Why do you think Albanese's opinion is important?
The release suggests a 40 year program but the likely scenario is that Albanese will not be in a position to influence transport projects after September 2013 and may not even be in Parliament after that date. I doubt he has a 40 week political career ahead of him, not 40 years!
However your are rather short sighted in your rejection of the proposal. High speed rail is also used for freight, Australian railways move one billion tonnes of freight each year, 95% of which is Australia's mineral and agricultural produce.
The remaining 5% represents around 3% of Australia's total general and mixed cargo movement, 97% of which is moved by expensive and polluting road trains, which clog our inadequate and antiquated highway system.
A decent, modern, high speed rail system can't come soon enough.
This project has been aired for the last few weeks. The last proposal I heard was that Government provide the track infrastructure and private enterprise provide the rolling stock, operations, sales, marketing and administration infrastructure - which makes a lot of sense!!!
I assume you feel a high speed rain network will impact upon airline viability, hence your post in a professional pilot forum? As there are geographical and economic limits to where high speed rail networks can be built, I think you will find high speed rail networks in Asia and Europe may adversely affect airline traffic over limited, specific short haul routes, but have little or no impact on total airline traffic.
We'll see if there is any other news on this proposal, other wise the thread may be moved to our other forum for open debate.