The Chaser Report - The Fast Train Out Of Sydney's Almost Gone

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

Inspired by the new fast train between Shanghai and Beijing, Charles and Dom demand it's time for Australia to build a fast train between Sydney and Melbourne. Sure, it may be a gamble of an infrastructure project, but maybe that's exactly how we afford it.---Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen 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 Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to another week of the Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. This is the relentless nature of a daily podcast. And indeed, we're doing six a week now because of the weekend edition you've got to pay for. They're the best ones, just quietly. I'm actually trying a lot harder with those ones. Sorry, sorry, no, not at all.

You're disrespecting the audience, Dom. The terrible thing, Charles, is that we went through this huge effort on Friday to solve a massive issue, an issue as massive as fire ants. Yes. And we've got to come in again on Monday and sort something else out. And back it up with another solution to the world's problems. It's a relentless, it's a relentless task doing this podcast. We do it for you. And I kind of feel like we do it on our own.

Like, I don't think anyone else in the world is out there day after day trying to solve the world's problems. That's just because you've checked our advertising income recently. Yeah, we are doing it on our own at the moment. That's right. That's why you should subscribe to get more of these solutions out there, by the way. But our ratings go. Why are the advertising dollars not going up commensurately? Oh, they're scared of us.

They're scared of us. Oh, they're scared of the truth. They're scared of the truth. Oh, because actually, half our ad revenue is from the Fire Ants Association of Australia. The pro-fire antloby. And then we did a whole eradication episode. Yeah, the advertisers have always been scared of us. That's why you should pay us.

otherwise we'll come after you, won't we? Well, today we have a solution to the problem of getting between Sydney and Melbourne. What about other cities? Oh, yeah, I suppose it will work for that too. I mean, it's one of the worlds, let's just be honest. But would you ever meet? Can we just stop pretending that this is, it's not the same. Sydney to Melbourne is one of the world's biggest transport routes, right?

We know this, one of the most heavily trafficked routes in the world. Yeah. Let's not pretend that Brisbane to Adelaide is as big a priority. Can we just, I know we're assholes from Sydney and you, chosen to listen to us anyway. Charles, just solve Sydney to Melbourne and don't worry about anything else. That's what they'd do in the People's Republic of China between their two most important cities, not their biggest, by the way, the two most important, Beijing and

Shanghai. And have they got an amazing idea for that? You've been between Shanghai and China both Australia, haven't you done? I have. So I went in, when was it, 2001? Right. So in Australian train years, yes. Yesterday, but in Chinese train years, a very long time ago.

So I remember it taking more than 10 hours. I remember it being, maybe it was an overnight train. It took a very long time. Because it's about 1,200 kilometres, isn't it? It's a pretty decent distance, yeah. So it's a little bit longer than Sydney to Melbourne, but it's the same sort of distance. Yeah. And so this was, well, 25 years ago or so.

And I remember still people plugging things in in the corridors. And it was relatively comfortable, but not that fancy. but it was a reliable service that did it day after day. It was much better than the Australian train between Sydney and Melbourne, which is a real bone shaker. It was actually quite comfortable. Yes, right. Which I'd been on the year before.

So, yeah, and by the way, just parenthesis, the Sydney to Melbourne train is now worse than it was then because at least we have sleepers. They're getting rid of the sleepers between Sydney and Melbourne. I think they have. Yeah, they just did. So, yeah, that's where we're out now. But no, I think it's about four hours.

They've built a high-speed train line, and Charles, I don't know whether you've looked into this, but the job of building high-speed rail between Shanghai and Beijing, that required them to construct several of the world's longest rail bridges. It was an absolutely extraordinary effort because there's the whole multiple river deltas, I think, along the way. They've built these incredible bridges. See, it's really impressive.

And I notice you've Googling as you there, the Maglev, which I also went on. Yes. Which is this hilarious thing. It's simply between Pudong Airport, the new airport. airport in Shanghai and the city and somehow goes to 430 kilometers during this very short route. And you basically, it's insanely fast. Like you see the kilometer rating on the train just going stupidly fast and then it's over before you know it.

Yeah, right. But they haven't done that technology anywhere else. Right. Just in that very short, um, short distance. That's the current state of affairs between Beijing and Shanghai. Yeah, but there's a proposal now for a new train that will go at over 1,000 kilometres an hour. Over a thousand?

Yes. And now the problem with going that fast, right, is air. Yeah. So the problem is once you reach that sort of speed, the air on the ground is actually quite dense. It's not like... Yeah, the drag. It's not like flying through the air at 30,000 feet.

And that's why the bullet trains in Japan and so on. Yeah. Have these incredibly pointed noses. Yeah. They've got these really, just sort of like wedge-shaped noses. So the solution that they've come up with in China, is that they're going to put a sort of tube around these trains. Not unlike Elon Musk's idea, you know, the hyperloop, right?

But instead of Elon Musk's idea was that you would actually create a proper vacuum tube at great expense. Yeah, so there was no resistance. Yeah. But that seemed very impractical. It was incredibly impractical. To take all the air out of the tube. Yeah, for thousands of kilometers.

Like, sort of inconceivable. This one instead just reduces the amount. of air in the in the tube which means that it can go at a thousand kilometers an hour without creating too much turbulence so it's basically like a kind of glass a glass loop you know like one of those sort of walkways or something yes yes but instead of being like 30 meters long this is 1,300 kilometers long wow right so but it's over a thousand kilometers per hour which means that you're talking Shanghai to Beijing in basically an hour hour and a half The actual point to point is touted as being one hour and one minute.

So that's then faster, isn't it, than a commercial jet? Way faster than a Boeing 737 and has the benefit of not crashing all the time. Yes, like a Boeing. That would be good. And the thing is that the route between Beijing and Shanghai is actually far harder to build than the route between Sydney and Melbourne. Like Sydney and Melbourne is basically just like empty farmland, right? There's no river deltas, I mean, except for the Murray River, which is what, like, I don't know, 30 metres wide.

Other than that, where would you have to build? You'd have to build across, I don't know, cow paddocks. Yeah, and Galban. And Galban. You just, well, or just build it through the main street of Galban. Yeah. No one would care. Yeah, exactly.

They could watch it whizzing Barbies. Give me something to do in Goldman. So the point is, why don't we just actually do it? Why don't we just do it? So I'm looking here at the, yeah, at the, it's an extraordinary train that they have now.

I'm just looking at how big derail things it is. Because I suspect it's because in, in China, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you can just do stuff. There's not really anyone saying you can't. Yes. There's no one saying you've got to have an environmental appraisal. Yes.

You've got to make sure that you don't, you know, if people, it's like the Three Gorges Dam. If you want people to do it. just fuck off on mass and move millions of people out of there. You can't. There's no one stopping you. So what you're saying is the problem is democracy. Yeah, that's right.

People say, I don't want this in my backyard and that actually being respected. That's, yeah, what a drag. What a drag. But the good news is, Charles, we all know that the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a massive fan of high speed rail. So if anyone's going to do this of a bold, visionary, very expensive, transformative infrastructure project, yeah. Albo would be the...

But he's been there for three years and still there's still no high-speed train. There's a problem. Well, no, no, but no. But no, before the last election, they announced that work had begun on the Sydney to Newcastle Hospital. They did sort of 20 drilling sites,

didn't they to try and work out what's happening in the... Well, it was sort of drill. It was test drilling. So what they had done is they'd 20 times just put a drill down into... I think it was mainly the rivers. and the sort of crossings on the hawksbury and done a little bit of rock sampling.

We're talking like tens of thousands of dollars worth of investment. I'm just reading this here. For the current Beijing to Shanghai high-speed rail line, had to build 244 bridges and 22 tunnels, and including several of, as I said, the world's longest bridges. See, I'm just thinking, like,

what would you prefer? A say in how your society's run or to be able to, you know, like to be able to go to Melbourne for lunch. Like, you could literally, if it was like 90 minutes to get to Melbourne. Oh, there's good food in Melbourne too. You could literally go, oh, you know, I can't be bothered going to Totties. So they would never. Why don't we go to taxi club at Federation Square?

The thing is they would, the thing is, it would only be used by Sydney Siders. Sydney sideers would go down to Melbourne and then come back again. Yes. And Melbourneans would never go to Sydney. So it would literally be just for the likes of us. It'd be a one. Maybe it would it be cheaper. just doing a one-way rail.

Have a monorail. We need a high-speed monorail. Oh, what a good idea. So I'm just getting this information. It's taking me while to get it up. The Dunyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, the longest bridge in the world built for this thing. Yeah.

It is 164 kilometres long, this bridge that they've built for this thing. So that's where we should do. We just, like, because you're saying the problem is we've got to go on land. and we're going to get approvals, what do we just go via the ocean? Oh, that's a brilliant idea. We build the train over the ocean.

Yeah, that way it's not, no one's going to be relocated. Yes. It'd be a slightly longer route, but it doesn't matter. Just go around down the coast. Well, you could probably go faster as well. You know what you could do?

What? Oh, some people wouldn't like this. You build it, I don't know, a couple hundred metres offshore. Yeah. With giant wind turbines the whole way along. Yes. I imagine how the anger that there'd be. The turbines would be.

directly power the rail line. Yes, and we could use all the dead whales that it... And the farms are killing. Yeah, all the birds. To create a new form of renewable energy. Like whale oil. Get back into the whale oil industry. Yeah, that's very, very good.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. It's just solutions that front and centre on this podcast. And so the other thing that's going on, Charles, just out, because I'm very passionate about this sort of stuff. Yeah. Is that in Japan, we know that. until China stepped up with all this stuff, they're kind of the world leaders in high-speed rail.

They've got a maglev as well, which goes at 500 kilometres per hour, in operational speed between Tokyo and Osaka. Yes, yes. The Troil Shinkansen. And in fact, in testing, I've seen the video of this, 600 kilometres per hour. See, that's actually better, isn't it?

Like, do you reckon... We don't need a tube? Do you reckon they did 600 kilometres an hour because China only got 430 and they went to one up. Yeah. That's exactly what they did. You know what we need? What we need?

700 kilometres now. Sure. The cutting edge Australian train. But this is no, I mean, it's worth watching the video of it. It's quite extraordinary. Like you're just sort of sitting waiting for it to come on the video. And 10 seconds later, which goes, and that was it. That was the train.

I've just worked out how to fund this in Australia. How? You know how we've got orcas? Yeah. Right. If we say that, like, if we do the sort of one off the coast, right? Oh, my goodness. Now you're thinking.

But we put it like down underneath the water. You can have a nuclear submarine. And we call it a submarine. We go, oh, well, we've sorted out our submarines. It's just, you know, our submarines go between Sydney and Melbourne. Don't yours? Has a nuclear power. You know what I mean?

You're just passive aggressive. And the Trump administration and across the detail, they just go out of the submarine. You got the submarines. That's great. Yeah. We actually spend, you mean we could actually spend all that money on our, on our infrastructure? On not, not on killing people, but instead on transporting people between, you know, a really cosmopolitan, lovely, beautiful city and Melbourne.

Hey. Hey. All right. There's just some great dreams here. So, but the magnetic levitation, this is the thing. I mean, as I said, I've been on this thing in, it's been going for 25 years, the one in Shanghai. I went on in, like, 2001. It's insane.

It goes for 430 kilometres per hour. It's just expensive. So how much do you really want this thing, Albo? How much you really believe in high-speed trains? I don't think, look, I think... Because it would also, it would solve the productivity, wouldn't it? If you could get between Sydney and Melbourne. I've got another way, actually, to fund this thing.

So it is very expensive. Yeah. But this would let us have the Chinese one. It's a thousand... Oh, yeah, yeah. Because... Pokies. On the train.

On the train. So you're getting on the train. You've got two hours. It's a perfect people are trapped, basically. They're on the train. Yes. There's nothing to do. There's no Wi-Fi.

You go, oh, it's too fast. You can't possibly have any mobile reception or Wi-Fi. Well, actually, what it would be is it'd probably be NBN. So it would work. Yeah. And you've got, all you've got to do there are pokey's, which somehow mysteriously work with the payments anyway. Yes.

And I mean, it had to generate a profit. Yeah, that's right. It would be the first train line in the world that actually just just makes everyone. And you wouldn't even need to charge for tickets. No. Just put bikies on there. Australians would just want to get on it.

And I've just come up with another way to sort of shift to the funding. What we do is we convince Brisbane that they need to be part of this network in time. For the Olympics. For the Olympics. That's cool. And then it just becomes part of their Olympic black hole. Oh, yeah. There doesn't matter how much they spend.

It doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we could say to Brisbane, for an, you know, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne. Yeah. Because Brisbane's a third. I mean, if you're going to have a third place, it's going to be Brisbane. And we just go, we'll build Brisbane last. But you fund it, but we'll be.

We'll get to it. We'll get to it. It's coming. Yeah. It's coming. Like all fast trains in Australia. Yeah. It's coming.

It's just on the way. All right, this is all brilliant stuff. But it just goes to show Charles. If you don't worry about democracy or environmental approvals and so on, you can build this stuff. Also, if you've got a population of a billion people, that helps as well. But Japan is a democracy. It is. Yeah.

And they'd be. They do. Well, the thing about Japan is that the tolerance for things being built out of concrete everywhere that aren't necessarily aesthetically stunning. Right. You seem to be incredibly high. I remember reading once that there's only two rivers in Japan. They've probably sorted them out by now that don't run along concrete beds. So what we need is we need the population of the Gold Coast to make all planning decisions. Yes. Everything concrete. And they'd be all, oh, yeah. I mean, you go, you go on the Shinkansen from, from Tokyo to Osaka, it's actually quite extraordinary.

The entire train line is basically really built up. Right. And a lot of, actually, you know, a lot of what you see along the way. Yeah. And they're often the biggest buildings in Japan and the most, certainly the most amazing looking. Buccino Palos, flashing lights. They're pokies, Charles. Japanese pokies.

Oh. We haven't even got them in Australia. Okay. Yes. So we just, it's a whole new form of gambling that we introduced. It is. It's been clear. Gambling is illegal in Japan.

So they wouldn't have gambling. Right. But what they would have with Pachinko is a fun game of skill where you take, you basically win lots of standstill balls through skill. Yes. And then as it happens, around the back of the Pachinko parlor, there's a little shop. Right. Which may not be run by the same people. No one really knows where you can take the, you can sell back the stand of steel balls in return for cash.

And that's the way the system works. What a loophole. Yeah, it's a pretty good loophole. So we need something like that. Yes. We wouldn't even need to get it approved. So we just, it's not even, yeah, it's not gambling. It's just, it's just a game of skill.

Yeah, it's Pachinko. And Pachinko actually is so ubiquitous it makes Pockeys look restrained. So next time you hear about New South Wales has the most pokey's of anywhere, you know. We're amateurs. Yeah, I mean, if you want flashing lights and, you know, massive social problems, I've got to tell you, the Japanese are, you know, cutting edge. Oh, okay, cool. Put Pachinko on the trains.

People will come from Japan to play. They will. Totally. In fact, why don't we have Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Tokyo. Brilliant. And that famous novel, Pachinko, you know, the TV series and all that. Yeah, yeah. Basically because the Korean immigrants had to work in organised crime.

So they ran all the Pachinko parlours and became the richest people in the whole of Japan. That's fascinating. Yeah, it is. It's a topic for the podcast. Anyway, we've solved a lot of things here. We've solved not only transport, but also revenue and tourism. Yep. done and also we figured out a way to kill the whales we're part of the iconoclast network get you

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