Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I can assure the honourable member for Hinkler that I am aware of reports of considerable constraints in the handling capabilities which are limiting Australia’s capacity to export coal around the world. In fact, the Prime Minister mentioned earlier in question time that the April balance of trade figures have just been released and they reflect a very significant improvement. We are very pleased that there has been this substantial reduction in our trade deficit for the month of April. But, in spite of the general improvement, there was one commodity where there was yet another decline—that is, the export of coal. It is shameful that a this time when the world is crying out for our coal reserves, when prices are high and when there are enormous opportunities around the world that our coal exports actually fell by three per cent last month. The reason for this fall was the constraints within the delivery system at the ports, but particularly on the rail lines.

The Australian, in an editorial, drew attention to this problem early in the week when it made it clear that the problem is that the state owned railways, which are supposed to deliver the cargo, are not up to it. Just five months into the year it already appears that the volume of coal shipped by Queensland Rail in 2007 will be 15 per cent less than the figure decided last November, at a time when we are wanting to export more coal. The following day, the Australian identified one of the problems when it pointed to the hundreds of wagons previously used to export coal that are lying idle around Queensland. It published a photograph of 200 wagons which are lying on a branch line near Murgon in my own electorate. I can vouch for the fact that those wagons are there. But what the Australian did not actually say was that these wagons are actually located on an abandoned branch line which has not taken a train for probably a decade. Its only link to the main rail system is another branch line that has been mothballed by the Queensland government. It carries no trains at all. So here we have hundreds of coal wagons that could potentially be used to ship coal, which would cost perhaps $1 billion to replace, lying—

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