On Tuesday, 2 June 2026 I called on the government to buy back the Brisbane Airtrain.
You can read my full speech below or in the official Parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard) here.
Deputy Speaker, if you will indulge me, just picture this. You have finally managed to save up for that trip to Cairns. You have booked your flights and the accommodation is all booked for the September school holidays. Now, how are you going to get to the airport? You saved fastidiously so, of course, you do the mental maths. Petrol is expensive and parking is a rort. Surely we will have to take the train, right? For me, that is two adults and three kids. We have 50-cent fares, right? Bargain! No, he has got it all wrong. There are no 50-cent fares on the Airtrain. It will be, in fact, $95.70 one way. It is a weekend and the trains only run every half hour, so we are just going to sit in the traffic. It should surprise no-one here that 95 per cent of people make this exact calculation. Members do not have to rely on me. It is in the Brisbane Airport Corporation's own master plan for the airport. Just five per cent of passengers take the Airtrain. That explains precisely why we are all so used to spending 20 minutes sitting in traffic to get to the pick-up and drop-off zone. Make no mistake: this will be exponentially worse during the Olympics.
Years ago I said that I did not know anyone who catches the Airtrain. It was true then and it is still true now. One of the key reasons for that—the expense—has been even further embedded. These days the Airtrain is almost 50 times the cost of a standard train fare. This is all because it is owned by a private offshore corporation which controls fares to the airport. The reason for that is that the state government signed Queensland up to a shockingly bad deal. Whether it is through privatisation, sale of assets or ever-increasing reliance on PPSs, we have given, in this case, an exclusive deal that gives Airtrain's corporate owners a 35-year monopoly on public transport services to the airport and total control over fares until 2036. Both parties have their fingerprints on this. Labor opened up the tenders and the LNP signed the contract.
There is 10 years left on the contract—10 years of a private offshore company holding our airport train to ransom. Very simply, it is time to buy it back. If they do not want to sell we can force them, by legislation if necessary, because exceptionally bad deals call for exceptional measures. The last thing people need right now in Queensland is more traffic and more fuel costs on top of everything else. I am petitioning the state government to buy back the Airtrain and make the fare 50 cents. Given the vocal support of the entire House for the Greens’ 2017 and 2020 public transport fares plan, I am sure everyone will support it.