Linking Sydney, Newcastle and Maitland with high speed rail would be the ideal starting point for an east coast network, Lyne MP David Gillespie believes.
Speaking in support of the High Speed Rail Authority bill, Dr Gillespie told federal parliament last week that high speed rail was vital to decentralising Australia's capital cities.
He argued that unlike countries like China, which had the ability to fund vast distances of its high speed rail network, Australia had to be innovative in how it developed its network.
"The idea of building it between Sydney, Newcastle and Maitland, between two big cities, is exactly the model that the Japanese followed when they built it. It's the hardest bit, but it's the first bit, and then you'll find every city in the country will want to be part of it," Dr Gillespie said.
"It will be competing against 40,000 people who drive down from the Central Coast every morning and drive back in the evening. What business case won't survive with 40,000 potential customers?"
"If you add further, up to Port Macquarie, which is the plan, you'll be going into a rapidly expanding North Coast network. That is a reasonable first build."
"Then you go down through the outskirts of Sydney to the new international airport. As soon as that's there, Canberra will want to be hooked up. And then, as soon as Canberra's hooked up, Victoria will be saying, 'We want to get hooked up.' That's how organically built bits of infrastructure happen.
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King introduced legislation to Parliament last month to establish the High Speed Rail Authority.
Labor promised during this year's election campaign to revive long-talked-about plans for high-speed rail travelling from Sydney to Newcastle at 250 kilometres an hour as a "top priority".
It pledged to set aside $500 million to start acquiring land in the rail corridor, planning and early works.
Dr Gillespie also highlighted the opportunities for local manufacturing with a new High Speed Rail fleet and encouraged the government to consider regional locations.
"We have a huge rail site in the Lyne electorate that used to build trains forever, and it's lying vacant. There's some plastic recycling. But this will be a breath of fresh air,"
"I call on any railway constructors to come on down and have a look at the beautiful Lyne electorate. We've got an unemployed workforce; they're in other industries now, but they know how to make trains. And we'd welcome them with open arms."
The NSW government's "Six Cities" strategy discussion paper says the state is "working towards delivering a fast rail network by 2056".
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