to Shepparton and Albury, and for people in the regional centres in New South Wales and Queensland to reach their capital cities. It will transform the decentralisation agenda, transform the development of those cities. It will mean the east coast of Australia will genuinely have those thriving, vibrant cities that are well connected with fast, efficient, zero carbon transport and which connect them with each other and the capital cities. It will be transformational. It's a wonderful vision. It relies upon making sure that this development occurs in the public interest, which is only going to be guaranteed by maintaining public ownership of high-speed rail.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown moved an amendment, in the House, calling on the government to ensure that the whole project remains entirely in public hands, that's delivered with green steel, as much as possible, to cut down on emissions in the construction phase and to ensure that local manufacturing is used. This amendment, and all three of those things, are incredibly important and would be really valuable additions to this bill. Unfortunately, they were voted down by both the government and the Liberal Party.

The cost of $130 billion sounds like a lot of money, but we can afford it. The yardstick of what we can afford—we have a government that is committed to implementing the Liberal government's policy of tax cuts to the very wealthy. Those stage 3 tax cuts will cost $250 billion over the next decade. Just imagine. You could have $250 billion of tax cuts, over the next decade, to the rich—to the billionaires, to people earning massive amounts of money, who wouldn't know what to do with an $11,000-a-year tax cut other than to have another flight to a holiday somewhere in Europe—or you could be delivering high-speed rail. It's $130 billion to deliver high-speed rail.

These are the choices that need to be made. I know where I would prefer to be spending my money. Rather than giving $250 billion in tax cuts to the very wealthy, I would prefer to see high-speed rail being built, thanks very much, and I think the majority of Australians would think the same. Our support for high-speed rail isn't just because we are gunzels—train and tram enthusiasts, for people who don't know the word—it's because of those benefits. It's because of the benefits for planning and development, and it's the benefits of having really fast, efficient, zero carbon travel across the country.

We have some of the busiest flight routes in the world. Melbourne to Sydney is the second-busiest domestic flight route in the world. Brisbane to Sydney is the world's eighth-busiest domestic route. Pre-COVID these routes had close to 100,000 flights a year, producing enormous carbon emissions. Carbon pollution per passenger, for flying, is estimated to be 90 kilograms per hour. Let's take, as an example, trips that we all here know well: coming to Canberra. I live in Melbourne. Getting to Canberra requires me to jump on a plane and fly here.

At that rate, of 90 kilograms per hour, my estimate is that it's a cool 75 kilograms of carbon emissions per passenger—so for me. My carbon footprint for flying to Canberra is 150 kilograms return, which means it totally wipes out all of my efforts to reduce my carbon pollution, from travel, at home. I ride my bike. I catch public transport. I hardly ever drive my car—I have a car. It's a very fuel-efficient little car that sits in the driveway most of the time. I estimate that by riding my bike and catching public transport I probably do about 100 kilometres a week that my next-door neighbour might otherwise do by driving. That 100 kilometres a week avoids around 11 kilograms of carbon emissions. I wipe out those carbon savings every time I fly to Canberra. A hundred and fifty kilograms of carbon is produced in a return trip, wiping out the 11 kilograms that I save by very faithfully using my bike and public transport to get around town every week in Melbourne. But there is no other reasonable option for me. At the moment, there is no high-speed rail to get me from Melbourne to Canberra and back again. I've tried public transport from Melbourne to Canberra; I did it in the early years of being a senator. I caught the train from Melbourne to Albury and then the bus from Albury to Canberra. I had to leave home early on Sunday morning to get here on Sunday evening. The alternative was that I could catch a train and change trains in Goulburn at 4 am, which I decided probably wasn't a good idea for the beginning of a busy Senate week.

Basically, there is no option. High-speed rail would give us that option—and not just for us politicians. It would give people the option of zero carbon, fast, efficient travel between our capital cities. You could get from Melbourne to Sydney in under four hours and from Sydney to Brisbane in a similar amount of time, which would slash the amount of air travel. It is a critical factor in reducing our carbon pollution from flying. It is there, it is possible, it is economically viable and it is achievable. We need to be fast-tracking it. We need to get that high-speed rail happening at the speed of high-speed rail.

The International Energy Agency has shown that the introduction of high-speed rail around the world has led to significant reductions in air travel on many specific routes—Paris to London and Seoul to Busan, for instance. In these cases, air travel was halved when high-speed rail was introduced. High-speed rail in Australia could do the same thing, massively decreasing our transport emissions and providing people with a high-quality, comfortable and enjoyable transport alternative to flying. If you also consider all the delays and chaos at airports at the moment, people are begging for that convenient and reliable alternative.

The other benefit of reducing air travel is that it reduces the issue of airport noise around cities. In the whole time that I've been in the Senate, I have worked with communities in the suburbs around Melbourne Airport, who are really affected by increasing airport noise, which is set to increase. We've got Melbourne Airport now proposing a third runway, and people in the whole City of Brimbank are going to suffer from a massive increase in airport noise. That not only is unpleasant but actually has demonstrated impacts on people's health and wellbeing, childhood development and the ability for kids to learn at school. These things have been documented, in terms of the noise of excessive air flights over residential areas. But when people complain about airport noise around Australian airports they're basically told just to suck it up: 'Oh well, you live close to an airport, so there's nothing we can do about it.' The people of Brimbank are basically being told the same thing: 'Airport noise is going to increase above your whole municipality—bad luck; that's how it is.'

Well, there is something that we can do about it. We can reduce the amount of air travel. As I said, Melbourne to Sydney is the second busiest domestic air travel route in the world. If we had the number of Melbourne to Sydney flights halved—and I think it would probably be more than that if we had high-speed rail—it would have a significant impact on the noise being experienced around Melbourne Airport. So high-speed rail is crucial to cutting flight noise and this pollution long term. The only way to truly reduce domestic flight noise in the long run is to reduce the overall number of domestic flights in Australia, and high-speed rail would be able to achieve that.

In summary, we welcome this bill. It's a beginning, but there's so much more that needs to be done. For our future, for reducing our carbon pollution and for tranquil, pleasant cities, high-speed rail is absolutely essential.