Opinion Articles

What does the rail lease actually require?

This is yet another instalment in my running theme: the State rail debacle. A saga of privatisation, monopoly infrastructure, and governments that appear to have misplaced both the keys and the contract. Twenty-five years after Western Australia leased out its freight rail network, one basic question still has no straight answer: what does the Brookfield/Arc lease actually require? Who is responsible for maintaining and upgrading WA’s freight rail network, and how on earth do we force the

Trevor Whittington February 19, 2026

Opinion Articles

State’s long rail tale of woe

WA has a long and bipartisan talent for pretending it is in charge when it plainly is not. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the 5500km of the old Westrail network — an asset sold at the turn of the century and then quietly abandoned by every government since. This is not a story about ideology. It is not even a story about privatisation. It is a story about a State that sold a

Trevor Whittington February 13, 2026

Opinion Articles

We can’t have a debate on rail without understanding the cost–benefit

Western Australia’s grain freight debate has become oddly unhinged. We talk endlessly about road damage, truck numbers, safety, emissions and who should pay. Rail tragics insist that reopening Tier 3 lines will solve all our problems. Road realists respond that we should simply widen and upgrade roads to allow triples. Yet the one thing farmers and road users actually need to have a rational debate about is largely absent: a clear, public, apples-to-apples understanding of what it

Trevor Whittington February 12, 2026

Opinion Articles

Time for action: WA’s rail Buy-Back promise cannot wait

When the State Government committed during the last election to “investigate and progress the potential buy-back of the below-rail freight lease”—to restore public control of freight rail, improve supply chain efficiency and support agriculture and resources—many across agriculture, transport and regional Western Australia hoped it marked a long-overdue recognition that the old Westrail network had become the poor cousin of the lavishly funded metropolitan rail system. It was, at least implicitly, an admission that something

Trevor Whittington January 8, 2026