IN the mid-‘80s, I was producing the flagship morning radio program in Adelaide for the late Vincent Smith.

In my first week with Vincent, I can remember organising an interview with Dr Paul Wilde, the then-chairman of the CSIRO, to talk about the amazing Very Fast Train project and how it was going to revolutionise transport on the eastern seaboard. It was to cost $2.5 billion and Paul promised that by the year 2000 we’d be riding the VFT between Sydney and Melbourne, along a coastal route.

Studies were done. Estimates were made and, in the end, it was concluded that the VFT was far too expensive. It was shelved.

Dr Wilde emerged again in 1986 as part of a group proposing a new train route. This time it would go inland from Sydney to Melbourne, including a stop in Canberra and, they added, a Sydney-to-Brisbane leg.

Feasibility studies were done and governments were lobbied. By the early ‘90s the Hawke Government had rejected the call for massive tax subsidies and the project folded.

Then some years later, Prime Minister John Howard announced the impending arrival of the high-speed rail age in Australia. There was talk of 15,000 jobs and plans for a line that left Sydney through Campbelltown and headed to Canberra via Goulburn in 81 minutes. There was even an announcement about who was going to build it. A joint venture between Altsom and Leighton Holdings would build the thing at a cost of $3.5 billion.

This time, high-speed rail was really going to happen.

Somehow it didn’t.

You’d think we’d wasted enough hot air and money on high-speed rail pie in the sky by then, but clearly we hadn’t. A bunch of consultants lined their pockets in 2001 putting together another report. This one cost $2.3 million to prepare and it concluded that the project was too big for government to contemplate.

Then when Kevin Rudd came to power as Prime Minister, along with declaring that climate change was the biggest moral challenge of our time, he also announced that high-speed rail was his Government’s “highest infrastructure priority”.

Five years on, please excuse my lack of enthusiasm at Minister Albanese’s latest announcement of another plan, more studies and more proposed routes.

Mentioning bookmakers in these parts has become politically incorrect, but can I say that if you have to put money on which comes first, high-speed rail or Raiders’ back-to-back NRL premierships, put your money on the green machine. They’re a much better bet than a very fast train.

Mark Parton is the breakfast announcer with 2CC.