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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Elias Visontay Transport and urban affairs reporter

Sydney to Melbourne in four hours: meet the man who seriously believes in high-speed rail for Australia

High Speed Rail Authority CEO Tim Parker stands on a platform beside a train at Central Station, Sydney
He’s ready for ridicule of the high speed rail project but HSRA boss Tim Parker believes it could ‘change people’s lives for the better’. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Given high-speed rail’s much mocked history of failed starts in Australia, Tim Parker manages to appear optimistic, even excited, about the decades-long project he has been tasked with delivering.

Parker, a former senior executive at Sydney Metro, was in January appointed inaugural chief executive of the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) – the body established to carry out Labor’s 2022 election commitment to build the rail line along the east coast.

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