FARM groups and other core stakeholders have submitted about $4 billion in project funding requests to access the $100 million being delivered by the federal government to improve beef roads in northern Australia.
The program was initially announced in May last year by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott to merge with the Northern Development White Paper’s release the following month, after being confirmed in the federal budget.
The $100m has been budget for three years starting in 2016-17 running through to 2018-19.
Final investment decisions are being guided by computer-driven economic analysis generated via the CSIRO’s new Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT) designed as part of the $100m program.
The government has consulted extensively with stakeholder groups in Queensland, WA and the NT over the past year, including farming organisations, local governments and State and Territory transport departments.
Forums were held in Kununurra and Rockhampton in late 2015 with stakeholders asked to submit their project priorities to the CSIRO to be modelled by TraNSIT.
Another forum was held in Darwin in March where a project list was unveiled, outlining about 60 different transport routes under consideration for funding, to help deliver cattle to market more efficiently.
The $4b stakeholder wish-list included projects to; seal gravel roads; upgrade roads to allow access for higher productivity vehicles; upgrade bridges to reduce inaccessibility from flooding; and upgrading intersection access to key facilities.
Dr Andrew Higgins from CSIRO Land & Water said stakeholders had since been asked to make formal submissions to the Federal Department of Transport for further funding evaluation, outlining specific project details and costings.
Dr Higgins said currently, the government intended to make a final announcement in June on successful projects to be funded in the $100m program.
He said the CSIRO’s role had been to apply the TraNSIT tool to assist with objectively evaluating the costs and benefits of the different projects submitted for assessment.
CSIRO says TraNSIT accounts for 20 million cattle transport movements in a given year between over 100,000 enterprises.
A report soon to be released shows the new tool’s specific analysis of the stakeholder proposed beef road projects, like sealing segments of the Tanami Road between Halls Creek and Alice Springs, and cost per head of cattle in potential savings.
The report said the total cost of cattle transport across Australia was about $262 million which almost doubled to about $490 million if return trips of empty trailers were considered.
According to TraNSIT modelling, sealing the remaining 105 km of the 260 km Hann Highway in Queensland would reduce travel time from five hours to about 3.5 hours, saving around 1160 hours for an estimated 1300 road trains using the road each year.
It also identified that the number of road trains using the fully sealed Highway would increase by 25pc, as it would become an optimal travel route, removing heavy vehicles from the congested coastal highways.
These benefits translate to a modelled cost saving of $1.23 million per five years, plus the additional savings from shorter return journeys for empty trucks and benefits to other road users, the CSIRO said.
Dr Higgins said the TraNSIT tool would also be used in future to analyse transport routes for other agricultural commodities which would change the way government made decisions on infrastructure investments, due to its evidenced based method.
As part of the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper, CSIRO plans to extend TraNSIT to cover about 25 commodities or over 95 per cent of Australia's agriculture transport volume, including grains, cotton, dairy, rice, sheep, poultry, pigs, sugar and horticulture crops.
The Commonwealth is funding about 80 per cent of the costs for final approved projects in the $100m beef roads program, with co-contributions expected from State, Territory and local governments and industry, while the private sector is also being encouraged.
The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association has expressed no surprise that the infrastructure wish-list submitted by stakeholders far exceeds the $100m committed by government to improve beef roads and reduce transport costs.
But they have asked that the extensive consultation process not be wasted and the project information be retained to act as a blueprint for government to understand the beef sector’s long-term infrastructure needs.
About 80pc of the NT’s 22,000 kilometres of roads are unsealed and largely impassable for months of the year but new infrastructure investment will help open new market access options; particularly to service trade deals signed by the current Coalition government in growing Asian markets.
NTCA Executive Director Tracey Hayes said the beef roads project had delivered a “fantastic blueprint of what northern Australian beef road priorities are”.
“Let’s start rolling out the money and in 12 months come together, measure the progress and continue to build on a model to attract further funding for northern beef roads,” she said after the Darwin forum.
“We don’t want that blueprint to sit on the shelf once that $100m is allocated, when more than $1b needed to fully optimise transport infrastructure in the north.”