Setting the ‘bigger picture’ for the national freight task – Part One

By Jennifer Perry

The federal government was guided by Infrastructure Australia's (IA) National Infrastructure Priorities report that identified a list of 'priority' and 'pipeline' projects to receive funding from the Building Australia  Fund (BAF). 
While IA is now well into assessing its second round of infrastructure submissions, the government’s BAF is empty and IA has started to focus on other areas including a National Freight Strategy and Ports Strategy.
“It’s been a very exciting time in the last 12 months, the next 12 months, following the GFC, there’s clearly not the same amount of money around,” IA chief executive Michael Deegan told Rail Express.
“IA was ostensibly set up to take a national top-down view of Australia’s productivity agenda...the discussion more generally is, where does the nation go in the longer term...in the words of Sir Rod Eddington this is not a one, two or three year approach to the nation’s infrastructure, it’s a one, two and three decade approach.”
Deegan said there was a “host of issues” that the nation had failed to look at from the top-down.
The development of a National Freight Network is one such issue. It was identified by IA in 2008 as one of Australia’s national infrastructure priorities and involves the development of a new National Freight Strategy that IA is currently progressing, a move welcomed by the Australasian Railway Association (ARA).
The strategy is not about “freight for its own sake” but instead, focuses on how Australia can become more globally competitive by sorting out “some fundamental strategic freight directions,” Deegan said.
“It’s about where the future direction of our freight network goes and the big picture issues that will affect that including levels of collaboration and competition, interaction in and out of our major cities and ports and the sorts of issues that need to be addressed for the long term future of the nation’s productivity.”
Deegan said there are three main areas of focus for the strategy. Taking its lead from the Treasury’s 2010 Intergenerational report, IA is carrying out long-term scenario testing of possible future freight requirements.
“What’s the likely demand for freight and what issues will affect that, given such things as climate change, peak oil etc.,” he said.
“The second area is to do some work on freight rights – what right do you have for accessing freight in a network and how do you properly define freight priorities instead of the ‘wishy-washy’ arrangements that are occurring in some places. Both of those pieces of work will then come into what the future freight network will look like.”
Deegan was emphatic that the strategy will be focussed on the big picture rather than “poorly perceived” individual projects and will consider all modes of transport rather than “protecting or defending or attacking one or other mode” – a view also advocated by the ARA.

To read Part Two of this story click here.