The inland rail is a political dream that winds back into pre-federation days. The first version was laid out by Henry Parkes in his Tenterfield address of 1889, as he made the case for a national government.
Such a move would also need a national army and a “nationwide uniform gauge railway line”. Parkes wanted to connect South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland by rail, “an immense advantage in the movement of troops”.
More than 100 years later the modern founder of the inland rail, Everald Compton, took his dream to John Howard. He envisaged a railway to service country areas and link farmers to ports.
Guardian investigation: Trouble on the tracks: is Australia’s $14bn inland rail project going off the rails?
Compton’s 1996 plan went from Melbourne via Parkes and Goondiwindi to Toowoomba. From there, the line would run to the port of Gladstone before setting off across country to Emerald and ultimately Darwin via Cloncurry.
The current route promises an express service to deliver freight from somewhere outside Melbourne to somewhere outside Brisbane in less than 24 hours – not counting truck connections. It is based on a 2015 business case by the former Nationals leader John Anderson, costed at the time at $4.7bn.
In the 2017 budget, the then treasurer Scott Morrison announced an $8.4bn equity injection into the Australian Rail Track Corporation as “one of the biggest investments ever seen in regional Australia”, supporting 16,000 jobs. As an equity injection, it was not counted as part of the budget deficit.
Morrison promised the line would benefit “not just Melbourne and Brisbane, but all the regions along its route”.
But last year’s Senate inquiry into the inland rail told a different story. It found “the interests of rural, regional and urban communities throughout Victoria, NSW and Queensland have been sidelined by an arbitrary time threshold” – the 24-hour window to deliver freight from end to end.
It was critical of the government’s reliance on a 2015 business case while costs had risen to $14.3bn. It noted predictions were now closer to $20bn.
“Whether Inland Rail’s 2015 business case remains valid in light of the substantial increase in capital required for its completion is a key question,” the report said. “It is the committee’s view that this substantive increase in the cost of Inland Rail alone warrants a review and update of the 2015 business case.”
The interim chief executive for ARTC Inland Rail, Rebecca Pickering, said in a statement that the ARTC recognised some parts of the freight industry and communities living along the route felt their views had not been adequately considered.
“We have heard the call from stakeholders who expected more from our early engagement on Inland Rail and we have continued to improve as the project progressed,” she said.
“Building Inland Rail is about working together and our priority is to continue to work with landowners, key stakeholders and government through respectful engagement and consultation.”
ARTC’s latest projection is for 21,500 direct and indirect jobs to be created by the inland rail project.
“In fact more than 2,500 Australians have already worked on construction of Inland Rail and more than $150m has already been spent with local businesses – we expect these benefits to be duplicated along the railway alignment,” Pickering said.
Who is the line for?
Critics have called the project a National party “boondoggle”, pointing out that Anderson’s business case found it would not make money back over 50 years.
Certainly, the rail has been pushed by National party leaders since Anderson, and former leader Warren Truss is currently chairman of the ARTC.
One fundamental question rolls up and down the 1,700km route – who is the line for?
NSW Farmers Association’s Adrian Lyons, who has led campaign to ensure farmers are fairly treated, says there is still no clear economic and social justification for the rail line and no clear value back to agriculture. His members have had properties cut in half and have warned ARTC and the federal government that flooding issues will create havoc for the line.
“They are playing politics, they are not looking for the 100 year vision, they are looking for the now,” says Lyons.
“We have done everything we possible can, attended the enquiries, written submissions but when it does get going, all we will be able to do is say we told you so, on the flooding. You will get what you pay for.”
Others support the idea of inland rail but see the current plan as a missed opportunity. They point to the uncertainty surrounding the route which has left landholders bearing the cost of changing decisions and in some cases unable to sell their properties.
There is also a lack of clarity about where the line will end in Melbourne and Brisbane. If it does not go direct to their ports, which would entail huge costs, they would need to unload their goods at the final terminal and send them by truck the rest of the way.
And there are cultural concerns. Taje Fowler, a descendant of the Wurundjeri nation with family connection to the Wiradjuri nation and who has family in Narromine, says “young Indigenous people are trying to hold on to our heritage while ARTC is whittling it away”.
“It’s devastating to see the project is still going ahead without the steps being put in place to do it the right way.
“As a First Nations woman it is my cultural responsibility to protect the land – we have around 2% of untouched land left in the central west.”
But above all there is a lack of transparency around the choice of the route and where trains will stop, leading to scepticism and frustration.
The chief executive of the Country Women’s Association, Danica Leys, says the benefits to many agricultural areas would be far outweighed by the costs.
“There are whole towns and communities that are watching the rail line go past but not having a point anywhere near them to onload or offload agriculture produce,” she says. “They take the brunt of the burden of this infrastructure without being able to get anything from their region on the train.”
The late Tim Fischer, another former National party leader and a rail buff, supported the line but said the beneficiaries would be the big freight companies in Melbourne and Brisbane and logistics hubs such as Parkes.
“There will be zero advantage for the small railway siding towns, even the ones with extended passing loops, other than the construction phase of inland rail and the upgrading to the standards necessary,” he told the ABC in 2017.
The coal connection
Other industries also have a strong interest in the line.
Coal is expected to be a major freight item, according to Anderson’s 2015 business case. “The coal task in 2025 represents over half of the total demand for Inland Rail by volume,” he found.
And when the Santos coal seam gas project at Narrabri was approved by the NSW government, the Nationals MP for Parkes, Mark Coulton, said gas combined with the “transformational inland rail” would give the town the potential to be “one of our significant manufacturing hubs”.
Coulton has supported inland rail since his first parliamentary speech. He believes support for it will increase as compensation rolls out and the route is finalised.
“It’s not always the people that are the most outraged that are the most disadvantaged,” he told Guardian Australia.
With the terminal location in Brisbane still unconfirmed, the current National party leader, Barnaby Joyce, has proposed instead extending the line from Toowoomba to Gladstone and has committed $10m to a business case which will cost the extension.
A spokesperson for Joyce said the link to Gladstone “could deliver better rail connectivity and expand access to export markets for regional Australian agricultural and mineral commodities along the route”.
“Once complete, Inland Rail will move goods and commodities around Australia to where they are needed – putting stock on supermarket shelves and food on plates while ensuring our mining and agriculture products can continue to be sold internationally to support regional jobs and communities.”
At 90, Everald Compton remains wedded to the cause – but not in its current form. He still receives letters from communities along the route who are being torn apart by the project.
“People would be willing to make sacrifices for a rail that’s going to help them, but not for a rail that’s not going to help them at all,” he says.
“The National party is supposed to be there to enhance inland Australia. Instead, inland Australia is being used to service the two capital cities.”
