It was meant to revolutionise Australian transport. Now the Inland Rail project is being suspended
The ambitious 1,700km project is being halved in length and will now stop in Parkes, not Brisbane, after a government report found it could cost $45 billion.
The troubled Inland Rail freight project from Melbourne to Brisbane has always been a burr under Anthony Albanese’s saddlebag.
As infrastructure minister in 2008, Albanese allocated $15 million for a feasibility study into the project, whose supporters say it will give farmers and other producers along its 1700km length better access to freight rail and take more trucks off the roads.
But in 2019, Albanese declared the project was “a trainwreck”. And in 2023, as prime minister, he commissioned new research by transport and infrastructure expert Kerry Schott, which put the project’s cost at $31.4 billion — not the $16.4 billion promised by the previous Coalition government.
Now, new analysis by consultant ACIL Allen which Schott recommended be undertaken says completing Inland Rail would cost at least $45 billion and take more than a decade.
