The Hon Catherine King MP
Press conference - Wangaratta, Victoria
CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Well, it is fantastic to be here in Wangaratta today, celebrating the completion of the Wangaratta Rail Precinct, and of course Tranche 1 of Inland Rail Beveridge to Albury. This has been a huge construction process. Inland Rail is building this double-stacked freight route for the Australian Government, and I'm really pleased that as part of that, as part of the need to get double-stacked trains onto Inland Rail, we've also been able to upgrade this rail precinct here in Wangaratta at the same time.
Inland Rail is an incredibly big and complex project, over 1,600 kilometres of rail track taking freight off our busy roads. Seventy per cent of our freight task, we are estimating, will come onto Inland Rail once complete. And of course, we're concentrating on the construction of Inland Rail to Parkes and beyond, being able to unlock the possibilities of getting freight from Melbourne and all the way to Western Australia into the Port of Botany and also to Newcastle. Really delighted, as a part of this project, there have been so many local people from this outstanding district employed on this project, because not only is Inland Rail a freight project, it is also a great employment generator. So, the fact that we’ve seen local electricians, plumbers, construction workers building this precinct here for the people of Wangaratta, I think, is a great testament to the skills and contributing- as part of Inland Rail contributing to the skills growth here in this community.
Inland Rail, as I said, is a multi-billion dollar project. It’s a really significant project that the Australian Government is very proud to be delivering for the Australian people and [indistinct] celebrating this significant milestone here today.
Happy to take any questions.
JOURNALIST: A multi-billion-dollar project for the Australian people – just why is double-stacked freight important to them?
CATHERINE KING: Well, in order to make sure that Inland Rail is viable compared to road, you need to be able to deliver the volume that road can at the time that road can. So, really, Inland Rail is premised on double-stacked trains, 24-hour Melbourne to Brisbane delivery. And that premise is really important to make rail and make sure rail remains competitive against the alternate routes, which is both coastal shipping and of course road freight. What we do want to do is see- we're seeing a growth in freight across this country. That's a good thing. But what we're also seeing, of course, is more and more heavy vehicles on our road, and we want rail to take on a greater share of that. That's both good for productivity but also good for the economy, for road safety, and for our communities.
JOURNALIST: I mean, more passenger freight through Wangaratta, do you reckon that might create some new opportunities for Wangaratta as well?
CATHERINE KING: Well, obviously the opportunities of Inland Rail to be able to get goods to market in a more efficient way, hopefully in a cheaper way as well, is really significant for Australia's freight task. We know that it is significantly growing. The demand for Australian goods is growing. The opening up again by the Albanese Labor Government of markets in China has been very important, being able to get goods out of our port but also being able to get goods in and into communities. So white goods from Melbourne up to Brisbane, being able to provide those opportunities for people to sell those in Melbourne, but also for farming communities as well.
And again, with the development of this precinct, what that has also opened up is opportunities for perhaps new businesses to come into this precinct. I've heard talk about maybe a brewery behind us there. That would be a great opportunity, market stalls, to be able to use the precinct for other economic opportunities and social opportunities for the people of Wangaratta.
JOURNALIST: You've been to a few project openings here at the Wangaratta [indistinct]?
CATHERINE KING: She's pretty nice, I'd have to say. It's a really great station precinct. The thing that I'm really proud of as well is the disability access. A lot of our train stations for passengers in particular were built over 100 years ago, and they are not disability friendly. Making sure people can actually access the platforms, access trains safely, but also there's access [indistinct] and being able to go to the toilet. So those sorts of things, this has really meant that Wangaratta is actually now compliant, as I understand it, with the disability standards, means that we can actually make sure that people with disability can access the train just like everybody else as they always should have been. So that's something I think the Wangaratta community can be very proud of.
JOURNALIST: How much did these works actually cost?
CATHERINE KING: These works, overall, are well over $100 million. You heard there around about $270 million overall for the overall project, Albury to Beveridge. And the train station here I think was around about $70 million, but I'll have to check the figures with Inland Rail.
Any other questions? Thank you. Thanks – did you want Nick as well to ask some technical questions about the project?
Nick, you’re up.
NICK MILLER: Nick Miller, Chief Executive Officer of Inland Rail. Look, delighted to be here today to open this precinct. It's been a long and tough journey for the teams, but the outcome, as you can see around here, is outstanding. Fantastic for the community. Great for their journey to get double-stacked trains from Melbourne to Brisbane. This is a really important milestone for that goal.
JOURNALIST: Can you go through some of the impacts local businesses received as a result of this?
NICK MILLER: Yeah, local business and work construction partner, McConnell Dowell, put an enormous effort into that. Over 1,600 people have worked on this project since its commencement, and around 1,500 of those people have been locals. We've spent over $160 million on this project with local businesses and around $10.5 million on this project with First Nations local businesses. We're really proud of those statistics.
JOURNALIST: Has this been a long time coming today?
NICK MILLER: Well these projects are really challenging. It's a brownfields environment so we're operating on an existing track, and on this particular site we've really relocated the western track and the dive over another side of the station has been removed. So a lot of that work has to happen during what's called possessions. So you do a lot of preparation work and we have two possessions notionally a year, and those possessions are for around 60 to 100 hours, and there's a very intensive period of activity goes on in construction during those possessions. So brownfields projects do take longer than greenfields projects.
JOURNALIST: And this would stack up quite significantly compared to other projects Australia has rolled out in the past?
NICK MILLER: Oh absolutely. This is a significant project. As the Minister spoke of, this is a multi-billion dollar project, Inland Rail. It's a critically important project for the Australian economy and for the regions of Australia. If we think about the trains that run on Inland Rail, 1.8 kilometres long, double stacked, each one of those trains will take 110 B-doubles off the road. That's good for safety, it's good for sustainability, and it's good for the economy in terms of having an efficient connection between Brisbane and Melbourne and the inland ports along that route.
JOURNALIST: What would be the consequence of taking those B-doubles off the road in terms of the economy?
NICK MILLER: Well, it’s a good question because ultimately if you look at the freight tasks now in 2040, 2050, the freight tasks expect to grow over 26 per cent. So the reality is, the secret here is it's not just about road and it's not just about rail. It's a combination. As our economy grows and the volume of our goods increases, the combination is going to be important for the Australian economy.
JOURNALIST: Just to confirm, is it around $70 million invested here into this project?
NICK MILLER: No, this project from Beveridge to Albury, Tranche 1 was around $300 million.
JOURNALIST: So, the actual Wangaratta project though, how much did that cost? This and the Green Street bridge?
NICK MILLER: Sorry, I…
All good. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Local member?
HELEN HAINES [FEDERAL INDEPENDENT MEMBER FOR INDI]: Good morning everyone. It's a big day in Wangaratta for the opening of this new railway precinct as a result of the Inland Rail Project. This is a nation building project for Australia but it has impacts on small towns all the way along the line. So for a regional centre like Wangaratta to transform our railway precinct, to make it more accessible for people, to connect our health services in our town with a modern facility such as this is indeed a good day for our town.
I'm really impressed with the amount of economic development that's happened as a result of this project. We heard today from Inland Rail some astounding statistics about the numbers of local businesses and input into this project. That has a trickle-down effect right across our community. But what we're left with actually is a legacy, and this legacy is one where we do see, from this day forward an improvement to our town. Better parking, better disability access, better and safer access to the trains and a beautiful new precinct that connects and helps us to the main part of our city. So very, very proud and happy to be here today to celebrate this.
JOURNALIST: This seems like a significant improvement for Wangaratta moving into the future with the projected population growth. So I suppose this is bringing services and infrastructure up to standards to meet that growth.
HELEN HAINES: Yes, indeed. This is a growing regional city. We've seen net migration out of the city's inter-country areas such as ours since COVID and we need to make sure that the infrastructure matches the population growth. What I'd like to see now of course is improved engagement, improved services when it comes to the numbers of trains available on our timetable and additional carriages for example. We've seen the numbers of people using the train increase with the changes in fares and I think we're only going to see more and more growth as people come and realise what a fantastic facility this is.
So that's the next part of the work of course is to make sure that the services can match the facilities here, but primarily this is a project for freight, not a project for passengers, but to get both improvements is a really significant thing and a great thing for Wangaratta I think, and of course we've got work happening further down the railway line in Benalla and in Euroa.
JOURNALIST: Obviously not your issue but you touched on getting more services through here, and I think a lot of people would like that.
HELEN HAINES: Look, absolutely they would. The numbers of people who are now using the services has grown exponentially, and that’s a result of good service and affordable fares. So, we need to put all of those things together. But what we’re here today to look at is the infrastructure, and we need infrastructure projects of this magnitude in rural and regional Australia and certainly across the electorate of Indi, so I'm very pleased with the result that we've had here today. It's been years in the making. Lots of relationships along the way, but I think what we’ve seen today is how when people work collaboratively in good faith with clear intent, we can get a great outcome.
JOURNALIST: We've heard some ideas about maybe a brewery going up around here. Have you got any ideas what you'd like to see?
HELEN HAINES: I just heard that for the very first time, and well, who's going to argue with a new brewery right? But I think what this has created is a reimagining of this space. I've lived in this town for nearly 40 years and this area of the railway precinct is one we've turned our back on for a long time. But now I think I'm certainly seeing it with new eyes and clearly other people are too. I can see community usage of this space in all sorts of imaginative ways, and who knows, maybe that may include a brewery. But you know, we have the North Eastern Hotel right across the road there, and I think we’ll see usage of this space in whole new ways.
Okay, thank you.