Red tape derailing freight investors, say CEOs

POLITICAL interference is discouraging investment, CEOs say.

SOME of Australia's biggest listed companies have warned that onerous regulation and political interference are choking off private sector investment in freight infrastructure.

Companies including Toll, Asciano, Woolworths, Transurban and Qantas have told the nation's top infrastructure adviser, Infrastructure Australia, that the country's freight network is plagued by bottlenecks and inadequate planning for future growth.

The warnings are contained in submissions to IA as it develops a national freight strategy aimed at avoiding capacity constraints as Australia's freight task is expected to double between 2000 and 2020 and triple by 2050.

The draft strategy, released in February, proposed allowing "high productivity vehicles" -- such as super B-doubles and B-triples -- on more roads, as well as quarantining land corridors for transport infrastructure.

Listed companies have urged the Council of Australian Governments to push ahead with the proposed reforms.

They maintain that adopting a new freight strategy is crucial to boosting productivity for businesses facing higher costs and congestion.

Transport giant Toll has warned that private sector confidence is being undermined by political interference and "regularly changing policy directions". And in some cities "it may be too late".

"The private sector has to date been understandably reluctant to invest in major freight infrastructure projects because of the number of land transport regulators, volume of regulation and the lack of certainty that governments pressured by external factors won't change the rules," the company has told IA.

Woolworths, which is one of the country's biggest freight users and transports more than 80 million cartons in freight each month, has echoed the concern, saying that it is forced to comply with multiple regulators because its freight crosses state borders.

"These inconsistencies and complexity create additional cost, confusion and increase the compliance burden for both Woolworths and its transport supply partners," a submission to IA states.

The supermarket chain says that bottlenecks on motorways in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are forcing its trucks on to suburban roads.

On top of this, outside the major cities, local council curfews limit when trucks can make deliveries to the supermarkets, Woolworths warns.

Toll roads operator Transurban has urged the government to prioritise projects that could secure substantial private sector investment.

"In order to meet the shortfall of investment in freight infrastructure, it is necessary to identify new financing models and to maximise the potential value from existing models, such as the user-pays public-private partnership," Transurban has told IA.