Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme again criticised as outdated by producers, business

For cherry grower Nic Hansen, it costs 50 per cent more to ship his produce from a Grove orchard to Melbourne than it does from Melbourne to Hong Kong. The urgent changes needed to the state’s freight scheme.

Australian exports generic - container ship

A coalition of Tasmanian industry leaders are calling for urgent changes to the scheme that attempts to level the trading field for Tasmanian producers.

Tasmania does not have a road or railway connecting it to the mainland and therefore products are shipped, at a much higher cost.

Tasmanian producers including fruit growers and one of the world’s one of the world’s largest suppliers of newsprint, Norske Skog, are calling for bipartisan support for urgent changes to the scheme as the federal government considers recommendations from the Senate Select Committee inquiry into the TFES which were reported in December 2024.

Cherry grower and president of Cherries Tasmania Orchards Nic Hansen said the scheme was good 25 years ago but had not been changed in that time and was no longer “fit-for-purpose”.

Cherries Tasmania Orchards director Nic Hansen at Old Beach. Picture: Chris Kidd

“It costs us 50 per cent extra to send a pallet of fruit from here in Grove to Melbourne than it does from Melbourne to Hong Kong,” he said at Hansens Orchard in the Huon Valley.

“That should not be the case.”

Mr Hansen’s family has been in the fruit growing business for the past 140 years and he said in the last four or five it has become “extremely expensive” to send fruit to the mainland.

“Tasmanian businesses and Tasmanian farmers need help and we need it now,” he said.

Norske Skog paper mill at Boyer is the sole remaining publication paper producer in the country and the second largest recipient of the TFES scheme.

General manager Patrick Dooley said changes to the scheme were needed for them to get their product to the mainland in a competitive nature against overseas imports.

Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Wayne Davy said they are seeking three immediate changes to the scheme to provide some immediate relief to north bound shippers while a review is undertaken over the next 12 months.

4th generation orchardist Nic Hansen, General manager Boyer Mill Norske Skog Patrick Dooley, CEO Fruit growers Tasmania Peter Cornish, commercial and development manager at Boyer Mill Norske Skog Michael Landman and chair of Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Wayne Davy. Picture: Elise Kaine

The changes include an increase in assistance for the calculated freight cost disadvantage, a doubling of the intermodal assistance from $100 to $200 and to increase the export assistance per container.

“We won’t get complete equalisation, but we will get close,” he said.

A spokesman for the department of infrastructure and transport said the government was considering the Senate Select Committee into the TFES recommendations.

Independent senator for Tasmania Tammy Tyrrell, who spearheaded the Senate inquiry, backed the call for changes and said it was now time to take action.

Originally published as Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme again criticised as outdated by producers, business