Our rail network has copped a battering over the past decades.
Our passenger rail was unceremoniously decommissioned by a Liberal Government in 1993. The Murray Basin Rail Project was vastly under-costed by both big parties.
The rescoped project, that was agreed to and funded by the Labor State Government and the Federal Coalition Government, was barely recognisable from the original vision.
The upshot is that many of our farmers were sold a false promise by everyone. The goal now is to design a new deal for freight, that doesn’t abandon the original vision of full standardisation, but that identifies other smaller steps along the way to greater rail efficiency and less freight on our roads.
