Action Plan for National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy released

The Federal Government released the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy National Action Plan over the weekend, outlining what is sees as the ‘… critical action areas for the next five years.’

4 critical areas, 13 actions

The Action Plan lists 13 actions across four critical areas:

Critical area 1: Smarter and targeted infrastructure investment

• Ensure that domestic and international supply chains are serviced by resilient and efficient key freight corridors, precincts and assets
• Provide regional and remote Australia with infrastructure capable of connecting regions and communities to major gateways, through land links, regional airports or coastal shipping
• Identify and support digital infrastructure and communication services necessary for improved and innovative supply chains
• Advance heavy vehicle road reform to facilitate efficient investment in infrastructure

Critical area 2: Enable improved supply chain efficiency

• Adopt and implement national and global standards, and support common platforms, to reduce transaction costs and support interoperability along supply chains
• Promote training and re-skilling of industry and government workforces appropriate to current and future needs
• Facilitate new and innovative technologies that improve freight outcomes and understand the deployment, skills and workforce requirements for operators and infrastructure
• Build community acceptance of freight operations

Critical area 3: Better planning, coordination and regulation

• Ensure freight demand is integrated in transport and land use planning across and between jurisdiction boundaries and freight modes
• Strengthen the consideration of freight in all other government planning and decision-making
• Investigate policy, planning and operational solutions to improve freight access and movement along domestic and international supply chains
• Improve regulation to be more outcomes focused and risk-based to support innovation and reduce regulatory burden whilst maintaining safety, security and sustainability

Critical area 4: Better freight location and performance data

• Develop an evidence-based view of key freight flows and supply chains and their comparative performance to drive improved government and industry decision-making, investment and operations

The Action Plan and iMOVE

iMOVE welcomes the release of the Strategy and Action Plan. The freight and logistics sector contributes around $130 billion to the Australian economy so efficient movement of freight is vital for the community and the economy. And, we’ve written before in Where’s my box? The case for improved supply chain visibility. Now!, there are numerous opportunities for improvement that we should pursue. The prospective prize is enormous; a 1% increase in productivity in the logistics industry would deliver a $2 billion increase in national GDP. (‘The Economic Significance of the Australian Logistics Industry’, ACIL Allen Consulting)

We are also pleased to see outcomes eventuating from the efforts that iMOVE and many other parties have been making in recent years to develop a nationally cohesive approach to this important sector. iMOVE was pleased to contribute through our Freight data requirements study project. We applaud the governments steps toward the creation of a National Freight Data Hub and we strongly endorse the aspiration in Critical Area 4 to ‘develop an evidence-based view of key freight flows and supply chains and their comparative performance to drive improved government and industry decision-making, investment and operations.’

iMOVE is focussed on improving visibility over freight data, but this is not an isolated task. It is deeply intertwined with Critical Areas 2 and 3. We expect that improvements in freight data will lead to:

• more efficient operations
• improved vehicle utilisation
• better scheduling
• better meeting of community expectations
• better capacity planning
• targeted removal of bottlenecks
• better informed investment decisions;
• and in the longer term better land use planning and reduced congestion

There’s a lot to like about better freight data!

‘I’m excited about the scale of opportunity in front of us in the freight sector, but also mindful of the imperative for Australia to lift its game in order to increase its competitiveness, grow its exports and increase local jobs,’ said Ian Christensen, iMOVE’s Managing Director.

DOWNLOAD THE ACTION PLAN