Parliamentary Speeches
Freight Shipping ( 12/05/2010)
Mr DONALD PAGE (Ballina) [8.01 p.m.]: The Pacific Highway upgrade continues, albeit slowly, and people continue to lose their lives on this road. The 2007 AusLink report entitled "Building our National Transport Future: Sydney-Brisbane Corridor Strategy" stated:
"Freight on the Sydney to Brisbane corridor will almost triple between now and 2029 to approximately 17 million tonnes per year. This compares to an exact doubling of freight on most other AusLink corridors."
Obviously, this will severely impact on my electorate of Ballina and, indeed, other communities on the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane. Another viable freight option at the moment is rail. I supported the former Federal Coalition Government's investment in interstate rail that aimed to increase freight carried by rail around Australia from 17 per cent to around 34 per cent. Whilst moving more freight on the rail system is a commendable and logical initiative, large amounts of freight remain to be carried on the roads. I take this opportunity to again raise the idea of investing in sea freight.
The Pacific Ocean is a major freight corridor between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane yet is not really used for domestic freight movements within Australia. Coastal shipping in Australia consists mostly of heavy cargoes such as coal, iron ore, bauxite, alumina, crude oil and petroleum being transported long distances. While road transport will always be a significant player in moving freight from one destination to another, I am very interested in new types of ocean-going vessels. Coastal shipping has been developed in the United States as an alternative, efficient, cost-effective and economically viable way of moving freight between ports. There is much potential for these new types of vessel in Australian waters. These vessels travel faster and are smaller than conventional ships, which make them more economically viable than the slower, larger freighters of the past.
They can travel up to 35 knots and carry up to 250 containers, depending on the size of the vessel. They also have a simple load and unload arrangement. Some ships will carry containers, while others will allow for prime movers to unhook their entire trailers and leave them on the vessel. These ships then travel to the desired port where another prime mover will hook up the trailer and deliver the goods to the local destination. Unlike large ships, smaller freight ships can be in and out of a port quickly and need minimal port infrastructure. Rather than loading a semitrailer in Brisbane and the driver travelling through the night to get to Sydney the next day, containers could be loaded onto ships that then travel between ports via the Pacific Ocean in roughly the same amount of time.
Using the Pacific Ocean is an environmentally friendly freight transport option. A discussion paper called "Climate Change and Australian Coastal Shipping", published in October 2007, noted that the National Greenhouse Accounts claimed the national transport sector was responsible for 15 per cent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of freight emissions, 84 per cent, came from road transport, with coastal shipping accounting for only 4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Also, there is no infrastructure to maintain except the port facilities, which are generally already in place. This is in contrast to the high cost of maintaining roads and railway lines.
Coastal shipping would see a reduction in heavy vehicles on the Pacific Highway leading to safer roads and a decrease in road maintenance costs and fatal accidents. This is especially important given that only 50 per cent of the Pacific Highway between Hexham and the Queensland border is upgraded to dual carriageway standard. The heavy vehicle freight industry will always have a place in New South Wales and Australia, but in the twenty-first century we must turn our thoughts to alternatives. Unless there is a significant injection of funds into the State and Federal roads budgets our roads will not cope with the predicted increase in heavy freight. Certainly, rail freight is increasing, but there remains a substantial gap for new alternatives in the freight transport market.
This is where coastal shipping can play a major role in the future movement of freight around Australia. We must immediately start exploring the open corridor at our doorstep in the form of the Pacific Ocean. Coastal shipping is a large industry in Europe and our New Zealand neighbours are embracing coastal shipping, producing a national strategy for domestic sea freight. The New Zealand Government promotes intermodality as:
The effective use of different transport modes in combination to achieve an optimal and sustainable use of resources and the most effective supply chain. This means integrating freight movement by ship with delivery to and from ports by rail and road on the basis of the best fit for the particular consignment.
I urge the State and Federal governments to look more seriously at coastal shipping as a freight option particularly along the east coast of Australia. It would save money, make our roads safer and reduce greenhouse gases.
