STEVE AUSTIN:
First of all, Jim Chalmers, you appear to have had a win, have you?
JIM CHALMERS:
I think it's the right outcome but it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this position. This independent review of Inland Rail has uncovered probably one of the most disastrous examples of economic mismanagement that I can recall. It's a scathing report that says that this Inland Rail project will cost twice as much as what the Nationals and Liberals told us and it will take years longer to build. So from a local community point of view, I think the Albanese government has come to the right conclusion today which is that this will no longer pull up stumps at Acacia Ridge which means that our local community won't be getting all those trucks on the road between Acacia Ridge and Brisbane port. Those people in Algester and the surrounding suburbs won't have those double‑stacked trains at their back fence and a lot of local concern has been alleviated. But more broadly, the project has been horrendously mismanaged, we're trying to clean up the mess that we've been left. Inland Rail is a project that will go ahead but it will be different and it will no longer end at Acacia Ridge.
AUSTIN:
So the Inland Rail project will go to Ebenezer which is just outside of Willowbank, on the inland side of Willowbank and there'll be some sort of transport hub there. What happens next from that point? Where does the freight go from there?
CHALMERS:
Well, that is the ideal outcome. What the independent report said today was ‑ get it to Parkes and then ideally get it to Ebenezer which is, as you say, about 50km west of here but there needs to be a business case now done on Ebenezer because we want to make sure that we get that right. We want to make sure we avoid the mistakes that have been made to this point, particularly over the last decade or so. So in order to do that, we'll work through this independent review in a methodical way. We will consider all the options that have been put to us, we support all the recommendations in principle, including Ebenezer, but there's a bit more work that needs to be done. But again, from the point of view of the people around Acacia Ridge, a lot of people that I've spoken to in Algester in particular, but some of those other suburbs around there ‑
AUSTIN:
Hillcrest.
CHALMERS:
Hillcrest. But also coming further east ‑ Stretton and Calamvale and Karawatha ‑ there was a lot of concern about these trucks because what would have happened was the way the Nats and the Libs wanted it was to dump a whole bunch of freight at Acacia Ridge, nowhere near Brisbane port and then all the trucks would just be travelling through our local community to get it to the port. They never had a plan to get it from Acacia Ridge to the port which didn't involve more trucks on local roads. And so I think that's the main reason why a lot of local people in the neighbourhoods that I grew up in and represent now will be happy with what we've announced today.
AUSTIN:
I'm speaking with Jim Chalmers who's the Federal Member for the electorate of Rankin based around that sort of that Beenleigh, Loganlea area, also Australia's Treasurer these days. So essentially, for Logan City it means that those double‑stacked, three kilometre long trains for the Inland Rail project will not be going through the City of Logan through to Acacia Ridge or the Port of Brisbane.
CHALMERS:
Yes, that's right. I spent a lot of time talking to those people around Algester in particular with Leeanne Enoch, my state colleague, and other state colleagues and if you live right near the line, the concern was around those double‑stacked trains. And in fairness to that local community, they're reasonable people and they went to a lot of information sessions, they went to a lot of the engagements and they tried to understand what it meant for them and it was quite hard for them to get the kinds of answers that they wanted and needed about what these double‑stacked trains meant for their community. So for them, it was a particularly pressing concern and I represented those concerns. But for people in the surrounding suburbs, a big part of it was the trucks as well and what we tried to do, Steve, is ‑ every time I do a mobile office in that western part of my electorate, people raised this with me ‑ and what I said to them in Opposition was, let's have a proper, methodical look at this. I'm not just going to go off making commitments without understanding all of the economics and all the budget implications and all of the transport implications. And so we did this review. Kerry Schott, who's this tremendously well‑regarded person in this field, she did the review in a methodical way, we've come to this conclusion today. We haven't rushed to it. We've considered it and it's a good outcome for our local community after a lot of thought.
AUSTIN:
What will happen between Acacia Ridge and the Port of Brisbane because there was $10 million ‑ the state of Queensland and the Commonwealth had put aside and they were supposed to make a decision in a couple of months from now on what to do. So what's going to happen between Acacia Ridge and the Port of Brisbane?
CHALMERS:
It will be no longer necessary at Acacia Ridge to have the massive intermodal terminal that was being contemplated. That would be more likely and a better idea to put that out near Ebenezer because that's got access to the freight roads but it's not in the middle of suburbs like the ones that we've been talking about. So it won't be necessary to have that big terminal at Acacia Ridge anymore. That means that we're going to avoid that situation, which would have existed without this action today, where a heap of freight from down south would just get dumped at Acacia Ridge and then would snake its way through the southern suburbs of Brisbane, out to the eastern suburbs of Brisbane and through the port. So that's what we're avoiding but we're not cancelling the whole project. We're trying to make it better. And we're also trying to manage it in a more responsible way. The cost in the estimation of the independent review today, it has literally doubled from what the Nationals and Liberals told us two years ago it would cost. It now costs twice as much at least, and it will take years more to build. So this is about being more responsible with taxpayer money. It's about cleaning up the mess that we inherited, but it's also about trying to get the right transport outcomes and we think that is ideally Ebenezer but definitely Parkes in the first instance.
AUSTIN:
Let me play you something briefly Barnaby Joyce told me in 2021 about this on the specifics of getting containers from to the Port of Brisbane:
"Whilst the container traffic which you all utilise, every time you go to Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, any of those stores, you're utilising container traffic. If you want to live in Brisbane, we've got to get the goods to Brisbane ‑ to get the goods to Brisbane, the trains got to get to Brisbane.”
Now the train is not going to be double stacked to Brisbane, does this mean there will be container traffic on ‑ the whole point of Inland Rail was to get trucks off the road. The number of trucks and coal trains ‑ sorry, it's to the Port of Brisbane ‑ but the number of trucks was to get it off the road. This was supposedly the backbone of the national freight network from the Port of Melbourne to the Port of Brisbane, and it now looks like that's not going to happen.
CHALMERS:
It just means that instead of dumping all the freight in the suburbs or at Acacia Ridge, that there will ideally be an intermodal terminal subject to the business case at Ebenezer. And the reason why Ebenezer works is because it's got access to all of those arterial roads. So there will be a more efficient, less intrusive way ‑
AUSTIN:
But those trucks will be on the roads ‑ so the trucks are back on the roads with containers.
CHALMERS:
But on the arterial roads rather than on suburban roads ‑ that's the difference. Ebenezer makes more sense than Acacia Ridge ‑ even take out for a moment the fact that I represent this local community, take that out for a moment and just recognise that having an intermodal terminal where you've got access to the arterial roads to the port, but it's not in the middle of suburban Southern Brisbane, Southwest Brisbane makes much more sense because you still get the freight on the road to the port but you're not relying on dumping it in the middle of suburbs in order to do it.
AUSTIN:
Will there still be investigation work to get a line from Toowoomba to Gladstone. There was serious money on the table there, where the investigation is actually underway now isn't there under the previous government to get freight from Toowoomba to Gladstone somehow? Coal, my apologies.
CHALMERS:
Yes, both sides of politics were interested at different times and trying to get this thing to end in Gladstone. Part of the reason for that was to avoid some of these suburban problems that you and I have been talking about today. But really one of the key conclusions out of this independent review today is if we want to prevent these massive cost blowouts, we've got to do this thing in stages. It make sense to go to Parkes definitely. We want it to make sense to get to Ebenezer. Beyond that, whether it's some kind of private outcome, whether it's some kind of future government making a decision about it, our job is really to responsibly stage this project. And so what we're saying today isn't that it will go to Gladstone, what we're saying today is it will go to Parkes, ideally, Ebenezer. We've got to focus on getting that right first.
AUSTIN:
Jim Chalmers, thanks for your time.