Queensland’s Inland Rail calamity laid bare

Zach Hope  Brisbane Times  South-east Asia correspondent  -  April 6, 2023   21 comments

Kerry Schott’s detailed investigation of the calamitous Inland Rail megaproject has thrust into public view what observers have warned for years: the Queensland side, in particular and increasingly, is a bin fire.

Building the infrastructure for double-stacked freight trains from Toowoomba to the outskirts of Brisbane could cost $9 billion alone. This was almost double the anticipated price tag for the entire Melbourne-to-Brisbane length only eight years ago.

Despite the blowouts and delays, Kerry Schott said Inland Rail was an important project that would lessen road congestion and emissions.

Forecasts for the full 1700-kilometre project increased to $10 billion when there emerged a more fulsome picture of delays and overruns. By 2020, it had risen to $16 billion.

Now Schott’s analysis, released on Thursday following a commission from the Labor government, assumed a more realistic figure to be closer to an “astonishing” $31 billion, with Queensland swallowing a disproportionate share.

Even this, she warned, should be taken with caution; likewise her early-2030s estimated completion date – “especially in the Queensland sections”.

Like countless observers before her, Schott noted that “somewhat surprisingly the project has commenced delivery without knowing where it will start or finish”.

In Queensland, she proposed doing away with the long-pondered northern option of Acacia Ridge in favour of Ebenezer, on the south-western outskirts of Ipswich.

Double-stacked trains eventually 3.6 kilometres long could terminate there at a new intermodal hub, while smaller, single-stackers continued to southern depots such as Kagaru, Bromelton and Acacia Ridge.

Keen for double-deckers to traverse through someone else’s patch, Logan mayor Darren Power was “delighted” at the suggestion. Also welcoming, though from a pragmatic perspective, was Robert Dow of community-based lobby group Rail Back on Track.

Derailed or back on track? Inland Rail and the new government now at the throttle

“They’ll have to build the new line over to Kagaru and upgrade the other line [to Acacia Ridge]. That’s all feasible,” Dow said.

“It’s been pushed back to something ridiculous, like the 2030s or something.

“But, well, there’s no other option –it’s been sitting there without a solution for some time.”

Schott’s report did not propose a long-term fix for how to move freight through Brisbane’s increasingly congested suburbs to the port.

In the short-and medium-term, trains would continue using the Brisbane tracks they do presently. The problem is freight volumes opened up by Inland Rail combined with increasing commuter services may one day prove overwhelming.

Multibillion-dollar tunnels remain an option, and one has been proposed from Acacia Ridge previously. More recently, Martin Albrecht, chair of the National Trunk Rail consortium, put forward a separate 52-kilometre tunnel from Ebenezer through which freight would be delivered to the port on driverless and clean-energy powered shuttles.

None of these future costs are factored into Schott’s $31 billion estimate.

In 2018, a study looked at the terminus-to-port issue. The Queensland government refused to make it public and has rejected right-to-information requests from this masthead.

But the secrecy is in keeping.

For years, the former Coalition federal government knew it was sitting on a bomb yet maintained to its dying day everything was dandy.

The findings beg an important and overarching question: is Inland Rail worth it?

Schott, while not providing an overt answer, repeatedly states the project’s importance.

Once complete, it will unlock billions of dollars of economic activity, she asserts. It will ease congestion and, perhaps, lower emissions by as much as 750,000 tonnes a year by 2050.

In addition, “resilience in the national freight corridors [would] be enhanced, the importance of this being clear from recent floods and the COVID-19 pandemic”, she said.

But, for now, Inland Rail and the taxpayers funding it remained mired in a “regrettable situation”.

The Queensland side of the project – five sections covering 384 kilometres of track – was presenting the “most issues”, Schott found. And of the entire 1700 kilometre project, finding a way through the Toowoomba range was the most technically challenging.

But the complexity of this project was not at the core of the Queensland mess.

Schott said the agreement between the Commonwealth and the Palaszczuk government was executed later than other states, exacerbating “initially poor-quality environmental impact statements” prepared by the ARTC.

"The Inland Freight Rail Melbourne to Brisbane always an ill conceived thought bubble and favourite push-bike of Barnaby Joyce....The mere fact that the Queensland end had not been fully planned or thought through proves the point of a rushed through project for political outcome....
Cost over-runs? you ain't seen nuffin yet baby....and these guys are considered the BEST MANAGERS of the ECONOMY?....go figure....whose is being held accountable for this debacle...Albo?"

"The country needs a decent freight rail system especially as we turn away from fossil fuels, but why oh why can't the planning be done properly? Why haven't the appropriate experts been recruited to ensure that the execution of something so important is done well? 
I agree with Miss Jane below. We need a national, apolitical body to oversee infrastructure like this at a national level. The only reason politicians should get involved is to consider potential projects presented to them by the national body at the outset and to set the parameters of funding. Once environmental considerations have been satisfied the politicians should then keep their sticky fingers to themselves."

"Government across the globe. Has been kicking the can down the road since the post war boom. Sadly this sort of infrastructure is just too hard to deliver with known budgets and timeframes. Australia needs a national body to build this sort of national solution. Yes it will probably bankrupt us all but we live in this capitalist society that demands ever spiraling growth. This is actually more important than submarines."