It is interesting that Anthony Albanese said last night on channel 2’s Lateline that Labor will introduce an infrastructure project looking at a high speed rail line from Sydney to Newcastle. What a waste of money! This project as stated on the show last night would cost up to $10 billion dollars if not more. Do that many people go from Sydney to Newcastle for it to be worth it? I know that the western suburbs of both Melbourne and Sydney are crying out for new rail lines – wouldn’t that be better money spent?

Labor of course have not decided that the project will go ahead. First they will spend $20 million on contractors and investigation but like many of their ‘intended projects’ I doubt it will go ahead – and I hope it doesn’t. I know that many people have been crying out for a high speed inter capital city rail lines such as between Sydney and Brisbane but with Airports popping up in a large number of new cities and towns and Jetstar, Virgin, Tiger and Air Asia fighting for competition it is likely that the train ride will cost more than a plane fair and take 3 times as long.

At the moment there is already a rail service using an XPT train between Melbourne and Sydney which takes 11 hours and costs around $100. Now last time I checked it was cheaper to fly, much cheaper. Not only that but flying is a hell of a lot quicker. Now with lets say $10 billion spend on high speed rail the cost of a ticket would rise considerable to fund the costs. The project has to be economically feasible because one day it will be privatised like all the other federal and state owned assets. And for that to happen, the project needs to be making a dollar or two to entice some buyers.

Europe has been the example of many to get a high speed rail line in Australia but the continents are very different in demography. Firstly, Europe consists of a large number of cities which are geographically spread. Many of these cities have populations of less that 3 million but over 500,000 and rail is much more feasible for many. In Australia however, 90% of the population is in large cities which have airports that service most of Australia – in Europe, this is not the case.

There are so many questions that need to be answered such as how many people will use the service? How much will a ticket costs? What are the other methods of travel that could take business away from the rail line? and so forth.

If you ask me this is a total waste of money and just shows how stupid this current government is. Labor will go into the election holding this initiative up high but in the end it will be a waste of money and a waste of time just like so many other Labor broken promises.

It will be a close 2010 federal election in Australia that's for sure.