COAG must go full distance with rail safety regulatory reform – Part Two

By Jennifer Perry

To read Part One of the story click here

Sochon explained that the COAG decision suggests that the Rail Safety Regulators Panel, which was originally formed to make the states work more effectively together, and still cannot function as a single regulator should, can somehow now be made to “work better”.
The ARA believes that this idea is also fundamentally flawed. Besides the legislative reasons explained above, Sochon said that “in practice” it is impossible for the Rail Safety Regulators Panel to make the exact same decision applicable across all states. Firstly, because of the different personal approaches of each regulator to the way they regulate and secondly, at the end of the day, each regulator needs to respond to their own jurisdiction, and nothing is going to force them to cooperate to the extent that a single regulator would have the capacity to do.
A single national regulator would operate to the same piece of legislation around the country, and has the opportunity to match the best staff to the right area of expertise without artificial state boundary limitations. As a result more efficient and effective regulation can be delivered than any kind of collaborative venture by regulators each responding to their own jurisdictions.
“COAG’s decision allows for the possibility that each state would still have their own regulator and somehow the panel is going to fix everything, it’s not realistic. Industry and regulators know this, ATC knows this, COAG needs to see it,” Sochon said.
The COAG proposal gives rise to the real possibility of separate freight and passenger regulators which Sochon said sounds innocuous.
“That all sounds fine but what happens when the networks start to intersect – capital cities, to varying degrees, don’t always have dedicated passenger tracks, but tracks that often run parallel to or are intersected by freight networks,” he said.
“Which regulator looks after the point where they intersect – the national freight regulator or the state urban passenger rail regulator?
“What happens in the event of a derailment where you’ve got both freight and passenger regulators involved? Who’s in charge? This could lead to confusion and potential chaos.”
The ARA also believes that concerns about potential problems regarding the interface between a national rail safety regulator and local jurisdictions can easily be managed by the framing of the legislation underpinning the new national rail safety regulator.
“What COAG is worried about is that the regulator will make a decision that will ignore the impact on other transport modes and import huge costs when there may be another alternative,” Sochon said.
“Victoria put a cost benefit analysis provision in their safety legislation to address this issue and we think this has merit - why can’t this be adopted in the national safety regulatory structure?”
The ARA urges the ATC to support the implementation of a single national rail safety regulator and to strongly argue its case to the premiers ahead of the next COAG meeting.
“This matter must be clarified in the near future before the ATC goes back to COAG for its early 2010 meeting,” Sochon said.