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What this is, in five questions.
What is it?
One elevated corridor across the continent, carrying six things in the same trench: fast passenger rail, electric freight rail, high-voltage electricity, water, gas and fibre. Build the route once and every service shares the cost of it.
That is the whole idea. Everything else on this site follows from it.
Why build it?
Because six national problems have the same cause — a country the size of Europe with no continental network, so almost everything is trucked, flown, or imported.
- Fuel. About 90 per cent of refined fuel is imported, with roughly 30 days held onshore.
- Power prices. Generation is only about a third of a household bill — transmission and distribution are most of the rest, so cheaper generation alone never reaches the customer.
- Renewable power, unbuilt. Australia has the best combined solar and wind resource of any developed economy, and the interior gets around 2,400–2,800 kilowatt-hours per square metre a year against 1,600–1,800 on the coast. What is missing is the transmission to move it, which is the single hardest thing to build — and the corridor carries it in an easement already being cut.
- Nothing to sell but raw material. The country exports coal, gas and ore and buys back the finished product. Power sent through the subsea corridors is an export that never depletes, and every megawatt-hour of it displaces coal or gas burned by a neighbour.
- Housing. Australians are packed into five coastal cities because nowhere else is reachable.
- Water. The north floods every wet season while the south buys desalinated water.
- Industry. Manufacturing has fallen from over 20 per cent of the economy in the 1970s to under 6 per cent.
- Defence. A country that cannot fuel, feed and move itself cannot defend itself.
Who builds it, and who owns it?
Modern Movement Australia — a public builder, owned by the Australian people, in the tradition of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. The corridor and its services stay in Australian hands, and the tolls paid to use them return to the public rather than to foreign infrastructure funds.
What does it cost?
Less than doing nothing. Australia is already committed to roughly $2.7 to $4.4 trillion over twenty years on water, energy, transport and defence, spent separately and connecting nothing. The corridor does the same work on one alignment, and the assets earn afterwards. Funding comes from a mix of Australian and international capital, set out on the Funding page.
Where does it start?
Phase 0 is the Melbourne–Brisbane inland spine, about 2,400 km, built on existing road and rail corridors through Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. It proves the method on the busiest corridor in the country. Phases 1 to 3 then take it across the continent, and seven subsea corridors carry the power and data on into the Asia-Pacific.
A few terms used across this site. MMA — Modern Movement Australia, the public builder. The corridor — the elevated multi-service right of way. Alice Hub — the water and energy storage centre near Alice Springs, at the geographic middle of the country. HVDC — the high-voltage lines that move power efficiently over long distances. Maglev — magnetic levitation trains, about 600 km/h. AUASIA — Australia in Asia, the alternative to AUKUS.
Read the plan in full →