August 2026

Australia has just delivered a masterclass in how not to build a nation.

After seven years of construction, billions of dollars spent, hundreds of kilometres of track laid and regional communities encouraged to invest around the promise of one of Australia’s biggest infrastructure projects, the Federal Government has effectively pulled the pin on Inland Rail north of Parkes.

The result is extraordinary.

We now have railway lines that go nowhere, enormous gaps between completed sections, hundreds of thousands of concrete sleepers sitting in paddocks , plus businesses and landowners wondering what happened to the future Canberra promised them.

This isn’t infrastructure policy.

It’s vandalism.

Inland Rail was conceived as a 1,600km freight spine linking Melbourne with Brisbane, creating a high-capacity alternative to sending ever-increasing volumes of freight along congested highways.

It was ambitious. It was expensive. And its execution was unquestionably flawed.

Costs blew out. Planning was inadequate. Routes were changed. Approvals dragged on.

The projected price (which started out at about $5 billion) reportedly ballooned beyond $46 billion.

But here’s the part Canberra apparently doesn’t understand: A badly managed infrastructure project doesn’t magically become better value by abandoning it halfway through.

Quite the opposite.

Only three of the project’s 12 sections have been completed.

There is 98km of upgraded railway between Parkes and Narromine.

Then nothing.

There’s a 306km hole between Narromine and Narrabri.

Further north, another 186km has been upgraded between Narrabri and North Star — except for an absurd 23km missing section around Moree.

So taxpayers have funded railway infrastructure that has deliberately been left disconnected.

That’s not saving money.

That’s ensuring much of the money already spent cannot deliver the benefits it was supposed to produce.

And those benefits matter.

Australia’s domestic freight task is forecast to grow 26% between 2020 and 2050.

Moving more freight by rail means fewer heavy trucks pounding already deteriorating highways.

It means lower freight costs. Less congestion. Greater supply-chain resilience. And potentially significant environmental benefits, with Inland Rail previously estimated to reduce emissions by around 750,000 tonnes annually by 2050.

Even the independent review that savaged the project’s management concluded that the additional freight capacity Inland Rail was designed to provide was critical.

Yet Canberra’s answer to years of poor management appears to be walking away from the railway itself.

Regional communities are paying the price. Businesses bought equipment, hired staff and planned expansion around Inland Rail. Councils planned industrial development. Investors committed capital. Farmers negotiated property acquisitions and easements for years. Some sold land.

Others remain trapped in limbo because the government wants to “preserve” a railway corridor it currently has no intention of completing.

Imagine being told for years that a railway may run through your property, reorganising your farm around that reality, negotiating compensation — and then discovering Canberra has stopped building but might restart someday.

You can’t properly invest. You can’t confidently sell. You can’t move on.

This is the hidden cost of government incompetence.

And perhaps the greatest tragedy is that Australia still needs Inland Rail.

Our population is growing rapidly. Our freight task is growing with it. Our highways cannot endlessly absorb more trucks. Regional Australia needs better connections to ports and markets.

Yet after decades of discussion and seven years of actual construction, Australia has somehow managed to spend billions building pieces of a national freight railway — and then decide not to connect them.

There should absolutely be accountability for the cost blowouts and failures that plagued Inland Rail. But abandoning half-built infrastructure isn’t accountability. It’s compounding the mistake.

Australia didn’t need another inquiry, another review or another political blame game.

It needed someone to finish the railway.