Yep Rudd's addiction to grandiose announcements that go no where, while costing billions is still alive & well.

He's announced they will build a high speed rail link from Sydney to Melbourne. What's more they are going to do it for about the latest independent estimate of the cost on the NBN. I reckon this one must be his application as chief fool/clown at the UN after the election.

He must have had a bit of time to kill on that taxpayer funded flight to Brisbane & back for his cooking show, to have come up with this one.

These things are a massive drain on on taxpayer subsidies almost every where they're built. If they don't work in Europe, what chance do they have here.

What's more they are touting them to carry freight.

I wonder what world these fools inhabit? My company looked at rail freight, & found the labour costs of transshipping goods from truck to train at dispatch, & back to truck at destination was greater than shipping all the way by truck. That even went for Brisbane to Perth.

I must admit I was a little surprised until I realised it is bureaucrats that run the system, & union controlled government funded labour that does the actual lifting.

I don't suppose you'd be surprised to find that like most of Labors announcements, it is not actually funded until the second term of the Abbott government. It looks like KRudd is taking a leaf out of Julia's book, & trying to lay booby traps for Abbott. Think he might have left this one too late.

I think he is trying to 1 up Bob Hawke with his crap To plant 1 Billion trees.

Never did see any of those trees.

With increasing population, congestion and lack of infrastructure to cope, the fast train is a good idea. Other than freight, it means people can commute to where jobs are while living on the outer edges of cities or in semi-rural areas. It also reduces reliance on air travel, which also with rising populations, airports are finding it more difficult to control air space.

This is not a Rudd-owned policy but has been mooted by Liberal and Labor governments alike, both went back on their election promises. I hope this one survives.

Right it would be a good thing for transport, so would 1 billion trees.

His timing is strange why did he not propose this idea when he had a chance to actually do something.

Election promise that if elected will be broken.

He simply can't be trusted anymore.

Pelican a fast train is not a commuting means of transport. If they have to regularly stop at stations to pick up passengers, they are no longer a fast train.

They are not even meant to make more than a couple of stops between state capitals. Long distance train travel is a total failure always everywhere. By design they can't earn their running costs, & use more fuel per passenger mile than aircraft.

A much better use of funds would to build office accommodation dispersed through the suburbs, & country towns for the bureaucracy. Get the public servants out of city centers, & the rest will follow. The commute congestion would be eliminated that easily. Meanwhile leave long distance transport to the private sector, who can do it much better than governments.

Public transport in other than the oldest cities like Europe, is a total loss. It is so last century that it is time to drop the concept completely, & stop wasting the huge subsidies required to move a very small percentage of the population to very few destinations.

Yep Rudd’s going down, grandiose ideas and all!

Any more big ideas from him in this election campaign will only work against him!

Ah. But hold on…. there is one, which would be bound to receive a whole lot of support from voters across the country:

Rather than building, more and more infrastructure and services of all sorts, for ever and ever trying to catch up to the ever-increasing demand, if he was to curtail this contantly growing demand, he’d have a grandiose policy well worth supporting…. and which wouldn’t cost and arm and a leg for each taxpayer in the country!

Yes, you guessed it ……. A simple slashing of our huge and grossly inappropriate immigration rate!