Transcript - Radio Interview - 6PR Mornings - Monday, 2 March 2020

RADIO INTERVIEW
6PR MORNINGS WITH GARETH PARKER
MONDAY, 2 MARCH 2020

SUBJECTS: Fast train from Perth to Bunbury.

HOST, GARETH PARKER: Would you catch a train from Perth to Bunbury, or from Bunbury to Perth, if it was a high speed train that took maybe an hour to get there? Anyone catch the Australind service currently? But try to find some patronage numbers for the Australind train at the moment it's not easy. If anyone's caught the Australind, tell me how often you catch it - does it work as a commuter service, or is it more a tourist service? What would need to happen to make the journey more attractive? It would be a lot of money I'm sure. Patrick Gorman is the Member for Perth and he says this is something that the Federal Government should seriously explore. Patrick, good morning.
 
PATRICK GORMAN, LABOR MP: Good morning Gareth. Thanks for having me on the program.
 
PARKER: Pleasure. Make the case because I've got to say at the outset I'm a little bit sceptical.
 
GORMAN: So in 2017 the Federal Government put out a plan looking at faster rail options in Australia with a view that this is something we should be investing in. One of the projects on that list was the Perth to Bunbury line but when they established the faster rail agency last year that plan fell off the agenda. So, currently taxpayer dollars from Western Australians is being put into nine business cases across the country looking at where faster rail or fast rail will actually make the biggest economic difference and they're not looking at anything in Western Australia. It would be transformative. We know that allows people to do exactly as you mentioned - potentially commute from Bunbury to Perth for work or indeed from Perth to Bunbury for work. These things are incredibly popular with tourists and all I'm saying is let's make sure we look at the business case because there hasn't been a proper federally supported business case for this project. I'd love to see one. I think it's a winner but I'm also happy to let the economists have their say.
 
PARKER: Alright - who would catch it?
 
GORMAN: As I said you would expand the potential for commuters along that train line. I think if it's a choice of being in the car for two hours as those of us do when you do drive down south or being on a train for an hour I think you'd have a lot of patronage from the Perth metropolitan area. I think I mentioned tourism. It gives you a really transformative option for Perth all the way down to Bunbury. Looking at how people can change the way that they work. We're seeing more and more people looking for those alternative ways of working and it would actually be quicker than the Mandurah to Perth line currently. That's a 66 minute ride. If we can get a 45 or 60 minute ride to Bunbury package people huge options about how they choose to live and work.
 
PARKER: Would you have many stops along the way? Obviously more stops and the longer the journey takes. But equally if it's only we'll stop at each end and fewer people use it because it's less flexible. Have you got any thoughts about that?
 
GORMAN: You would have to have a few and I think it'd be a huge fight amongst a range of councils between the Perth CBD and Bunbury. You would have to have a few and I think with co-ordinated planning you would get the best economic benefit of activating hubs along the way. But I reckon it would be a hotly contested fight - I'm sure there will be about 100 ideas of where it should stop and we should probably only have three or four at most.
 
PARKER: How many services would you have? Would it be a sort of an everyday thing, would it be multiple services a day once a day morning afternoon? I mean what do you think?
 
GORMAN: I would think you would not want to build infrastructure that's only used once a day. I'd hope you'd have a very regular service. And the reality is these are things where we've got to look 10 to 20 years into the future. There is a lot of high speed rail work that was done on the Canberra to Sydney high speed rail link. That was going to take 16 years to build from the date that the Federal Government signed on the line. So we don't need to think not just about what we need today but what we're going to need in 15, 20 or 30 years.
 
PARKER: Would you run it down the existing sort of Australind line that is the one that goes through ... it is quite an operation ...
 
GORMAN: I'm not brave enough to commit to a particular path. I think this is where the Federal Government funds high speed rail business case looking at all those options. You'll find the best cost-benefit ratio - whether that is down the existing line, whether it's down another path. On the East Coast, there is rail reserves already identified for the Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne High-Speed Rail. It'd be great if we at least started to have an idea of where this would go and that's what the business case could do.
 
PARKER: I mean I'm a little bit sceptical that the Brisbane Sydney Melbourne rail is a goer. But I mean there you're talking about significant population centres of millions of people. Do we have sufficient population between Perth and Bunbury to justify this sort of project?
 
GORMAN: Well, some of the other high speed rail cases that are being looked at include Brisbane to the Gold Coast just want just one leg. Now if you look at Brisbane and Perth and where we're both going to be in 2046 - Perth will actually be a bigger population centre than Brisbane. In about 15 years’ time Perth is due to overtake Brisbane and become the third largest capital city in Australia. So we need to think now about the planning for when that happens because we don't want to be having this conversation in 15 years’ time. This is going to take a multi-party multi government co-ordination. It's not saying it's going to happen tomorrow but for WA not to have a one of the nine current business cases. I think we might be missing out on something.
 
PARKER: How much money should they spend on a business case? What's the pot of funds?
 
GORMAN: Well of course that's up to the Government. I think anything would be better than the zero dollars we're getting now. What we could say in the last election was $2 billion provided for the Melbourne to Geelong High speed rail projects. That obviously was a commitment post a business case. All I'm saying is let's start the business case. Let's have a proper look at this. These are big and expensive pieces of infrastructure but we know the Forrest Highway has exceeded its expectations of use, the same as when we built the Perth to Mandurah rail line - patronage well above what was expected. So, it's worth having a proper look at this.
 
PARKER: Well when you say high speed rail do you know ... I mean there's a couple of rail corridors presently out there. You've got an inland route and a coastal road there where there is already a rail corridor in place. To convert that to sort of high speed up to 150-160 kilometres an hour. If it costs us $2 billion to build a case of rail to the airport and Forrestfield with three stations, I know there's no business case ...
 
GORMAN: We're talking about tunnels versus above ground. I think they're very different things and that's and they're very frequent commuter lines so they're not comparable. I would look at that Melbourne to Geelong fast rail $2 billion spend. And that is admittedly shorter than getting all the way to Bunbury but, that is probably the sort of project you'd be looking at. And the other thing is that what we know, and it's the same with rail car manufacturing and continuous build and passenger rail, is that if we start to build up an industry in Australia, and in Western Australia - Perth to Bunbury will not be the first high speed rail that is built in Australia that's going to be the Melbourne to Geelong line. If we start to build up the industry and start to build up the skills then we learn more, the costs come down, our capacity to deliver those projects in a timeframe that is possibly more acceptable to people who do say these projects take a very long time, we start to get into a place where it's actually really is worth doing
 
PARKER: Thanks for your time.
 
GORMAN: Thank you very much.

ENDS