On Wednesday 26 August 2026 I introduced the Brisbane Airport Rail Link (Airtrain) Buy Back Amendment Bill 2026 to Queensland Parliament.
You can read my full introductory speech below, or in the official parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard).
I present a bill for an act to amend the Transport Operations (Passenger Transport) Act 1994 for particular purposes. I table the bill, the explanatory notes and a statement of compatibility with human rights. I nominate the State Development, Infrastructure and Works Committee to consider the bill.
Tabled paper: Brisbane Airport Rail Link (Airtrain) Buy Back Amendment Bill 2026.
Tabled paper: Brisbane Airport Rail Link (Airtrain) Buy Back Amendment Bill 2026, explanatory notes.
Tabled paper: Brisbane Airport Rail Link (Airtrain) Buy Back Amendment Bill 2026, statement of compatibility with human rights.
Mr SPEAKER: I encourage those leaving the chamber to please do so quietly. Take your conversations outside. Show a bit of courtesy.
Mr BERKMAN: Today I am introducing a bill that requires the government to finally ditch the terrible Airtrain deal and bring it into public hands. For as long as I can remember, the major parties have tried to pitch privatisation as a good deal for us. It is presented as though it is some kind of economic common sense, built on claims that getting the government out of the way, fostering competition and freeing up the market will somehow innately deliver more benefits for consumers. When has that ever really been true? Look at Qantas, Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, toll roads and power companies; it is always the corporations who benefit, not us.
Here in Brisbane we have another really clear example: the Airtrain. It has been an absolute rort from the start and it is albatross around our necks as we limp towards the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. This might actually be the easiest case of infrastructure privatisation to reverse, precisely as this bill lays out. To look at the history of this deed, the Brisbane Airport rail link deed as it is called in the bill, we have to go back to the mid-nineties when former Labor premier Wayne Goss commenced a process of inviting private tenders for this piece of infrastructure. Then in 1998 the Liberal-National coalition government under Rob Borbidge negotiated and signed the Airtrain build, own, operate and transfer deal.
It has been run by British pension fund USS Axle since that company acquired Airtrain in 2013 for $110 million. The overall deal is, of course, a secret. We are not allowed to know the finer details of it because of the veil of commercial confidentiality that blocks so much visibility of our government’s dealings. What we do know is that it provides for a private corporation to build the Airtrain link and own and operate it for 35 years—that is, from 2001 through to 2036.
The deal provides exclusive rights for the holder of that deed to provide scheduled public transport services to the airport. We know that deal also provides for Airtrain to set and keep the fares for that service, even though they are subcontracting their operations almost entirely to QR, as we understand it. As a result of that deal, we have this absolutely shoddy and overpriced service.
Just how bad is it though? Fares for a one-way trip can cost up to $23.80. When we compare that to the rest of the Translink network it is almost 50 times the standard 50-cent fare for an equivalent trip on other parts of the network. The trains do not run from the airport after 10.04 pm or before 5 am on weekdays or 6 am on weekends. There is more than a hint of irony in the fact that an airport without a curfew does not run any trains outside of those hours. The trains generally only run every half hour and it is only during peak times that they run every 15 minutes.
To make a comparison, Perth provides 60 per cent more train services to and from their airport than Brisbane at about one-tenth of the price. It is little surprise then that just five per cent of passengers in Brisbane take the Airtrain compared to 20 to 25 per cent in Sydney. Anyone who is left wondering why we often find ourselves sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for 20 minutes just to get to the pick-up and drop-off lane can directly blame that terrible privatised Airtrain deal.
Let us be clear: it is going to be 10 times worse when we get to the Olympics. In the context of the Olympics, I would say to members that we simply cannot wait. This agreement does not expire until 2036. Just in case anyone is unclear on the timelines, we are supposed to be hosting the Olympics four years earlier in 2032. Just imagine the traffic at that point in time. Imagine the embarrassment of being a city with such a lame duck bit of infrastructure to the airport and no alternative services.
There is still time to fix the Airtrain debacle now, but not if the state keeps kowtowing to the corporate owners. If we bought back Airtrain now we could save ourselves another unnecessary decade of rip-offs and poor services. So far it appears Airtrain’s corporate owners have blocked any alternative services to the airport, but buying it would mean we could start improving the network.
Some of the fundamental improvements that I say we could and should make would be to increase the frequency to every 15 minutes all day, with trains starting earlier and finishing later. We want the existing peak frequencies. To be honest, given that the trains are running every 15 minutes—it can already accommodate that frequency—we can only assume that Airtrain are simply too stingy to operate services at higher frequency.
We would suggest that we could build a new station at Skygate for the thousands of workers at Skygate and DFO. We could finally see the long delayed Gold CityGlider funded and extended to the airport, which is not possible now under the exclusive use term. We could ensure any other Metro or bus service that runs to the airport will not rip up the Doomben line.
The corporate foreign owners are simply sitting on Airtrain, it appears, hoping to milk as much out of Queenslanders as possible without actually giving back and without improving the services as they could. This owner has had it for the last 13 years. Over the last decade we know that they took $193 million in fares and paid zero dollars in corporate tax. We know that there have been some attempts, but they have refused, to have them come to the table and negotiate with the government on a fair buyout price. They are clearly trying to squeeze Queenslanders for every cent they can get out of us. On top of that, they are actually suing the Queensland government, as we understand it, over what they claim to be lost revenue because of 50-cent fares, as if them charging us 50 times as much as the 50-cent fares on their section of line is not bad enough.
Some will ask: is it really possible to take on Airtrain’s corporate owners if they are so dogged in their opposition to a fair deal? Is it possible to tell them that enough is enough and to end the contract early? In simple terms, yes, of course it is. It is possible. In 2025-26, the corporate owners own financial statements valued the Airtrain contract at just under $47 million. The value of that intangible asset falls by approximately $5 million a year, with that value due to fall to zero in 2036 when the contract ends and when their exclusive provision of public transport to the airport finishes. This means that the state government could buy back Airtrain for just under $47 million in 2026. Sure, $47 million sounds like a lot for you or me, but it is simply not a lot of money in the context of government spending. I will offer some comparisons to make this clear.
The cost of a single major road upgrade could pay for 50-cent fares on the Airtrain line five times over. In one year alone this current government will spend $200 million on handouts to the racing industry and more than $600 million on propping up old, dirty coal-fired power stations. If the government taxed gas properly by raising the royalties even a modest amount, we could cover the cost of buying this back hundreds of times over.
Can the government really ditch the contract is another question that is asked. Absolutely. There are several options. If we look to Victoria, before the Victorian government reached a settlement deal with the East West Link project in 2015 they were openly considering legislation to extinguish that contract. There is no legal or constitutional reason we cannot pass a law to buy back Airtrain as proposed in this bill.
No doubt some will claim that they are worried about the message it sends to investors or potential investors in Queensland. To those people I would say: what message do you want to send? Do we want Queensland to have a reputation as a state of suckers who are waiting to be shafted by the next snake oil salesman who rocks up? I do not think so. The Greens’ message with this bill is that Queensland is not open for raw deals. I say that the message that we should be sending is: if you come to Queensland wanting to control our public infrastructure, demanding exclusive rights that stymie progress and boost your profits, if you charge Queenslanders through the nose while dodging tax and then try to sue the government to recover even more, you are not welcome here.
In closing, it should not be a wild proposition that public transport should be publicly owned, but we all know that the major parties are completely wedded to this idea of neo-liberalism, addicted to privatisation and terrified of standing up to big corporations. It is up to the Greens to put this on the table. Airtrain’s corporate owners are trying to squeeze us and we in this House have the power to stop them by legislating to end that dodgy contract.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Krause): Member for Maiwar, you have used unparliamentary language in your contribution and I would ask you to withdraw.
Mr BERKMAN: I withdraw.