FEARS have been raised about the safety of country road users, with tens of thousands of trucks expected to carry grain between Mallee grain fields and ports in Melbourne and Geelong following this year’s bumper harvest.
Grain industry figures this week called for more investment in road infrastructure after the Victorian and Federal Government’s botched Murray Basin Rail Project (MBRP) failed to deliver on what was promised.
The $440 million MBRP began in 2015 to improve Victoria’s outdated rail freight network and provide more efficient and cheaper services for growers to get their crop to ports.
Mildura grain broker Fabian Devereux said it had done neither, forcing growers to continue shifting grain by road.
“The rail network here in Victoria seems to be that much of a shambles at the moment that it is more profitable for growers to send their grain to port by road,” Mr Devereux, chief executive of Grainwise, said.
“Growers want governments to spend more money on roads than the rail because I think that horse has bolted.”
Mr Devereux said the political hotcake that the MBRP had become had caused more growers to resort to on-farm storage for their grain without access to efficient and cost-effective transport options.
“There are a lot more growers turning to on-farm storage because it hasn’t been feasible to go through the rail system.
“I think more growers are doing it now more than ever.
“It’s just not safe, not with the roads and their conditions at the moment.”
In the current stage of the MBRP, growers have to first truck their grain to a centralised hub, where the crop can be loaded on trains and sent to Melbourne.
But for many, it’s more expensive than trucking it from their farms to ports themselves.
“I’ve got growers at Gol Gol that used to deliver to Yelta, which was $22 per tonne harvest rate, then they’ve got to pay a rail-freight component of $60 a tonne, so that’s $80,” Mr Devereux said.
“What we can do is get it from Gol Gol to Melbourne for $60 a tonne.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s a false economy.”
President of the Manangatang VFF branch and grain grower Brian Barry called the MBRP a “broken promise”, saying growers were exasperated by political manoeuvring, which was resulting in them being locked out of potential markets.
“(MBRP) was supposed to be completed two years ago but all we’ve gotten is a great big pile of crap,” Mr Barry said.
“We’re locked out of markets because we can’t get cheaper freight rates.
“There’s only one set of train and wagons able to use these lines, so we can’t ship sideways to New South Wales or anywhere else.
“We can’t even go to Portland because the trains don’t fit on the tracks.”
Mr Barry expressed concern about the pressure on country roads, particularly in big harvest years, when the destruction of surfaces could be “frightening”.
“A huge percentage of the grain goes on roads, so imagine big trucks going through every little town, destroying all the local government infrastructure along the way.”
Deputy chair of the Rail Freight Alliance Glenn Milne said the current plan had added five hours to a round trip due to a diversion to Ararat and Geelong before arriving in Melbourne.
Following a statement from the Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes, which claimed the government had not “walked away from our commitment to the Murray Basin Rail Project”, Cr Milne said the lack of action or investment by the State Government in this week’s budget was appalling,
“The noise that’s coming out of Melbourne isn’t giving the indication that they’re committed to it,” he said. “They have walked away.
“What we’re asking, and what the farming community are asking, is just to deliver on what you originally promised.”
Urging the state and federal governments to work together, Cr Milne said a standardised rail network was an essential long-term project for the community, cementing the ability to get goods to the market efficiently.
“Carrying freight on trains is more efficient, it’s more environmentally friendly, it produces less carbon dioxide, it ticks all the boxes for the environment but also reduces the cost factor to the community in the long term,” he said.
