94-year-old entrepreneur Everald Compton still lobbying for Inland Rail project

Everald Compton refuses to give up on the Inland Rail.

At 94, the Queensland entrepreneur is still lobbying Canberra, this time with a private consortium he believes can rescue the project he brought to life nearly three decades ago.

Without intervention, he believes it will die, but he also remembers the day it began, as a national promise.

It was June 1998 and Mr Compton stood alongside his friend, prime minister John Howard, pitching what was, even then, an ambitious inland freight project.

Backed by a coalition of rural mayors, the original proposal imagined a single corridor carrying double-stacked, kilometre-long freight trains between Melbourne and Darwin.

"We designed it to pick up freight, not to pick up votes," Mr Compton said at the time, as questions swirled about the project's route and timing.

The proposed line — etched boldly in blue across an atlas map — would run through several seats where the Coalition faced mounting pressure from Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

Pressed by the gallery on the project’s chances of materialising, Mr Compton didn't hesitate: it would be built, he said, and the celebration would be with "a bottle of Grange".

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Nearly 30 years on, that bottle is still unopened, and Mr Compton's confidence in any government to complete the task has all but evaporated.

"It has been a disgraceful exhibition of wasted money," he told 7.30.

Cost blowouts and bad budget news

Politics shaped the Inland Rail long before the first sleeper was laid.

"I was dealing with five governments between Melbourne and the Northern Territory, councils all along the route, and public servants warring with each other," Mr Compton said.

The route was formally set in 2010, but it differed from Mr Compton's original vision. Instead of running to Darwin, the Inland Rail would be built from south to north, linking Melbourne to Brisbane.

The first official business case, released in 2015, put the cost at $9.9 billion.

By 2020, that figure had climbed to $16.4 billion.

Within two years of that, internal estimates pushed it beyond $30 billion.

Then, days before this year's federal budget, another internal review raised the projected cost to $45 billion, and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King called for construction to be paused north of Parkes.

Considering the project has haemorrhaged public money since its inception, Mr Compton conceded it was necessary 'to stop the bleeding.'

"But then they then didn't announce anything to fix up what the bleeding had caused," he said.

Ms King told 7.30 it was a tough decision to make.

"It wasn't a decision that I've enjoyed taking either, to be honest,"

"I want to build things. I'm an infrastructure minister, but I have to do them responsibly.

Ms King told 7.30 the $45 billion figure was produced by the project's delivery body, Inland Rail Pty Ltd.

"We've had Inland Rail go through line by line, figure by figure, kilometre by kilometre to look at the cost, and we've had independent actuarial assurance done," she said.

"If anyone's saying that we've somehow made these figures up, I'm really concerned about that. I think that shows a lack of understanding about this project and a lack of understanding about how budgets work."

But that is exactly what One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has claimed.

During his tenure as Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, Mr Joyce became the project's chief political advocate.

He remains a vocal supporter and told 7.30 he doubts the figures.

"But they can't actually clarify exactly where the blowout is beyond this stupendous number."

Ms King defended her office's decision to withhold information from the report because of "commercial in confidence," telling 7.30 "we are working with Inland Rail and my department at the moment to look at what else we can release".

"It contains a huge amount of data ... including existing contracts."

Politicians play blame game

Ms King was also quick to raise a 2023 review commissioned by the Albanese government and led by infrastructure expert Dr Kerry Schott, which concluded that Coalition ministers had not met their obligations to ensure the project was being properly managed.

"How do you start a project without any planning, approvals, any idea of the route and have no idea how much it's going to cost?" Ms King queried.

"This project will be used by project managers, by courses in years to come as how not to do infrastructure."

Mr Joyce rejects that claim.

"I watched it very closely and I used to try and push them. I said, 'start laying steel, get into it',"

Mr Joyce said he was never made aware of serious concerns by anyone at the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), Inland Rail or other stakeholders.

"I was never ever aware of a substantive concern," he told 7.30.

"The concerns that would come to me were parochial — people wanting it, not people opposing it."

Mr Compton is frustrated by the noise but says there is no point wasting time "kicking the hell out of these politicians".

"Politics always gets in the way, and politics is primarily about power," he told 7.30.

"But we've got to get politicians to stop being power grabbers and becoming nation builders."

A homestead cut in half

For people along the route, from farmers to investors, the project, and their lives, remain in limbo.

Minister King has confirmed that, although funding has been withdrawn for the northernmost sections of Inland Rail, the ARTC will continue to preserve the corridor across the NSW-Queensland border, through the outback and towards Brisbane.

That means the years of uncertainty around land acquisition will continue.

At Narromine, Katie Cox and her fourth-generation farmer husband feel stuck in planning purgatory.

"People already say farming's the biggest gamble," she told 7.30.

A revolving door of Inland Rail staff has worked through successive versions of the plan with the growing family. The latest would see a double-stacked freight train run less than 200 metres from their homestead.

Ms Cox says it would effectively cut the farm in half, but it's the uncertainty that has caused the greatest strain.

She says her family can't plan, can't invest in new infrastructure, and can't risk spending money on anything that may later be moved or demolished.

"We just want to know what's happening, if the train's coming, when it's coming, and the mixed messages and changing timeframes are really hard," Ms Cox said.

'Second-class citizens'

Further south Parkes Mayor Neil Westcott told 7.30 the government announcement was like "having an arm chopped off".

The rural town is already a major regional freight hub, with a growing intermodal precinct sitting at the crossroads of Inland Rail and a major highway.

That the federal government committed an extra $3.8 billion to Victoria's Suburban Rail Loop days after halting construction north of Parkes hurt.

"Parkes will still be fine — we're blessed with a great spot on the map, we already have a lot of major players in our transport hub — but it will limit development," Mayor Westcott said.

"Are we really going to be treated as second-class citizens in the bush?

"Saying, 'no, we can't afford to finish a project that is already underway', stops most regional people in their tracks to think, 'what do we really mean to you?."

Barnaby Joyce told 7.30 One Nation will "100 per cent" back the continuation of Inland Rail, if the party finds itself in a position of power, within a Coalition.

"One Nation will get themselves to a position where you won't govern without the numbers of One Nation,"

"And you are not going to govern unless you support Inland Rail."

The Nationals have gone one step further with new leader Matt Canavan launching a petition to revive the project.

Mr Compton is sceptical of that.

"Matt's not in power," Mr Compton told 7.30.

"And at this rate, it'll be two more terms before he gets a go, and I'll be 100 by then.

"Australia can't wait that long to have this done."

That statement is why Mr Compton says he has decided to broaden his current private proposal, extending the line he had been pursuing between Gladstone and Goondiwindi, to include the unfinished corridor down to Parkes.

He argues it could be built faster and cheaper with less political interference.

"All I want is governments to get out of the road but give us permission that they won't interfere, they won't pull the plug on us," he told 7.30.

Minister King told 7.30 she "highly respects" Mr Compton and will consider all "unsolicited proposals".

He said he believes his proposal could see the Inland Rail running by the end of 2032.