Ms BURNET – Don’t waste time, Ms Brown. Minister, clearly this a very important issue about safety of drivers and train drivers. I understand there’s a federal government regional level crossing upgrade fund and that pays 50 per cent of the cost of upgrades. Was that actually applied for? Did Tasmania put in an application?
Mr VINCENT – I might ask exactly about the process, but some are 50:50 and others are on an 80:20 basis. I will ask the CEO for clarification.
Mr DIETRICH – TasRail put a submission to the state government –
Ms BURNET – I am talking about federal government.
Mr DIETRICH –The state government, through Department of State Growth, then applied to the federal government on our behalf in terms of process. That didn’t find its way through the last state budget process and my understanding is that was more around the 50:50 in terms of co‑contribution. My understanding is that the federal government has just responded through Minister King’s office around accepting 80:20, so we’re now working with the government to acquire that funding, which is $8 million over two years beginning next financial year and thereafter.
Ms BURNET – The upgrade of the rail crossings was a considerable Infrastructure Australia project. Is it disappointing that it takes so long to get to that point where an application is submitted?
Mr DIETRICH – It’s really timing. We’re not slowing down on continuing to improve level crossings. This is a very discrete package around technology and safety. We also have to have the contractor capacity to undertake this work. We’ve got a list of level crossings we’re already working through on our existing capital programs. This is over and above, which is exciting and very good, it’s just more around timing. The minister in his comments has effectively confirmed that will be coming our way and the timing of that works for our business as well.
Mr CANTWELL – It’s also relevant to say that every level crossing in the TasRail network is assessed and reassessed according to the ALCAM, which is the nationally recognised standard for assessing the safety requirements of level crossings. Over the last four or five years – this package that we’re currently talking about is a small amount of investment that’s gone into improving level crossing safety. Over the last four or five years or longer, we’ve spent more than $20 million improving the approaches to level crossings and the roadworks around level crossings throughout the network.
There’s been another $7 million spent in that same timeframe improving the protection of level crossings, so level crossings, throughout – it’s not as if we’ve been waiting for this $8‑million program that the minister was asked about it. There’s a continual process of looking at level crossings right across the network in a very systematic and standardised way, and investing on a prioritised basis to improve safety.
Mr VINCENT – I can confirm that the previous minister did correspond with the honourable Catherine King, and it was changed from 50‑50 to 80‑20.
Also, a little bit to Ms Brown’s question – there have been quite a few places identified and we do have numbers, if they’re required, on the regions, on the near misses and issues, and also down to which intersections it is and how many are at each intersection.
Ms BURNET – Minister, through you to whoever: is TasRail diversified enough to withstand a reduction in log volumes? This is a bit of wishful thinking on my behalf. I am just curious to know the business model.
Mr VINCENT – It is not something I am across. I will hand to the chair and the CEO to answer that.
Mr CANTWELL – Thanks. I’ll have a go at it and, if need be, hand it to the CEO. There are three commercial pillars within the TasRail business. There are bulk mineral products, forestry products and the intermodal products, the container products. So, if you like, it’s a three‑legged stool.
Within the forestry products business vertical, about 80 per cent of the volume that we accommodate is plantation timbers. Like each of the other product lines, there is a fluctuation in demand from our customer community, so there are rises and falls. To answer your question, it would be unfortunate if all of the forestry product line was lost, but to the extent that 80 per cent of the volume that we’re currently handling is associated with the forestry timbers, then we don’t see a loss of that business vertical as a significant risk.
Mr DIETRICH – That’s the real strength of TasRail, that we’re very much a multi‑commodity business. We see some commodities up, some down, but the strength of the business is we’ve got a range of products and a range of customers within each of those portfolios, particularly the forestry industry where it was probably more proportionate to native in the early days. It’s very much we’ve developed the supply chain and the equipment to safely handle the plantation side of the forestry industry and seen a real mode shift from road to rail to support that.
Ms BURNET – What about coal volumes? I think that makes up about 10 per cent of your total freight volume. Given there is likely a change at Railton with tire-derived fuel, what’s likely to happen there?
Mr DIETRICH – Thank you for the question. It’s an excellent question. The coal volumes we move at the moment have been those volumes that have been in existence for a long time, supporting large manufacturers on the island and, basically, internal consumption. As Cement Australia are looking at their energy requirements, they’re talking to us around, as there’s a transition from coal, and what that may look like for them is bio, and they see us as a key supply chain provider, a logistics provider to support them in bringing in the raw materials for their bio requirements, which is basically going to be –
Ms BURNET – Not whole logs, is it?
Mr DIETRICH – bark and timber and those type of things. That is where it may convert to. So, we see substitute, but coal is not a huge portion of our business in any event.
Ms BURNET – Minister, does TasRail intend to extend its Fingal rail line and establish a coal-loading facility to accommodate a possible opening of the Hard Rock Coal Mine?
Mr VINCENT – I will pass that to the CEO if that’s okay.
Mr DIETRICH – I’m happy to answer that. There was some minor discussion going back probably three or four years ago around a coal mine – I think they changed their name but it was Hard Rock at the time – to look at the opportunity of mining coal from that region, but we haven’t had any engagement or discussion for at least the last three or four years.
Ms BURNET – Okay. This is more about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transport emissions being one of the largest emitters. Is there a desire to have a greater share of the freight transport market for TasRail?
Mr VINCENT – Certainly what I’ve witnessed on my visit out there is a quite ingenious design of rail carriages or ‘logtainers’ – a nice little play on words – where they can be collapsed so that freight can come back, which lessens their kilometres travelled empty. They’re maximising the trips up and back. The $15 million that’s refurbishing a lot of the engines that are operating now to extend their life gives an opportunity for the whole network to look at alternative fuel sources for the future to minimise their carbon footprint. The whole operation that I saw was based around efficiency and minimising their impact but increasing their volume so that it lessens the pressure on the road network for the state. Chair, would you like to add to that?
Mr CANTWELL – You’ve got it perfectly, minister.
Ms BURNET – I’m interested to hear all of those things. I’m just curious to know whether the skills that are required for TasRail are available in Tasmania for your staff?
Mr CANTWELL – Are you talking at board level or right across?
Ms BURNET – Right across the business.
Mr CANTWELL – The answer to your question is the pool probably isn’t as deep as you would hope for, right from board level through to professional level. I think the pool is fine in terms of bringing through people to train up as train drivers and infrastructure maintainers and so forth, but we find ourselves fairly often having to look to the mainland for the specific signalling and engineering skills and the like, which are a little hard to come by. Also, within the organisation we have a disciplined approach to succession planning and identifying business critical skills and doing the things we need to do to develop our local talent. We don’t sit on our laurels, we put quite a considerable amount of effort into developing the local capability.
Ms BURNET – Those TAFE or VET skills, presumably you have those. Are they accessible within Tasmania?
Mr CANTWELL – Yes, and I’ll get the CEO to share with the committee the work we’ve done and are doing to establish ourselves as a registered training organisation so that we can deliver the training ourselves.
Mr DIETRICH – We’re investing heavily in our training department to make sure we can upskill our people but also bring them on. While I think about attracting personnel to TasRail, every year we’ve been doing an intake of rail operators who ultimately then become train drivers with all the opportunities that presents in terms of our business. We advertised for about two or three rail operators in Burnie and had over 450 applications from people wanting to come and work at TasRail.
We’ve got lots of aspiring train drivers out there, which is very exciting, but it does take time. It takes 12 months for someone to become a rail operator and then another two years thereafter to become a fully qualified train driver, so it does take some time. That means we need to have very good workforce planning. We’ve seen quite a rotation in retirements. We have had a lot of people with 40-50 years’ service retiring and we’ve got a new cohort coming through and we’ve been building up to support that. Just quickly, we are moving towards an enterprise RTO. That way we’re in control of our training and can get it signed off.
Ms BURNET – Minister, do you have an indication of how many staff hours are lost to workplace-related psychological injury?
Mr VINCENT – I’ll just ask the CEO for that, because we had discussed briefly about some policy in that area.
Mr DIETRICH – We’ve done a lot of work in the psychosocial area and making sure that that’s clear within our business. We have zero tolerance for bullying, victimisation, discrimination, sexual harassment or harassment. I can say in the last year we had zero lost time, or zero days away, of any personnel due to those circumstances.
Ms BURNET – You’d have a staff engagement survey?
Mr DIETRICH – Yes.
Ms BURNET – Can that be either tabled or provided to the committee, please?
Mr DIETRICH – Yes. The staff survey, which we had 80 per cent participation, we ended up with an engagement result based on our benchmarking of 61 per cent – the industry average is 60 per cent. The biggest item that we rated and scored highly on was ‘the business and my leader cares for me’.
Ms BURNET – Do you think there’s more work to be done in that area for the business?
Mr DIETRICH – We got a very high score in that area. There are certainly some areas that we’ve got opportunity, as you do with any engagement survey – particularly improving comms, one-on-one, those type of things – but we do have a lot of people on shift work. We’re looking at those opportunities, but our survey clearly demonstrated loud and clear that the organisation cares for its people. I’m very happy to give you those high-level results.
Ms BURNET – Thank you.
Mr CANTWELL – That’s not a one-off; we do that survey every two years. We ask our staff to give us their feedback – well, we invite them to give us any feedback all the time, but we conduct a formal climate survey every two years.
CHAIR – Just to be clear, are you putting that question on notice, Ms Burnet?
Ms BURNET – Yes.
