The long-awaited Melbourne to Brisbane freight rail project is aimed at getting farm produce to ports quicker, for export. The government favours a Wagga-route option, which tries to cut costs by upgrading century-old tracks rather than building new ones.  

But Jim McGann, Griffith mayor 1992-95 and councillor 1982-98, says the federal government realised that this wouldn’t work almost two decades ago.

“I spent two days with a federal government commissioned railway engineer, taking him on a tour of rail networks across the MIA. He said to me that this business of upgrading tracks won’t work. When you’ve got something that’s moving really fast, you want the best,” Mr McGann said.

Mr McGann provided The Area News with a handwritten letter from the engineer, dated 10 March 1999, thanking him from the two days spent here (see gallery). 

Back then, the government had grand plans of an inland Melbourne to Darwin freight rail service. 

The 2000-01 federal budget papers reveal the government contributed $300,000 to a study of an inland railway between Melbourne and Brisbane, which was to be the first stage of a Melbourne to Darwin rail line.

Nearly two decades later, this first stage is yet to commence and the second stage is a distant memory. What’s worse is they are going with an option they knew would be a failure even back then.  

The alternative proposal was the build a new rail line that would pass through the food bowls of Shepparton and the MIA (Narrandera). This was considered too expensive. 

“I was fighting for the food bowl route back in the 1990s,” Mr McGann said. 

Mr McGann showed the federal government Australian Bureau of Statistics data from 1987/88, indicating Griffith City Council was the third highest producer of rural commodities in NSW (see gallery). 

A more recent 2015 study by Deloitte indicated that the inland freight route through the MIA would carry more than six times as much freight as the Wagga route. 

An announcement on funding for inland rail is expected on federal budget night on May 9. 

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