The Chaser Report - High-Speed Rail to Finally Connect Newcastle to Australia

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Dom has a major update on the rapidly incoming timeline for Australia's high-speed rail network, while Charles is still catching planes like a chump. But has anyone asked the Qantas board if this is a good idea? Plus, does Albanese plan on being PM in 2086?---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, you're an idiot. You're doing the wrong thing. What? What? You're coming to this conversation in an airport lounge.

You're about to fly between, I presume, Melbourne and Sydney. Is that correct? Yeah, that's great. Are you old-fashioned, ridiculous, carbon-destroying, fuel-burning, old-fashioned, unalbanesian Luddite? What are you talking about, Dom? This is the only way. Like, unless you want me to spend 14 hours in a sitting up, but they've abolished the sleeper. Like, how do you, what do you want me to do?

I want you to wait right where you are. Don't get on the plane. Okay. Because high speed rail is coming. She's a coming. It's on the way. So I'll just have to wait here. And then so when will I be able to catch this train to Sydney?

Well, after the ads, I'm going to reveal how the government has a plan for high speed rail between Sydney and the most important other city that we need to urgently build high speed rail to. Yes, Melbourne. No, Newcastle. After the break. Now, so, Dom, before we get into it, I think I should correct you, because you said something earlier that was not quite correct. I've just looked it up. It's not actually between Sydney and Newcastle that this high-speed rail is going to be.

It's between the central coast and Newcastle. In the first instance, yes, that's true. Yeah, so Sydney's not really part of the equation here. But if I were, say, stuck in the central coast and I was waiting to catch a plane to Newcastle, which is about half an hour's driveway, what you're saying is instead I should wait until they build this train line to get to do that. Yeah, until I think it's 2039. So look, if you haven't been following, if you're not like me and you don't read every single

news article that high speed rail, just to quickly recap what the plan is, the government's released its business case for high speed rail. So it's more of a plan to have a plan. Like it's just the business. This is not actually the plan. Oh no. No, no, we're not doing the plan yet. It's the business case for why we need a plan.

And what this business case says is that more than 16 million passengers a year would pay 31 bucks, that's the price, for a $90 billion high speed rail line between Sydney and Newcastle that will deliver a lot of homes between them. Now, what this means, as you say, is that first you'd build Newcastle or Central Coast, get the most important part of the link up, and then you'd extend it down to Sydney by about 2040, which is incredibly complicated. You've got to dig lots of tunnels, a whole kind of Hawkesbury River and all those things. It's very, very difficult. It's the hardest bit of the entire line. And this line would have, I think, about 110 kilometres of tunnels. So it would largely be underground, lots of viaducts and bridges, a little bit of regular track. And it would take an hour to get between Sydney and Newcastle at more than 300 kilometres per out.

So did you say it was $90 billion? Well, I mean, subsequent reports have said there's no way to be that cheap and it will definitely cost more. But 90 billion is the price tag at the moment. And you're saying the ticket price is $31. So can I just tell you that I've just calculated that in my brain, and that business case relies on 2.9 billion people buying a ticket for that to be breaking. How many people do you think live in Newcastle? Aren't there several billion? 2.9 billion trips.

How would that ever make? I mean, like, I don't want to be the one who pooh-poo's high-speed rail because, you know. But you are. But it just doesn't, like, surely, like, this is what I would do if I was the government is make the tickets cost, say, $31 million each. And then you'd only need, like, 29,000 people to buy tickets. You see what I mean? Like, they've got their numbers all wrong. But Charles, you need to read the more speculative parts of the business case, which say that full high-speed rail,

and this is going all the way from Melbourne to Brisbane via Can't bea, via Can't have Camba and, of course, Sydney as well, that would boost the national economy by $1.7 trillion by the year 2086. So in some ways, we're saving. We're saving. We're saving money. It's cheap. It's a bargain.

So in actual fact, we should, yeah, okay. Well, then I'm sold. It's on board. If that's what they reckon. Yeah. So presumably, I presume part of the thinking behind this, I haven't read the full documents, of course. But a part of it would be that, you know, Sydney has very high house prices. So what you want to do is take pressure off Sydney by getting everyone to live in a different shit hole slightly up the road.

Right. Is that the idea that by having a link that goes from Central Coast to Newcastle, people, will, like, it'll basically make Newcastle just an outer suburb of Gossford. That's exactly the idea of Gossford. No, the idea is there's 200,000 homes that are built largely in Newcastle and Sydney, so they're not assuming people will want to live in the Central Coast, which is probably the most realistic part of the entire plan. So 200,000 home.

Now, admittedly, nearly 50,000 of these are needed for the people who have to relocate for this thing to get built. But the idea is to have a sort of populated corridor along the way, this would allow more people to own their own home, they'd be more affordable, and it would all kind of come together. And I think that's why they're doing this bit of it first, because it's relatively short distance. Obviously, Sydney to Melbourne, you're going through a lot of countryside. That's harder to build the development to justify it. But a couple of interesting details, though, Charles.

The first is that the route, now this has been debated for a very long time. You can actually kind of draw a straight line southwest from Newcastle going through late McCrory, there'd be a station. Yeah. Gosford, there'd be a station. And then to Parramatta. That's a straight line. and then on to Canberra.

But what they're actually going to do is they don't want to do that. They want to actually zag into the east to go to Central to be downtown Sydney and then then go to Parramatta in the opposite direction kind of thing and then go to the airport, Western Sydney Airport, and then on to Canberra. So the route's actually a bit controversial. A lot of people think you should build it to Parramatta and people change for a line into Sydney Central or take the Metro. But that's not the plan. I live close to Central, so I support that stupid plan.

I think that's the right way to do it. Well, I think more people would certainly use it. More people like us, which is what really matters. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then they go down, and this is the really big part, is that you then extend it all the way down to Melbourne. But that's presumably the Sydney Melbourne bit. That's the point where you really see economic benefits.

Yeah. Because that's when all the planes come out of the sky. So I'm just, what I don't really understand what's going on here is, and where it just does not add up is how does quantist benefit out of this? Like, this doesn't, like, surely you've got to run everything through the quantist board to get policy up in Australia. Look, it's a great question. And the thing I'd say to you is that, look, knowing Australia, they won't just have this as a government project. I mean, the Sydney Metro, for instance, is operated by, in many cases, government-owned companies from overseas. I think the MTR Corporation, which runs a lot of cities,

Metro, for instance, is partly owned by the Hong Kong government, I'm pretty sure. And then we know, for instance, Singapore's government operates a lot of rail overseas. So other countries, the Spanish build all our trams now that this as well. Yeah, yeah. And so other countries have efficient government-owned companies, but we can't do that. So it's entirely possible that they'll outsource the running of the high-speed rail line to Guantas, given us all of its expertise in the area. Right.

So, right. So the answer is. So it's actually a neat. way of doing it, isn't it, is to just, you know, if a monopolist is standing in your way, you just concede everything to them. You just literally give them whatever they want. I mean, the only question I have, Charles, is whether the chairman's lounge is a carriage in every train or is it on every platform? Or both, all of the above. Well, I think the chairman's lounge is more of a sort of state of being. It's more of a metaphysical thing.

Oh, really? It's not really, it doesn't really matter the actual, you know, like it's, it's more about being a member, then just as long as you know that. Oh, okay. Then that's fine. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. How would they lose the luggage is what I want to know? Because it's pretty simple. Passengers bought a train.

They take their luggage with them and then take it off again. There's not actually any third party handling. How would you make sure people lost their luggage? Gee, that is. This is, look, I wouldn't. It's a lot of details. I just sort out. No, well, I wouldn't shout that too loudly because that could interrupt the whole project,

just working on that very. That very tricky question. So, I mean, I think the thing is, Charles, this business case, it's been a long time coming. But the numbers, it's so far off in the future that it's basically like, does the government actually want to build this or not? And it's true. I think that there's bipartisan support for a lot of this happening. So, yes, I mean, we've said it before, but this might actually happen. The question is, well, we'd be alive to see it.

And I'm not confident. Well, I think Albo is so assured. of his position at the moment, given how split the coalition is, that he'll probably still be Prime Minister by the time he's filled. By 2086. I think they're sort of going, I think Albo's sort of, he's not aiming for three terms, you know, to try and, you know, set the record with Bob Hawke. He's aiming for like 30 terms, 31 terms.

Maybe that's why he caught $31. Is that inflation adjusted, that $31 sort of thing? I think it's like... But compared it to the greyhound price of $38. It's a lot cheaper than I thought it would be, I must say, to get there in one hour. Although I must say if you use an opal car, because I often catch the train up to Newcastle of a Sunday, and in New South Wales, on Sundays, you tap on, it only costs $2.50 anywhere in the state. Yeah, yeah.

So you can catch the train to Newcastle from Sydney. Newcastle, $2.50. And it's still overpriced. Yeah, Barry Unsworth brought it in. It's such an annoying. I've done that train ride. They call it the shit-canson. Well, I think it's the Stabby Express.

I mean, the thing that's fantastic, and Matt Bevan talks about this a lot, Newcastle's first podcaster, you know, chief podcaster, is that the line was faster in the age of steam than it is now from Sydney to Newcastle. It's quite extraordinary. Mind you, I think probably Novicastrians were probably faster as well. They may have been. They may have been. So, oh, this is so sweet, Charles.

I'm just reading this, that Labor's MP for Newcastle, Sharon Claydon, thinks that Newcastle will become the high-speed rail hub of Australia. Oh, that's sweet. Like, clearly it will be, if they start there, but I'm pretty sure once the line goes to Melbourne, I don't know how many passengers, just with all due respect to Newcastle, which I've visited many times. I imagine most people are going to be heading south.

from Central Charles, just quietly. Well, a bit of a hub, it doesn't have to. Maybe that's where you put, that's where you put the Chairman's Land. That's how you encourage everyone to go to Newcastle. It's the only place you can go to the Chairman's Land. Hang on, yeah, but that's where you park the trains. That's where there's room to just park all the trains overnight. Yeah.

You can park them downtown. It's just a whole area along that river that they turned into a light rail to turn it back into heavy rail. Park all the trains there. It's not a river that's a harbour, Dom. It's a harbor. It's a harbor that becomes a river. Oh, really? I don't know.

I haven't been any costly. We've been doing this call over Zoom, right? We've been recording this over Zoom. And before we started, it offered to turn on your AI companion, your Zoom AI companion. One of the buttons I can press right now is, are there any action items from this meeting? I think I've got one. Shall I click it and see what the answer to this is? It's been summarizing out our comments.

conversation. Okay, analyzing, it's analyzing. Okay, here are some follow-up action items. Albo, follow-up on the high-speed rail business case and implementation plan. Just a small. That was he? It's the only action item. Yeah.

For Zoom AI says Albo should build it. Well, he can't argue with that, can he? Or create tasks from, the next button is create tasks from action items. Good. Okay. Well, we'll send these on to Albo for him to complete. Oh, there's no, there's no tasks. Oh, okay.

Well, you better tell him, there's not actually anything. Well, look, you can click, was my name mentioned? Let's click that. Oh, very good. So, look, let's just say that. Put in $230 million for this and Albo's just gone. I want to be the PM that starts the Sydney to Melbourne. No, Charles, an update for you.

The PM just two hours ago said, I accept that I will not be the Prime Minister when high speed rail is finished, but I'm determined to be the Prime Minister who starts it. So he's not planning to be there in 2086. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, there's news. That's a spill.

The spill is on. He also makes the point that Sydney to Melbourne is a lot easy. Why wouldn't you just build that bit first? Dom, you just don't have the cunning political savvy of Anthony Allen easy, Dom. You're telling me that Newcast and Central Coast are key electorates if they want to keep. Oh, you might say that. I couldn't possibly comment. There you go.

So he says Sydney to Melbourne under three hours. I mean, this is what I'm saying, Charles. Don't worry. Don't fly back. Just stay in Melbourne. I think he meant... Sydney to Melbourne in under 300 years, but he meant to...

Yeah, that's actually quite possible. Okay, we're part of the... Have a good flight. Yeah, I've got to go. I've got to go. I've got to fly. Jump on the old-fashioned out-of-date train, playing, Charles.

I'm going to burn some carbon. Or, as they say, in Ireland, I'm going to suck on some diesel. Catch you next time.