Opening thoughts
Australia is a big country. If it weren’t an island continent, it would be the world’s largest island. But it’s also one of the most sparsely populated places in the world with half of Australia’s 28 million people concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, with 5 million in each city, and 4 million in South East Queensland, from where I recently returned. Nearly 90 per cent of the population lives within 50 kilometres of the coast, meaning that the vast interior is very, very empty.
But unlike Aotearoa/ New Zealand, Australia does not think small. Its ambitions are as a middle power and it exercises significant influence in the Pacific and South East Asia. Its vast mineral resources gives it leverage that a food-rich but resource poor country like Aotearoa/ New Zealand cannot match. But as a think big country, it can envisage and deliver projects of huge scope and ambition. Large scale public transport investments like Metronet in Perth; Sydney Metro; Melbourne’s Level Crossing Removal Program and The Wave rail and busway project on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast come to mind. But in thinking big, Australia often misses getting the smaller details right and the legacy of car-oriented planning is plain to see in the giant high-speed stroads that pepper the suburban landscape of Australia’s largest cities.
Politics and politically-driven investments are also plain to see. State and federal elections are won or lost in the mortgage belt in the outer metropolitan areas of state capital cities and this is where transport investments are often concentrated. Areas that vote solidly for one or other party are often given short shrift. A case in point is Western Sydney, Western Melbourne and Ipswich and Logan in Brisbane. These more deprived areas only get significant investment when formerly safe seats suddenly become contestable. Mixed Member Proportional in Aotearoa has largely done away with the perceived political payoff from such pork barrelling as the overall nation-wide party vote determines the electoral outcome, not small but significant swings in a small but significant number of outer metropolitan marginal seats.
So how does this all play out in South East Queensland?
My last two and a half years in South East Queensland have seen these same issues playing out in microcosm. The state has slightly more people than Aotearoa/ New Zealand (5.7 million in Queensland versus nearly 5.4 million in Aotearoa/ New Zealand) but Queensland is 6.5 times the size of Aotearoa/ New Zealand.
On the positive side, around 40 per cent of the state’s transport budget for the current four-year period is going to rail investment in South East Queensland. This will contribute to delivering some big ticket rail improvements in the lead-up to Queensland hosting the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games such as:
Cross River Rail: A new 10.2 kilometre line through Brisbane City Centre, including 5.9 kilometres of twin tunnels with four new underground stations. This will increase rail capacity through the city centre from four to six tracks and vastly improve rail access to the southern part of Brisbane City Centre.
Logan and Gold Coast Faster Rail: Quadruplication of a 20-kilometre section of the Gold Coast Line in Logan between Kuraby and Beenleigh, including upgrading nine stations and grade separation of road/ rail crossings.
Sunshine Coast - The Wave Rail and Metro: This project extends the current Sunshine Coast rail line by around 27 kilometres between Beerwah in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland and Birtinya on the coastal Sunshine Coast with intermediate stations at Aura, Caloundra and Aroona. It is complemented by a Metro-style (as in Brisbane Metro style) bus rapid transit route served by articulated battery electric buses from Birtinya to Sunshine Coast Airport via Maroochydore City Centre.
Gold Coast Light Rail extension: The 6.7 kilometre Gold Coast Light Rail extension south of the existing tram network between Broadbeach South and Burleigh Heads opened to the public on Sunday 9 August 2026.
The patronage paradox
While the scale of rail infrastructure investment is impressive, what is less impressive is the lack of investment in public transport service improvements as opposed to infrastructure investments. In the past two and a half years, the on-the-ground public transport service improvements have been:
Roll out of the early stages of the $A69 million bus service improvement programme in Logan and Ipswich in outer metropolitan Brisbane. This was funded by the previous Labour government partly, I suspect, to shore up political support in traditional Labour voting areas. Service improvements include weekend service to Beaudesert in the Scenic Rim region, Sunday and public holiday service to significant growth areas in Flagstone and Yarrabilba, and a new service between Ipswich and Springfield.
The final stage of the $16.4 million Northern Gold Coast bus improvements programme, co-funded by the state government and Gold Coast City Council.
Introduction of Sunday and public holiday train service on the Doomben Line in Brisbane, the only line not to have every day service up to this point.
The roll-out of Brisbane Metro, bi-articulated battery electric buses on two key very high frequency busway routes (M1 - Eight Mile Plains to Roma Street and M2 - University of Queensland to Royal Brisbane and Hospital).
The accompanying “evolution” of the southside bus network in Brisbane in support of the Brisbane metro project, implemented on 30 June 2025.
A Townsville Airport to city centre bus route implemented on 29 June 2026 along with a similar Cairns Airport to city centre bus route to be implemented on 23 November 2026.
It’s worth bearing in mind that these improvements cover a state with a slightly larger population than Aotearoa/ New Zealand. But the paradox is as follows: In spite of lacklustre investment in new or improved public transport services, patronage has grown steeply, driven by the introduction, now enshrined and embedded in Queensland law, of 50 cent flat public transport fares for all urban public transport in Queensland.
The South East Queensland public transport patronage figures speak for themselves:
2022/2023 financial year patronage - 153.25 million
2023/2024 financial year patronage - 170.54 million (+11.2% on 2022/2023)
2024/2025 financial year patronage - 192.88 million (+25.9% on 2022/2023)
2025/2026 financial year patronage has yet to be published but trends indicate a similar increase in patronage as in the previous financial year.
The 25 per cent increase in patronage in two years puts South East Queensland well ahead of pre-pandemic patronage while many cities and regions are still well below pre-pandemic patronage levels. While of course no service, no matter how cheap, will be used if it’s not useful, it’s telling that price sensitivity shown here, notably while cost of living is a top of mind issue in Australia, has had a significant impact on patronage. This has been accompanied by a perception shift caused by the Brisbane Metro project which has been equally successful at building patronage, even though it in effect only replaced two bus routes run by articulated diesel buses with two identical routes run by bi-articulated battery electric buses. Sometime perception does become reality.
Final thoughts
Australia is laudable for its ability to think, act and deliver big. Mostly on projects that have merit in their own right, but not always. But public transport service investment is funded out of the same pot as the rest of state government investment whereas in Aotearoa/ New Zealand, revenue in the National Land Transport Fund has to be spent on land transport. This so-called “hypothecation” of transport funding gives more public transport opex funding certainty than is the case in Australia.
The other striking observation from Australia is just how politicised - for good and bad - transport investment is in Australia. This politicisation has led to big projects for good - such as Victoria’s regional rail revival and Melbourne metropolitan level crossing removal projects, Sydney Metro, Perth’s Metronet rail projects and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail - while other large projects are possibly lacking in a similar level of merit.
This politicisation, along with Australia’s electoral geography and preferential voting system gives possibly undue weight to relatively small numbers of swing voters in marginal seats, often in the outer metropolitan areas of Australian state capital cities. And gives an undue lack of weight to relatively large numbers of non-swing voters in the poorer parts of Australian state capital cities. Unless of course, their votes are at risk in a state, territory or federal election.
For all of its bugs and flaws, the regionally-led approach in Aotearoa/ New Zealand does a good job at the regional level and is relatively transparent when compared to Australia, with decisions here generally being taken by democratically elected bodies in public and subject to media, stakeholder and public scrutiny. Where we fall down is in the inter-regional and national public transport planning space. While we have a national state highway network fully funded nationally as a single, integrated network, we are far from having anything parallel at a national level for public transport.
Thanks for sharing these reflections, Darren. You will be missed here in the "West Island"... All the best back in Aotearoa!
Hi Darren -- There's an impressive video of the hill-climbing abilities of those Brisbane Metro Hess lighTrams under full load on Mount Coot-Tha. I'm trying to get people interested in this for Queenstown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Labogrixx4 .