Beattie slams Commonwealth ports proposal

<p>Queensland premier Peter Beattie has joined a growing group of government and industry leaders in rejecting a Commonwealth bid to take control of ports from the states in an effort to reduce bottlenecks.</p> <p>Mr Beattie told Channel Nine such a move would be a disaster, saying Queensland’s ports were running as effectively as possible, and there were no problems with bottlenecks.</p> <p>He said that if the Commonwealth took over the control of ports &#8211 and legally it would have difficulty doing that, but if it did &#8211 all sorts of delays and problems would result.</p> <p>"I don’t think they could run them," Mr Beattie said. &#8220I think they’d be basically incompetent and I’m not going to have Queensland’s coal industry affected by Federal Government incompetence.&#8221</p> <p>In the lead-up to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Canberra tomorrow (Friday, April 13), Mr Beattie said the states could also cut red tape without handing over more of their powers to the Commonwealth.</p> <p>Reports today said prime minister John Howard would offer the states $110m if they agreed to 10 national schemes to slash red tape.</p> <p>In return for the funding, the states must refer their powers to the Commonwealth in issues, such as the operation of ports, product safety, personal properties security, rail safety and occupational health and safety.</p> <p>After a blowout in bulk carrier queues in 2005, treasurer Peter Costello and former deputy prime minister John Anderson called for a single port regulator.</p> <p>The states say the real problem is coping with competition laws, which require third party access to infrastructure.</p> <p>In 2004 and 2005, the Queensland Competition Authority held up expansion work at the Dalrymple Bay coal terminal by its delay in approving terminal owner Prime Infrastructure’s charges to miners using its coal loaders. </p> <br />