National transport regulatory reform

• COAG’s harmonisation reforms established national laws and national regulators for heavy vehicles, rail, and domestic commercial vessels.
• After almost a decade, the transition is nearly complete, albeit with some unfinished business:
  • Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not participate in the national heavy vehicle regime
  • unnecessary derogations from the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) and Rail Safety National Law (RSNL) continue
  • some grandfathering provisions applying to domestic commercial vessels pose safety risks
  • approval processes for heavy vehicle access to local roads still lag in some areas.
• By most measures, heavy vehicle and rail safety continue to improve, largely due to new technology and infrastructure investments.
• Safety regulation across the three modes is a mix of prescriptive and outcomes based regulation. Amending safety regulation to create a more flexible, outcomes-based approach should improve safety and lift productivity.
• The COAG reforms were expected to unlock large efficiency gains for heavy vehicle operators. While gains have been made, the forecasts were optimistic and have not been achieved.
  • Road access for larger, more efficient trucks has improved, but significant bottlenecks remain on some major freight corridors.
• There are significant opportunities for COAG, regulators and industry to further promote safety and productivity.

  Striking a balance between prescription and outcomes-based approaches in safety regulation:

  • amending the HVNL to allow further progress to a tiered system, where operators can choose to follow prescriptive regulation or to develop more flexible and efficient ways to manage safety risks with the regulator’s approval
  • removing unnecessary prescriptive detail from the HVNL.

  Emphasising risk-based approaches to improving safety and consistency:

  • removing unjustified derogations (road and rail) and grandfathering (maritime)
  • ensuring effective oversight of Hire and Drive vessels in the maritime sector
  • streamlining Australian Design Rule processes for heavy vehicles.

  Improving infrastructure provision and management:

  • progressing Heavy Vehicle Road Reform
  • ensuring that investment decisions on major freight corridors are based on transparent cost-benefit analysis, which includes consideration of intermodal options
  • encouraging more ‘as-of-right’ access for vehicles (where appropriate) and more efficient processes for assessing permit applications
  • creating more consistent network rules for rail services.

  Improving the evidence base for policy and regulatory decisions:

  • establishing ‘no-blame’ incident investigation across the transport modes
  • harnessing telematics data to inform infrastructure investment and access management
  • ensuring that regulators improve their collection, analysis, and reporting of data, particularly in relation to safety outcomes and compliance costs.

• Cover, Copyright and publication detail, Letter of transmittal, Terms of reference, Acknowledgments, Contents and Abbreviations.
• Key points
• Overview
• Findings and recommendations
• Chapter 1 About this inquiry
  • 1.1 National transport regulatory reform
  • 1.2 What was the Commission asked to do?
  • 1.3 What does the transport sector look like?
  • 1.4 The Commission’s approach
• Chapter 2 Assessing transport safety regulation
  • 2.1 A framework for transport safety regulation
  • 2.2 A ‘tiered’ model of transport safety regulation
• Chapter 3 Harmonising transport regulation
  • 3.1 History of transport regulation
  • 3.2 The 2009 COAG national transport reforms
• Chapter 4 Is transport safety regulation nationally consistent?
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 The harmonisation task in transport
  • 4.3 Moving towards national regulation
  • 4.4 How ‘national’ are the national laws?
  • 4.5 National consistency of application and enforcement
• Chapter 5 Assessing the national regulators
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator
  • 5.3 The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator
  • 5.4 The Australian Maritime Safety Authority
• Chapter 6 Has harmonisation of transport regulation improved safety?
  • 6.1 Introduction
  • 6.2 Heavy vehicle transport safety
  • 6.3 Rail transport safety
  • 6.4 Domestic commercial vessel transport safety
• Chapter 7 Have the COAG reforms raised productivity?
  • 7.1 Introduction
  • 7.2 Compliance costs and regulatory burden
  • 7.3 Administrative costs
  • 7.4 Access management of heavy vehicles
  • 7.5 Examining changes in heavy vehicle productivity
  • 7.6 Improving heavy vehicle access
• Chapter 8 Transport technology and data
  • 8.1 Transport technologies
  • 8.2 Transport data
  • 8.3 Automation
• Chapter 9 Further reforms to improve transport safety
  • 9.1 Introduction
  • 9.2 Evolution of transport safety regulation
  • 9.3 Safer freight routes, vehicles, and equipment
  • 9.4 Harnessing data to improve safety
  • 9.5 Improving incident investigation
• Chapter 10 Further reforms to improve transport productivity
  • 10.1 Introduction
  • 10.2 Driving productivity through safety regulation
  • 10.3 Improving infrastructure provision and management
  • 10.4 Heavy vehicle access management
  • 10.5 Harnessing data and technology to improve productivity
• Appendix A Public consultation
• Appendix B Analysing transport safety outcomes and heavy vehicle productivity
• References

This spreadsheet contains data underlying charts in the Productivity Commission's inquiry report on National Transport Regulatory Reform. Data underlying maps are not included.

• Chart data - National Transport Regulatory Reform - Inquiry report (PDF - 342 Kb)