Article: Freight corridor needed: NRMA director

[ozbob]

From the Sunshine Coast Daily click here!

Freight corridor needed: NRMA director

AUSTRALIA needed to build a dedicated rail freight network or face the economic and safety cost of a 100% increase of heavy vehicles on our roads within 20 years.

That's the warning from NRMA director Graham Blight, who said an efficient cost-effective freight rail network was critical to Australia's competitiveness.

He wants an inland rail route from Melbourne to Gladstone built as a priority project, something that would require maturity and an innovative approach to accomplish.

"If we keep taking in each other's washing, we will go nowhere (in advancing the economy),'' the former global trade ambassador for the Australian Government said.

The pressures on Australia's transport network were enormous, with only 5% of eastern seaboard freight being carried by rail and the rest by road.

"How do we handle that number of trucks even if we go to B-triples?'' Mr Blight said.

The agribusiness man, now living on Buderim, is a past president of both the National Farmers and World Farmers Federations, a former chairman of the Wheat Export Marketing Association, former president of the Ricegrowers Association of Australia and was a director of SunRice from 1969 to 2003.

He says the only way to maintain and increase our living standard was to bring in new money via exports.

"The only way to do that is to be competitive with our trading partners.

"It is simple. We need to be in the business of finding new markets and growing the ones we already have.

"Our competitiveness is a real challenge. Construction workers are the best paid and have the best conditions of anybody in the world.

"But it's not just the workers. It's also the business community. We have to get efficiency and productivity going in this country.

"A critical element of that is infrastructure.''

The advantages of an inland freight rail network with distribution depots at Parkes to service the greater Sydney area and at Dalby to service south-east Queensland were enormous.

Most of the eastern seaboard road networks do not have heavy duty bases. Maintenance and reconstruction costs are expected to rise with increased use.

Rail became immediately more economic than road transport for goods travelling distances greater than 600km, he said.

Mr Blight said that major projects like an inland rail could be achieved at lower cost if a global tender was put with conditions that allowed the winning bid to do the job in the most efficient way.

"That would probably mean bringing in their own labour at their rates,'' he said.

"But if built quickly the job development around the country for Australians would be enormous. It would decrease the time needed to wait to reap the benefits of critical infrastructure.''

An NRMA fuel security report warns that Australia would have only three days of fuel in service stations and food in supermarkets and supplies at hospitals for seven days if supply of the 90% of mobility fuels that are imported were cut for any reason.