Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Regional rail

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (17:45): (1750) My adjournment is for the Minister for Transport Infrastructure. A few weeks ago, during the current Victorian grain harvest, a train hauling grain from the Boort grain storage terminal to the port was stopped. Because of the lack of regional rail infrastructure, because the passing loops were removed from the lines to save on capital costs, because the track work has stalled, the train was held up for 8½ hours, going nowhere.

Sometimes it physically pains me to know that this Melbourne government is making decisions about regional Victorian railway lines. It seems to me they are deliberately destroying capacity so the lines can eventually be shut down for good. The government know that there are solutions to collapsing rail infrastructure in regional Victoria, but they are either not prepared to act or else just do not understand the importance of the grain harvest to regional Victoria.

The train being held up wasted nearly two shifts just sitting still. This delay is a direct cost added to the supply chain. The government says it wants to protect the food supply chain, but it is still getting the fundamentals wrong in regional Victoria. There are options to repair the line from Inglewood to Eaglehawk to alleviate the bottleneck around Ballarat. The proposed upgrades to freight infrastructure on the Ballarat line should have been a priority, but it is in regional Victoria, so it has to wait. The government announced this work would be done but put the whole project on hold in 2019 when mismanagement sank the Murray Basin rail plan. A Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report dated 18 March 2020 examined whether regional rail upgrades were improving rural freight outcomes in a timely and cost-efficient way. VAGO’s conclusion: they are not. They went on to point out that the state government had delivered about half of the approved scope of the project using $3.815 million, which was 86 per cent of the money, and then abandoned the project.

Once upon a time regional Victoria had a fantastic rail system, built mainly to haul grain to port, but we are squandering that legacy and more and more grain is going by truck. When you look at trains sitting idle for over 8 hours at a siding, it is not hard to work out why. Minister, the action I seek is for this government to finally follow through with the needed regional rail upgrades to relieve the pressure on the grain harvest in Northern Victoria. Like the Boort grain train, Victorian regional rail is sitting, waiting, going nowhere.