Australia constantly flirts with the concept of high speed rail. It’s a thing. It’s something that inevitably is centred whenever we’re talking big infrastructure projects, because trains are cool and people are delighted by the concept of one that goes extremely fast between Sydney and Melbourne.
Well, it’s back on the agenda again. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is primed and ready to announce a “radical” new funding plan which will once again ignite hopes among train-lovers that the hypothetical train they have so loved for so long might become a reality. How ’bout it.
He’s announcing it as part of the government’s infrastructure and cities policy, which is focused on boosting population and investment in regional centres.
Turnbull’s government considers high-speed rail between the Sydney CBD and the planned airport at Badgery’s Creek to be a priority. The idea is that they could then extend that out west to various regional centres, and then between major cities.
The Australian reports that the government intends to fund the rail via private consortium, which probably isn’t the public plan that many rail advocates probably prefer. That said, this pie-in-the-sky kind of scheme has been proposed for yonks, while being subtly backed by Turnbull, and he’s never really said how he planned for his cash-strapped government to fund it.
Labor’s transport spokesman Anthony Albanese, who favours bigger and better transport investment, says Turnbull doesn’t really have a plan. “You need a structure. It can’t just happen with a front page splash once a year,” he says, seemingly ignoring the fact that a once a year front page splash is how things are done in this country.
Anyway. We’ll see how this goes – but it’s definitely back on the agenda.
Source: News.com.au.
Photo: Getty Images / Don Arnold.
