Stewart McArthur (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to make a contribution on The great freight task report. In opening my remarks I would like to thank the chair, the member for Hinkler, and other committee members. I commend the chairman for his conscientious attendance at the meetings and an outstanding report. I also thank Mr Tas Luttrell, who was the secretary to the committee. This is a landmark report. It will act as a benchmark for transport in Australia, be it road, rail or sea.

Fundamentally, the initial task of this committee was to investigate the connection between the ports and other modes of transport. However, the committee in its deliberations and its inspections of ports all around Australia developed some other aspects of the report. The evaluation of the road freight task, the rail freight task, the intermodal activity plus the operation of the ports around the eastern seaboard and Western Australia is to be commended in terms of what the committee observed and some of the recommendations.

Obviously the fundamental task facing Australia is the doubling of the freight tonnage by 2020. Everyone in this parliament should be aware that freight movements in Australia in a very short period of time will double so that we will need better roads, better trucks and a better railway system. Of course, the sea trade for exports and imports will need to be improved, as will the operation of our port structure.

In the time available I want to refer to some aspects of the report that I have some interest in. As members would be aware, I have had an interest in the rail systems of Australia, having participated in the Tracking Australia report. I have had an ongoing interest in making sure that the rail task is improved, that railway systems do reach the 21st century and that they make a contribution to the moving of freight, both internally and for export.

I will deal with some of the aspects in the report. Looking at the containers, which are moving in both the export trade and internally, I will deal with some of the observations that there are increasing numbers of containers being used, there is a growing proportion of 40-foot containers replacing the 20-foot size and there is a need to move double stacked containers along rail routes. Those observations cover an enormous number of problems. If you go to the urban areas of Australia, you see different types of containers, but I am delighted that in fact there is a movement to the bigger container, compatible with international trade.

I was part of the inspection of the Port of Melbourne. It is worth noting that the Port of Melbourne is Australia’s biggest container and general cargo port. It handles 39 per cent of Australia’s container trade, amounting to 1.7 million TEUs in 2003-04. Melbourne acts as a natural cargo hub. That is a pretty important feature of the Port of Melbourne. Obviously other ports around Australia do play a very important role. It is worth noting that the committee were briefed on the problem of the channel dredging. We note in the report:

The port management has plans to dredge the channel to 14 metres. This measure is necessary because 30 per cent of the visiting container ships cannot enter or leave the port fully laden.

That fact is of critical importance. As container ships become bigger, obviously the Melbourne port will have less accessibility, so it is fundamentally important for both Victoria and Australia that that dredging operation is completed. I understand the political sensitivities of environmental concerns and the politics of the people who live around Port Phillip Bay, but in the longer term we need to ensure that that dredging is completed and that the Melbourne port continues to play its pre-eminent role in access for containers into Australia.

Some of the issues that the committee looked at with regard to port access included: the channel dredging in Melbourne, as I have mentioned; the removal of curfew restrictions at Port Kembla, which I visited; the rail connection of Web Dock to Melbourne; the review of the capacity of West Gate Bridge; the dock line in Melbourne; the reinstatement of the standard gauge link between Mount Gambier and Portland, which the committee had a good look at; and the overpass at Wellington Road at Portland. There is a great list of other quite significant changes that would add to the efficiency of rail access to ports, particularly on the eastern seaboard.

Looking at the rail network, there is a very good summary in the report on the problems facing rail operators, particularly with regard to access difficulty. I note the problems identified in the report. The committee looked at some of the problems regarding access to Sydney from the south, north and west. Historically, the committee are very aware of that access through both the geography of Sydney and the problem of making access to the port through the metropolitan area. Regarding the line from the Queensland border to Brisbane, again the geography is difficult for that particular proposition. Regarding the southern Sydney freight line, it is very important that we can have a single, special purpose freight line through Sydney rather than it being committed to the domination by the passenger lines in the Sydney orbit. The committee had a good look at the problem of the Hunter Valley coal chain, and I think some good work has been done by ARTC in improving that. That is a pretty good system compared to world standards, but obviously improvements could be undertaken. Regarding missing rail links in the Hunter Valley, some of the crucial parts of the Hunter Valley rail link could be improved. Those of us who have been interested in the issue of the line through or around the Toowoomba ranges know that that is a major impediment for the Brisbane to Melbourne line. Regarding the missing rail links in Queensland coalfields, with massive exports of coal, we need to ensure that in 2007 we can do it efficiently. And there is the rail connectivity in Victoria and across the South Australian border. Some of those issues identified problems that the committee found in the rail area.

I would just like to quote Mr Vince O’Rourke, who is a very well known and very well respected railway man—a former head of Queensland Rail. He put a most interesting proposition to the committee in terms of the Melbourne-Brisbane link. I think his quote is fantastic. It says what the parliament and governments of all political colours should be thinking about in the future:

Regarding the Melbourne to Brisbane railway line proposal … let us build a new railway line, and a decent one. This is a position I was advocating when I was in QR. Why don’t we do something that the rest of the world does? …We see modern freight trains and passenger trains throughout Europe and the great railways of North America. …We will patch up another railway and think we are doing pretty good to get along at 80 kilometres per hour when we should be thinking about freight trains that will travel up to 160 kilometres per hour, which happens in other parts of the world.

We are suggesting that we should build a modern railway between Melbourne and Brisbane on the shortest corridor of about 1,600 to 1,650 kilometres, west of the Great Dividing Range on the flat country with very low gradients, that it should cater for high speed freight trains up to 160 kilometres per hour and double-stack trains travelling at up to 120 kilometres per hour. It should have the capacity for fast tilting trains that would run between Melbourne and Brisbane and probably more importantly that would service the regional areas of southern Queensland and northern Victoria.

In philosophic terms, that encapsulates the thinking of the committee—that we should really try very hard to improve the rail system. We should invest some capital, both private and government money, to look very carefully at that inland route, but more importantly we should have a railway system that works, is modern and can reach those higher speeds.

One of the debates that the committee had was the significance of intermodal terminals, and there has been a lot of debate on this subject amongst transport operators on the seaboard and inland. On intermodal terminals, the report says:

The intermodal sector consists of two subsystems; one servicing import and export (port oriented) movements and the other supporting interstate freight movements. In many ways these operations are independent of each other, but some terminals cater to both port-oriented and domestic movements.

This debate about the operation of intermodal terminals has been going on for some time. There is a strong argument that freight and containers should be moved from the ports to an intermodal terminal and then distributed around the areas of population. It is interesting to note that most of the containers coming into Sydney are distributed in about a 35-kilometre area, so there is a tendency to use road transport. Those other containers are being encouraged to go to intermodal terminals where they can be distributed in an efficient manner.

The debate is ongoing, and various proponents of Parkes, west of Sydney, are suggesting that intermodal operations are the way to go. That debate is yet to be concluded, and it is a matter of logistics and the use of modern technology. In Melbourne, the Somerton intermodal operation is showing great promise in view of its proximity to the port and its proximity to the national standard gauge.

In conclusion, some of us have had a longstanding interest in freight operations. It is not an issue that excites interest in the parliament but, in the long run, the standard of living of Australians will depend very much on the ability of freight to be moved efficiently across this broad continent. The movement of freight from Western Australia to the eastern seaboard is now done about 80 per cent on rail, which is a very big change from what was done historically.

The development of the Australian Rail Track Corporation has been a wonderful step in the right direction. Mr David Marchant, who is the managing director of that operation, has proved the theoretical concepts that rail can operate an efficient track system and that independent operators can move on that track system at a profit. This has been a major change in policy position—that, in Australia, where we have had three different gauges going back to the turn of the century, we now have a standard gauge going from Brisbane to Perth, and this is being improved all the time. So there is great hope that this parliament and state parliaments can move in the right direction to inject some funds into the port and rail facilities. There is also hope from the ongoing injection of funds into the national highway system. There is always great debate on the way in which we inject funds into the road network: is it done on political grounds or is it done on the rational grounds of improving the national freight task?

I commend the report. I have been delighted to participate in these deliberations. I also commend the photograph on the front of the report, which depicts the fundamental argument that some of the freight now moved by road could be placed in the top of a flat-top rail wagon; it shows what could be done at container ports. I hope that the report stands the test of time and that it will be used as a reference work for those who are interested in these important activities of shifting freight through our ports, shifting freight internally and, of course, exporting all those important goods and services that we export around the world. I commend the report.

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