Australia's port deficiencies `need federal help'

Australia’s port deficiencies `need federal help’

The Federal Government had to assist to speed up urgent dredging work for Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, a parliamentary report into the interface between rail and road networks said today (Monday, August 13). The Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services report, tabled in Federal Parliament this afternoon, made 25 recommendations to improve the interaction between land and port infrastructure. The report recommends urgent federal spending to overcome a host of problems hampering Australia’s transport network from accessing the nation’s ports. Former Queensland Rail chief Vince O’Rourke said government spending ought to be focused on building new rail lines that would use the latest technology rather than repairing the existing, ageing network. The report calls for emerging technologies to be used nationwide to improve efficiency. &#8220Double stacking of containers, modern signalling systems for railways and the development of intermodal hubs in capital cities, can all contribute to the network’s ability to handle the growing task,&#8221 the report said. &#8220Bold measures&#8221 were needed to equip the transport sector to deal with a doubling of freight by 2020. &#8220Many of Australia’s ports suffer from deficiencies in their transport and logistics infrastructure,&#8221 the report said. &#8220The deficiencies are varied: missing supply links, a lack of rail capacity, bypasses, and a lack of ring roads or road and rail loops needed to reduce traffic congestion in port approaches.&#8221 The report said the depth of port channels was a serious concern. &#8220The worldwide trend is to larger and larger cargo vessels &#8211 already many of the vessels servicing Australian ports cannot navigate the channels when fully loaded,&#8221 the report found. Rural rail lines were so dilapidated that grain harvests were being moved by road using heavy vehicles that the infrastructure could not support. The committee received 194 submissions and held 30 public hearings since its commissioning in March 2005 to investigate how the land infrastructure was interacting with port operations and consider how the three levels of government could achieve better efficiency.

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