The Melbourne to Darwin Asian
Express proposal, which Prof.
Endersbee later expanded into the
Ring Rail to go around the top end
of the continent and terminate in
Perth, is a beautiful idea, which
would transform Australia’s relations
to Asia.
Australia’s present transport system
is a huge constraining factor on
the nation’s export capabilities, as
Prof. Endersbee explained to the
CEC National Conference on November
23, 1997,
“Our present system of shipping
involves what are still effectively
tramp steamers, that go through several
ports.… If you have a look at
the time tables of all the ships that
come to Australia, you find that
when a ship comes to Australia, they
visit three or four ports in our waters
and effectively, most shipping in
Australia, circumnavigates the continent.
This system would cut right
through this, with a total new transport
system. It is not just a railway
line. It’s a new transport system.
Because of the fact that these ships
have to call at several ports in Australia,
the sort of ships that serve
Australia also call at several ports
around in the South West Pacific/
East Asia area. So they have a schedule
of about six weeks, a turnaround
time of about six weeks. So, for shippers
shipping from Australia, it usually
is a month plus, to get to anywhere
in Asia.”
With the Asian Express, however,
three trains a day could be running
between Melbourne and Darwin, and then, with high speed ferries,
products could be in key Asian ports
in another day or two. Said Prof.
Endersbee, “The distance from Darwin
to Singapore is the same distance
as the length of the Mediterranean.
The sea state is mostly fairly
flat. In other words it is calm seas
most of the time, so that means we
can contemplate fast ferries servicing these areas, and so we can have
daily ferry services from Darwin to
Java, Darwin to Singapore, and so
on.” And these Asian ports are huge:
Hong Kong and Singapore are close
to tied for the world’s largest, while
the third largest port in the world is
Kaohsiung in Taiwan, with four
ports on the north coast of Java
which handle as many containers combined as Europe’s greatest port,
Rotterdam.
The Asian Express should obviously
be built immediately. But, explained,
Prof. Endersbee,
“In proposing this project over
the past five years, I have been totally
opposed by every government
in Australia, federal and state…. And
nobody is really interested in my analysis of the economies of the
project, all the detail I have done in
terms of professional work. I have
done at least five years solid professional
work on this, and prior to that
I was working in Southeast Asia, and
I have been looking at these economies
in Southeast Asia for the last
30 years, and so I had an awful lot
of background behind me and what I was proposing was rational
and proper for Australia, and, as
you can see, the political system
was not equal to it.”
There were several reasons for
this: first, it was a national project,
and the nation’s rail and port systems
are all state-based, so no state would sign on to a national project
which might “divert” anything
away from its own collapsing state
rail systems and ports; and second,
more importantly, because the federal
government has been on a mad
privatisation, user-pays binge with
the rail system, like everything else.
While refusing to back the revolutionary
Asian Express, Prime
Minister Howard has lent federal
backing, and funds, to a privately-
funded $10 billion rail scheme
from Melbourne to Darwin, the
Australian Transport and Energy
Corridor (ATEC), headed up by former Liberal party fundraiser
and Howard friend Everell Compton.
Aside from the fact that ATEC
will mostly run along existing
routes, which thus negates the essential
point of the Asian Express,
its high-speed aspect, and the fact
that federal government backing for such a project was effectively let
without a tender, under coming depression
conditions, the privately-funded
ATEC will never be built in
the first place.
Continue onto Development Corridors
