“It doesn’t take a Harvard educated lawyer to figure out what’s going on here.

The state of current services suggests Aurizon has no interest in delivering regional freight services beyond the expiry date of their existing contract in December.

The Palaszczuk Labor Government is scrambling to find a viable contractor to take over the Regional Freight Transport Services Contract from January 2018.

The crux of the matter is, Labor’s sale of Queensland Rail forced a monopoly in the commercial market. Aurizon is the only company with the means to deliver regional freight services to Western Queensland.

That is the real reason Jackie Trad is stalling on this issue.

The Deputy Premier needs to come clean.

The Palaszczuk Labor Government tells us they are currently reviewing contract options beyond December 2017.

What they should be doing is engaging with Western Queensland business owners.

These people are the ones routinely affected by Aurizon’s unreliable and unsatisfactory services and they need to have skin in the game.

Jackie Trad should accept that the current contract arrangements aren’t working and start looking at other options.

What’s stopping the Palaszczuk Government from purchasing trains and wagons and leasing them to a boutique operator who is invested in providing high quality and reliable freight services to Western Queensland?

These are the kinds of options Labor should be pitching to the community. Instead, the silence from Brisbane is deafening.

The people of Western Queensland are sick to death of the Palaszczuk Labor Government dragging their feet on this issue.

The time for talking and reviewing is over. We’re all getting grey and old waiting for this government to make a decision.

It’s time for the Deputy Premier to act.”