Premier Roger Cook in Geraldton to reaffirm election promise to reverse freight rail network privatisation

Premier Roger Cook declared the Geraldton-Mt Magnet Road will be a “high priority” for future funding, while vowing the election promise to reverse the privatisation of WA’s freight rail network will ease the burden on the rundown route. In Geraldton on Friday, Mr Cook visited Arc Infrastructure to reaffirm Labor’s election commitment to bring the freight rail network back into public hands, 25 years after it was privatised. The Liberal-National Court government sold the network for $586 million in 2000, but Mr Cook remains tight-lipped on what bill taxpayers could now face to break the 49-year lease with Arc Infrastructure at its halfway point. Mr Cook said the feedback had been “loud and clear” that the community wanted to see less trucks on roads and more freight on rail. “We continue to see a situation where we have some of our . . . lower tier iron ore miners having to put literally millions of tonnes of iron ore on the roads,” he said. “You see this impact daily in Geraldton — road trains coming into the city to offload their product at the port. It’s inefficient, it’s dangerous, and it costs the State millions in road maintenance costs. “It’s having a damaging impact (on) the road network . . . and it’s wrecking the lifestyles of people here in the Geraldton area, as they’re having to contend with road trains while they’re taking the kids to school each day.” Mr Cook admitted WA Treasury had deemed the proposed buy-back a financial risk “because it’s a live negotiation”. To date during the election campaign, no funding has been committed to repairing and upgrading the Geraldton-Mt Magnet Road. Mr Cook said the heavy haulage route would be “a very high priority” under the State Government’s rolling program to improve the regional road network. In an Infrastructure WA report last year, it was found that $225m was needed for upgrades on the 355km stretch of road. Mr Cook said it was “startling” that the Liberals and Nationals opposed Labor’s freight network plan, given they owed the WA public an apology for the “disastrous decision” in 2000 to privatise the network. Nationals WA leader Shane Love has previously described Labor’s uncosted plan as nothing more than a hollow promise. He said there was a clear need to bring more freight onto rail, but Labor had done nothing in its eight years in power to rectify that. “This is particularly evident in the Mid West, where freight which should be moved by rail is instead burdening regional roads,” Mr Love said. “The Geraldton-Mt Magnet Road, for example, is seeing 170 movements of 60me quads daily, with this figure set to skyrocket to 500 per day.”