Rail chiefs want to end profusion of safety regulators

Australasian Railway Association (ARA) chairman Don Telford threw his weight behind a call for a national rail safety regulator yesterday at the AusRAIL 2008 conference in Melbourne.

“The recently released National Transport Commission regulatory impact statement for a national rail safety regulator and investigator clearly recommends the move to one national regulator,” Mr Telford said.

While the RIS was non-committal about the national investigator, the industry strongly advocated the establishment of the national rail safety investigator.

“The productivity gains by moving to a national regulator and investigator are immense, Mr Telford said.

"We cannot afford the cost and the inconsistent approach to safety that exists today.”

“I urge all transport ministers to pass this important reform agenda. Australia and the rail Industry need a viable, productive and safe rail industry. This reform is a key plan in enabling us to reach this objective”

However, efforts to harmonise the national rail system were being undermined by state regulators seeking to protect their patch, Australian Rail Track Corporation chief executive David Marchant warned.

Mr Marchant told delegates that differing individual state amendments were being inserted into National Transport Commission deliberations, even as a uniform system was being formulated.

He urged the industry to keep up the pressure for reform and a single safety regulator in the face of state regulators desperate to defend their patches.

"Every one of us need to put forward the best case for a single regulator because we're outnumbered by the number of regulators opposed to us," he said.

"The reality is that there are more regulator people regulating than there are companies being regulated."

Panels of regulators often wasted time on infighting due to a lack of agreement on basic items such as what the standard for the audit should be.

"At the end of that process we are supposed to get one audit report," Mr Marchant said.

"What we end up getting is one audit report and a supplementary audit report from the State of Victoria, which is as big as the original audit report, and then another supplementary audit report from the State of NSW which is even bigger than the Victorian one.

"And the reason is that they use different criteria, even when they do this together."

The same applied to the national model legislation, with variants being proposed by Victoria and NSW and, to a lesser extent, South Australia.