Shadow Portfolio — 12 May 2026
Tribune’s note
Garth Hamilton used a House debate on 12 May to mount a defence of Inland Rail, framing the Prime Minister's cancellation as a broken promise to his Toowoomba-area electorate. He anchored the attack in decades of bipartisan project history and substantial sunk regional investment — including the $1.2 billion Second Range Crossing and over $50 million in private funding at InterLinkSQ — to argue the cancellation is both economically reckless and politically dishonest.
His core claim is that the PM personally committed to deliver the project and has since reneged without adequate community consultation.
Primary records (1)
The official records this note draws on — the raw primary documents themselves, as published.