New Melbourne-Sydney fast rail pitch to Malcolm Turnbull

 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's proposal to use "value capture" to kickstart the decades-old dream of building a high-speed rail line along Australia's eastern coast has been welcomed with the middling warmth of a mid-  April morning breeze.
Labor's transport spokesman Anthony Albanese backed the concept, while pointing out that it had released the definitive, $20 million study into a Melbourne-to-Brisbane link exactly three years ago. 
The Greens' transport spokeswoman, Janet Rice, also cheered the idea, but said that it was the minor party who first pushed Labor into committing to the feasibility study six years ago.
And transport infrastructure expert Chris Hale warned politicians not to get carried away with how much revenue value capture mechanisms would contribute to the project's overall cost, arguing 10 per cent would be a win.
The rail link's cost was estimated in the 2013 feasibility study at $114 billion, which is more than twice the cost of building the NBN.
On Monday the Coalition revealed plans to use value capture to lure private investors to pay for high-speed rail in sections, potentially beginning with links between Sydney and Goulburn, and Melbourne and Shepparton.   
Value capture involves using rising land values spurred by new infrastructure to help fund the work. It was used in the form of a levy on city landowners to help pay for Melbourne's underground rail loop.
Dr Hale, a transport consultant, said value capture could only ever cover a fraction of a project as large as east coast high-speed rail, leaving governments to pick up most of the tab.
"Your benchmark would be, if you're getting 10 per cent you're doing very well," he said. "If we're talking from Melbourne to Sydney at $45 billion to $50 billion, $5 billion worth of value capture would be fantastic."
John Alexander, Liberal MP and Chair of the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities, said a bullet train from Melbourne to Shepparton, or Sydney to Goulburn, would have extraordinary benefits for those centres by placing them within a half-hour commute of a capital city.
"You are going to have housing prices in those two regions competing with the Melbourne and Sydney housing prices," he said.
Meanwhile, the newly-connected regional growth centres would act as a "pressure release valve" on property prices in Sydney and Melbourne. Under conservative estimates, 50,000 people could move into towns along the rail line each year, Mr Alexander said.
The federal member for Bennelong said it was possible the "value capture" from development created by the regional routes could fund the entire bullet train project. "You might be able to have your cake and eat it too," he said.
The median house price in Shepparton is $286,000. Homes in the Goulburn Mulwaree region fetch about $345,000.
Domain Group chief economist Andrew Wilson questioned whether Shepparton and Goulburn were the best places to build fast rail. He said regional centres with strong local economies, such as Albury/Wodonga, Bendigo and Newcastle would be more ideally suited to reap the benefits of a bullet train.
"I'm not sure why Shepparton has been mentioned as a prospect because it is more or less an agricultural, regional area," Mr Wilson said.
"Shepparton has had its issue with the cannery - and it has really been a bit of a sideways economy."
Suzanna Sheed, the independent state MP for Shepparton, said the town's location along the proposed rail corridor "might be our ace in terms of attracting development".
"We could soak up a good proportion of population growth, provided we get the funding we need to do it," Ms Sheed said.
With Michael Koziol