It makes so much sense to build a HSR at least on the East coast. It will happen eventually.
Sydney is surrounded by mountains, rivers, water catchments, national parks and ocean. There is a limit to how many people can live there. Once it gets to 10 million or so Sydney is full. The only thing left then is to use high speed rail to allow development outside the Sydney basin. Places like Goulburn, Newcastle, Albury would be boom towns before too long.
Air travel will become more and more expensive as oil prices rise and people will need cheaper alternatives. HSR is it.

The biggest problems I see are vested interests. As usual.
The airlines dont want it. The existing railways dont want it. The greenies dont want it to go through bushland. The farmers dont want it to go through farmland. No one wants to live next to it. Everyone will want it to go to their town. And no one wants to pay.

Bazz I think a modern coal fired steam engine, using powdered coal, as in modern power plants, using all the developments in extending the life of steam generation systems, rather than old fashioned boilers could be quite long lived.

Even if they need a bit more maintenance than electric, the low capital costs of the whole system would be a major winner in a near bankrupt economy.

Then we will have all those now useless factory workers. Most of them are never going to be tourism/hospitality people, but most of them could be trained to service & maintain steam trains, & we are sure going to be short of jobs.

Then again, how stupid to carry coal to a powerhouse to generate electricity, or use imported diesel, to haul our coal to the ports. I can see modern computer controlled powered coal injection fed steam becoming very competitive, if we could just sit on the Greenies long enough to get it going.

I was just taking the piss with my earlier post, but thinking about it, there is no better choice, if petroleum does get short.

Mikk what we have to do is stop relating to Sydney & Melbourne as if they have to be the center of everything. We no longer have to base our choice of living sight on a suitable port for hundreds of sailing ships.

The geographical accident that made these ports the center of industry just no longer applies. There is no reason for someone living in Goulburn, Newcastle or Albury to ever have to travel to Sydney, & certainly no reason to have to work there.

When so many people's place of work is at a computer terminal, it can be in Albury, or even Timbuktu for that matter. With people doing an increasing amount of their shopping via the net, the need for transport will diminish dramatically over time, making anything but freight services mostly redundant.

Then all we would need would be a bounty on those pesky bike riders.

For some of the possibilities of steam,
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Chapelon

Andre Chapelon's best locomotovies were the equals, or bettered, contemporary diesel electrics and demonstrably better than the electrics.

"Everyone will want to go to their town....." very true but the Super Fast trains will not stop at their towns as stopping is uneconomical.
In days of yore the "All Stations" train was a very slow mode of transport but not if one wanted to go to the next town, 10 to 15 miles away.

I couldn’t disagree more, Vision for Australia.

How many billions would a high-speed train line cost, just from Sydney to Canberra, let alone to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth?

Wouldn’t that money be much better spent on health, education and other basic quality-of life things?

How would a high-speed train help those who don’t live in or near the big cities?

How many people in the big cities would it actually help to any significant extent?

Sorry, but it is just totally the wrong sort of thing for us to be thinking about if we are to develop a real meaningful vision for this country.

Mikk, as I said earlier, we have missed train, it is too late.
The money will simply not be there.
The world's economy is winding down. The end of growth is already here.
As far as population is concerned, I think the very difficult economic
conditions between now and getting our sustainable economy working
will see a slow down in population growth or perhaps a reduction.

What we have to do now is ensure food production and distribution and
in ensuring that we will lay the foundations for a sustainable economy.
We need, if we can, stretch out our use of coal and natural gas.
Our exporting of coal and gas will be cursed at some time in the future.
We need them here to enable whatever is our long and difficult change
to whatever permanent energy regime we adopt for the rest of this century.

Hasbeen, we can build coal fired power stations on the coal fields
as is the case with some already.
In the longer term, oil will not be short but expensive.
Despite what many believe the major oil companies are having a hard
time with their fundamentals, they have increased their capital
expenditure dramatically but their oil production is still falling.
The increased capex has had no effect.
I have a graph here I wish could be put up so you can see it.
It is the third graph down.

http://blogs.platts.com/2014/07/30/peak-oil-forecasts

Think about the implications of that graph and then contemplate Shell
is now selling up its holdings in Woodside's NW business.
Shell and others are selling assets so as to pay dividends.
Now Hasbeen you have been in business, doesn't that make you think ?