Inland Rail was sold as a $10.7 billion project. It now costs $45.6 billion, and stops at Parkes

Inland Rail was meant to be a 1,600-kilometre freight line from Melbourne to Brisbane, moving freight between the two cities in under 24 hours. The 2015 business case put the cost at $9.9 billion, or $10.7 billion on its more cautious (P90) estimate. Construction was to run from 2016 to 2025, Infrastructure Australia's evaluation said.

In November 2025, an independent review by consultants ACIL Allen put the cost of finishing the full line at $45.6 billion, with construction not finished until late 2035. The infrastructure department's secretary, Jim Betts, told Senate Estimates that "the $45.6 billion is the lower-end estimate".

In May 2026, the government stopped funding the line north of Parkes in central NSW. The line will run from Beveridge, north of Melbourne, to Parkes by the end of 2027. North of there, the corridor will be protected but not built.

The price tag, year by year

And the business case wasn't the first number. A 2021 Senate committee report, Inland Rail: derailed from the start, said the original estimate was $4.7 billion, from an ARTC study in 2010.

What went wrong

Building before knowing where it would start or finish. Dr Kerry Schott's 2023 independent review found that work had begun "somewhat surprisingly" without settled start and end points, and that "there is insufficient certainty about the scope, the related schedule, and delivery costs". She said the cost estimate of the time "should not be accepted by the shareholder", meaning the government.

The wrong people in charge. Schott found that "appointments to the board did not provide the skills required", and pointed to weaknesses in governance, risk management and project management at the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), the government company building the line. The government agreed to her 19 recommendations, and a new company, Inland Rail Pty Ltd, took over the project in May 2024.

Queensland was never sorted out. The sections still to be built in northern NSW and Queensland are mostly new track on new land. Betts told Senate Estimates the biggest sticking points were Queensland planning approvals still to come, along with land acquisition, environmental consent and "unexpected technical matters".

Even the new estimate was optimistic. ACIL Allen found Inland Rail's costing methods were "fit for purpose and consistent with industry best practice". But the $45.6 billion assumed work would start from 30 June 2025. It didn't, and ACIL Allen warned that this "is likely to result in an increase in the estimated cost".

What you're getting for it

The southern half is real and nearly done. Once Beveridge to Parkes is finished at the end of 2027, double-stacked freight trains will be able to run from Melbourne to Perth through Parkes, with a new 39-kilometre line bypassing the winding Bethungra Spiral. The Parkes to Narromine section and the first stage of Narromine to North Star are already finished.

The government says the priority now is the existing interstate freight network, which has been shut by weather for about 200 days in the past five years. "What industry have said to us is that the priority is to invest in the integrity of the existing network," Betts said. The government is reallocating $1.75 billion in previously announced funding and putting $55 million into an incentive scheme to move more freight by rail and sea.

What Australians won't get, for now, is the thing they were sold: a freight line to Brisbane.

Who's to blame?

Both sides have owned this project. Labor and the Coalition both took $300 million pledges for Inland Rail to the 2013 election. The Turnbull government put $8.4 billion into the ARTC to build it in 2017, and construction started under the Coalition in 2018.

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King says "the 2023 independent review found major deficiencies in the governance and delivery of Inland Rail" under the former government, and that "we are taking sensible decisions to realign the future of Inland Rail".

Shadow Infrastructure Minister Bridget McKenzie says "history will record that this Labor Government pulled up the tracks half-way without any warning", and that "this decision means no long-term project is safe". NSW Farmers president Xavier Martin said: "We need the Minister to tell us what this means north of Parkes."

Your share: the jump from $10.7 billion to $45.6 billion works out to about $1,250 for every Australian (on a population of about 27.9 million). Most of that money hasn't been spent, and now may never be. But it's the price Australians would have to pay to finish what they were promised.

The ARTC and Inland Rail Pty Ltd are wholly owned by the Commonwealth, like Snowy Hydro, whose Snowy 2.0 went from $2 billion to a $22.2 billion target.

Top photo: Parkes railway station in central NSW (file photo, 2009). Photo: Amanda Slater, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.