Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

That's okay, Mr Acting Deputy President. I will continue my remarks later, because this is an important issue.

High-speed rail is something that this country has been talking about since at least the 1980s. I remember when we got the first XPT between Canberra and Sydney. As a boarding school student, I used to jump on the XPT. It still took three hours to get from Canberra to Sydney, but in those days that was actually quite fast. The XPT was going to be the frontrunner for what we were going to develop, which was high-speed rail. And, just like the best episodes of Utopia, this is a continuing drama.

When you look up high-speed rail in Australia on Wikipedia, it highlights the various fast, faster, fastest, high, higher and highest speed pipe dreams that have captivated various members of this place almost since the first railway line was built. We have had concepts for the very fast train or the VFT, the tilting train speed rail proposal, the east coast very high-speed train scoping study—which as a consultant I actually did a desktop audit to help for—high-speed rail for Australia, an opportunity for 21st-century western fast rail, a magnetic levitation line in Melbourne, and another VFT between Sydney and Melbourne, the study of which was announced by the Rudd government in 2013 when it was estimated the cost would be $114 billion. What we now have is $500 million to set up another agency.

Our side isn't totally innocent in this. In 2019-20 we established the National Faster Rail Agency. We did a lot of work through that agency to look at business cases for higher-speed and faster rail between capital cities and regional centres. We allocated 40 million to assess five fast-rail corridors on top of three business cases already under way at the time of establishing that agency, including the Sydney to Newcastle case. In our budget of 2021-22, we set aside a $1 billion commitment for the Sydney to Newcastle, Tuggerah to Wyong faster-rail upgrade. This is where the Utopia part of it really comes into play. What is the difference between faster rail and high-speed rail? I would have thought that if it is faster then, ergo, it has a higher speed, but I asked at estimates about the new High Speed Rail Authority legislation, which is the $500 million commitment. I said, 'We've got the National Faster Rail Agency already and the High Speed Rail Authority, so which is which and what is what?' The response was:

The National Faster Rail Agency is intended to have part of its functions rolled into the High Speed Rail Authority and part of its functions rolled into the department as the High Speed Rail Authority is established.

They went on to say:

Some of the projects identified and developed through the National Faster Rail Agency are on the books between the Commonwealth and the state, and they will continue to be so until such time as either they're built or government has a different decision.

This is why we are where we are today—still talking about it and not doing it. We have a change of government so we change the name of an authority or an agency, we reduce the funding available to that agency to give half of it to the new agency, while half of it will get absolved back into the department, and we continue to go around in circles. No government has actually made the hard decision. We had the funding set aside for the Sydney to Newcastle, Tuggerah to Wyong faster rail upgrade. Why is that business case not being adopted? Why do we have to go through all of the palaver to rename an agency? I was told by Mr Hallinan from the department:

I don't think there's enough in the budget to do substantial construction activity but there's certainly enough in there for detailed planning …

We are setting up an agency with $500 million so they can do more planning, more desktop surveys and more reviews. They are not even going to be able to afford to purchase the rail corridor or easements. They will, perhaps, be able to do some corridor protection and negotiation—that's also a quote from the department—but they're in no position to actually start work or to purchase easements.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Debate interrupted.