Bills

Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous No 4) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (12:21): I rise to support the bill, likewise. Harmonisation is very important in railway. Unfortunately, it has taken a long time for Australia to harmonise everything in the railway sector. In some of the research I have done here, I was intrigued to read that in 1847 the South Australian parliament decided that standard gauge was the gauge we should be using.

Interestingly, the first public railway to be built in the Southern Hemisphere was actually between the port of Goolwa and Port Elliott to take the produce from the river out through the port. That was built as a broad gauge line. It is interesting that they did not even follow on their first railway line that the government decided to build back in 1854. Today, the railway lines that operate within Finniss are now just tourist lines. We are now disconnected at Mount Barker Junction from the wider system.

That occurred in 1995 when the line from Adelaide to Melbourne was standardised, which meant that the broad gauge line from Mount Barker Junction through to Victor Harbor was cut off from the wider system. That means that that part of the network has actually been lost at this stage, but, as the member for Heysen mentioned, with the bit of research that I have been looking at, I have come across the fact that in Spain in particular they have developed some technologies to change the trains rather than the gauges to allow them to continue to travel on those different gauges.

We have seen technology enable the removing of some pins and the sliding of the undercarriages to a different width to allow those trains to continue on. They can apparently do it at 60 km/h in the changeover, so they barely even notice. When talking to the member for Heysen, he said that he probably travelled on the trains when he was living in Europe and did not even know it happened.

In relation to the bill, I sought some advice through the department from the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator in relation to what effect it might have on the operations of SteamRanger and other tourist railway operators around the country, as these are still part of the rail network and covered by the Rail Safety National Law. It will have minimal effect. It will augment existing powers and processes. This will have negligible impact in practice or on cost and will not create any significant barriers to their operations

The instances prescribed by the changes represent significant incidents, which the report shows do not occur often in tourist and heritage operations. There is no indication that this would increase after the amendments have been put in place. The amendments require that police or the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator have the first responsibility to undertake testing. In SA, there is a local provision of eight hours for the evidentiary testing time frame, which would be able to take place in most cases. However, if operators are required to undertake the testing, there is a provision for a reasonable excuse for operators not to undertake the testing if it is not possible to do so. So it is not going to have a huge effect on the operations.

The drug testing measures set out in the amendments are the only changes that could reasonably be expected to give rise to any increased compliance burden for the tourist and heritage rail operators. Section 127 of the national law already provides for drug and alcohol testing of rail safety workers by the regulator. This amendment inserts a reference to urine testing to allow the regulator to also use urine samples.

Operators generally use a mix of testing methods—oral fluid, blood and urine—to best address their risk. There are some scenarios where the ability to undertake urine testing will enable the regulator to use the drug testing method best suited to the circumstances. For example, if it takes a number of hours after an incident to attend the site and undertake the testing, oral fluid testing may not detect drug use, as oral fluid only shows up the presence of the drugs for a short time. Other examples may be where there are visible signs of impairment or where a complaint has been received in relation to a particular work group or location.

Oral fluid testing will remain the primary form of testing but, in a very limited number of circumstances, urine testing may be used. However, oral fluid only shows up the presence of drugs for a short time; therefore, if a rail safety worker has been working for longer into their shift, drugs may not show up in oral fluid. A negative oral fluid test undertaken several hours into a shift may not give a true indication of whether the worker is using drugs or not. These are all very important matters. We want to make sure that our railways are safe, including our tourist railways.

As I mentioned before, the railway system that operates in Finniss is very much a tourist railway. The main operation now is the Cockle Train. That is the train that runs between Goolwa and Victor Harbor on most Sundays, subject to weather conditions. During total fire bans, it does not run, but it runs most Sundays. Recently, it has been running on Saturdays as well, and it also runs every Wednesday. Interestingly, on Wednesdays some members of the community in Goolwa use it as their public transport to get across to Victor Harbor to do their shopping, effectively using it as a commuter train. It is a very novel commuter train to travel on. It also runs every day during school holidays.

It is a very popular train to travel on, particularly over the summer period. During the period between Christmas and new year, in particular, the SteamRanger organisation really ramp up operations and run two steam trains, if they can, depending again on weather conditions. Trains run in alternate directions and they cross over in Middleton, where you have the joy of passing another steam train going the other way. It is an amazing tourist experience, and I encourage anyone who has any interest in trains to get down there.

It is also worth knowing, and if you have the choice, that one carriage operated at times on those steam trains is an old luggage carriage. It is the only carriage they operate where you can stand outside on the platforms while the train is actually travelling because it has a fully enclosed platform rather than just crossover platforms, as there are between the other carriages. To stand outside whilst travelling and look out to the beautiful views of the coast is certainly an amazing experience I would recommend to all.

There are also many other train journeys that operate on the line, particularly between Mount Barker and Victor Harbor. One that runs on a regular basis is the Southern Encounter. Again, that travels on a Sunday, usually twice a month but sometimes three times a month. It allows people to come down to Victor Harbor for the day and then travel back to Mount Barker later in the afternoon. Again, it is very well patronised, particularly when the steam train is operating during the winter months.

There are other journeys one can take which operate at different times and which can be found on the SteamRanger website, and I will mention some of them. The Fleurieu Explorer is a train that will run just on 15 June from Mount Barker to Goolwa. From there, you can take a bus to one of the nearby restaurants, have a meal and, once you have finished your meal, you will then be taken back by bus to the train and taken back to Mount Barker.

StrathLink uses one of the Brill cars to travel back and forth to Strathalbyn, and the next run of that is on 26 May. There is also another train that travels from Victor Harbor to Mount Barker. That is not very often done, but the next run is coming up quite soon, on 13 April. You can catch the train from Victor Harbor, travel to Mount Barker and spend a couple of hours in Mount Barker. The train also stops at Strathalbyn for 20 minutes for a quick walk around Strathalbyn. They are trying to link all the tourist regions across the train line.

There are also the StreamRanger dinner excursions, with the Christmas in July on 20 July. Again, you can catch the train from Mount Barker to Goolwa, have Christmas dinner and then travel later in the evening back to Mount Barker. Short trips also operate in the other direction, from Goolwa to the township of Finniss, where you can stop and have lunch at the Finniss general store and then hop back on the train. The next time that runs is on 24 April.

A service is also run on New Year's Eve to allow the people of Goolwa to come over to Victor Harbor to see the fireworks. The train comes over in the early evening and then, in the early hours of the morning, at about half past 12, the train departs for Goolwa to allow those who have decided to see in the new year at Victor Harbor to return to the township of Goolwa.

There are many historic trains that operate on this track, and SteamRanger do a fantastic job of maintaining them and keeping them safe. They have been able to restore several carriages. Two steam engines are currently used; one is the Rx207 of the Rx200 class. It is named after one of the people who was heavily involved in the restoration of the SteamRanger rolling stock and is named Dean Harvey. It was built in 1913 and still runs today, so it is well over 100 years old. It is a beautiful black engine and is the one that is often seen in shots running across the line. We then have the Duke of Edinburgh, which is the 621 and was built in 1936. It is used to haul the longer distance trains from Mount Barker through to Victor Harbor. It is an engine that has a greater capacity and can pull more carriages.

One of the trains that is not currently being operated but is still being restored is the Sir Malcolm Barclay-Harvey. That is the No. 520, which was built in 1939, but unfortunately it has had to undergo significant repairs, including the rebuilding of the tender, to try to get it operational. Interestingly, it is also the only Australian train that has been seen in Thomas the Tank Engine. It is known as Shane in Thomas the Tank Engine, and it also appeared in The Great Race. My daughters were of the right age at the right time for me to become aware of this. If you google 'Shane' and 'Thomas the Tank Engine', you will see the engine painted in the green and gold colours of Australia. It will hopefully operate again soon, once they have been able to rebuild what damage time has done to the engine.

Other amazing vehicles operate on the line as well, and there are memories of the urban trains that operated in Adelaide. The old Redhens operated from the 1960s through to the 1980s. My memory of the Redhens is of travelling on really hot days. My grandparents used to live in Hawthorn, here in Adelaide, and the station was right next door. We would sometimes take the train into the city and on a really hot day we could have the doors open. Rail safety has come a long way, so we do not have the doors open anymore as these trains operate on the tourist line. It was fun to have the air blowing past, but, understandably, it is not a good idea to have the door open in a vehicle travelling at 60-plus km/h as someone could fall out.

They have also done some amazing repairs on a 1926 Brill diesel railcar. The work that has been done is amazing because it was originally not even an engine—it was actually one of the carriages that was used by the Brill car—but they retrofitted it with an engine and have it operational as a railcar. There is also a class 500 diesel engine that does a lot of the hauling work when the trips to Mount Barker require the use of a diesel engine, rather than a steam engine, because of the fire conditions. The diesel is a 1964 engine and it was originally used as a shunting engine, which actually replaced the Rx200 class in the 1960s.

We also have one of the old Australian National diesel engines, which is the old traditional bullnose engine that used to pull engines across the Nullarbor. It has been in service since 1955 and is often used locally to pull the train from Mount Barker or, occasionally, when one of the steam engines breaks down, it is required to come and get the steam engine and tow it back to the depot. Steam engines are certainly significant in weight and a very big workhorse is needed to pull those engines.

We have seen the ability to get this part of our history up and running. Interestingly, in the yard at Goolwa, SteamRanger now have a retired suburban train that was operating until quite recently. They see an opportunity to put that train into service on very hot days in order to allow the passengers to travel in air conditioned comfort. At the moment, the railway does not have any trains in service that have air conditioning.

To recap, this is a very important part of the rail network because it was the first piece of the network established in South Australia. It was also the first piece of public railway network established in Australia and in the Southern Hemisphere, so it is a very significant piece of network. In my office, I am privileged to have a photograph of my great-grandfather, where he is sitting in a replica of a horse-drawn tram that was used at the time. The photograph is of him sitting in the seat at the age of 95 and was taken in 1954 at the celebration of the centenary of the line.

One other interesting piece of history is that an encumbrance exists on the line. All the other encumbrances over that line were extinguished for stock movements. My family is the only farm operator in the district that still uses that encumbrance. We are legally allowed to move our cattle across the line and stop the train if need be.

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (12:41): It gives me great pleasure to stand and support the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous No 4) Amendment Bill 2019. By way of background, the bill amends the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act 2012 by inserting new provisions relating to drug and alcohol testing to provide an additional exception to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1991 and to implement routine amendments arising from the national law.

It should not be a surprise, as I belong to a regional seat in South-East South Australia, that rail has played an important role for our state, and will continue to do so, although it was not like the system and network of our glory days during the development of South Australia. In relation to these changes, I agree with and wholeheartedly support our government in its endeavours to make the rail network as safe and as efficient as possible.

One thing to advocate is that all those who work on our railway system and lines operate in a coordinated fashion that is consistent right across Australia and that they abide by all the occupational health and safety laws that we have to adhere to across all industries. I think our government is trying to ensure that all rail network workers, and the public, can feel safe, that they are working to the latest best practice technologies and that rail network employees and the public are adhering to national laws.

Obviously, we do not need any drivers or employees on our rail system to be suffering the effects of drugs and alcohol. I think it requires a streamlined, efficient testing process that is not going to be cumbersome or ineffective. We want the best possible system in place for our network. We know that rail has seen some horrific accidents—not necessarily in Australia, but certainly overseas—where lives have been lost.

Basically, it has come down to human error, and I guess that human error, when these accidents do occur, will be a lot worse and more frequent if humans and employees are suffering the effects of any type of drug or alcohol issue while they are meant to be on the job. A couple come to mind where we see trains overseas having head-on collisions because the computer system has failed. Again, it comes back to computer error. We obviously do not want any of those sorts of issues to occur in either South Australia or Australia. We want the network to be able to flourish.

One of the things I would be hoping for as I go on to speak about the rail network in South Australia—and, Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I had words just recently about Eyre Peninsula and the rail system there, which is not looking as promising, fruitful or prosperous as it could—is that, once we get a full understanding of what rail is to our state and its opportunities, then across the whole spectrum of what rail is for South Australia I am hoping, like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to see that rail either be continued or upgraded, or actually for it to find its purpose not only to transport the minerals and agricultural product but also to do it in an efficient and, obviously, more cost-effective way than perhaps some other modes of transport.

We must also recognise that the more rail fails our state and nation, the more pressure we put on our road infrastructure. I think that the cost of wear and tear on our road infrastructure has not been determined well, comparing it with what rail can offer. When it comes down to economics and we look at rail in its total cost and the fact that you put a tonne of grain onto rail, which might cost $10 or $20 a tonne, maybe even slightly more, the flipside of that is we then do not say, 'Road transport might be cheaper,' but we did not add to that the wear and tear on the roads and then what that actually means for other users on the road, be it road wear and tear or the safety issues that also come to hand with the increased heavy transport that we see.

Coming back to the drug testing and so forth in the bill, one of the things that this bill wants to do is to work with the railyard workers, making sure that it is not seen as some sort of witch-hunt, that it does not ostracise our employees and it does not make them look like scapegoats. We want to make sure that they feel like they are part of any workforce in South Australia and that they would face the same rules and regulations that truck drivers or anyone else in the workplace would. Obviously, as a government, we advocate for a safe workplace right across the spectrum.

I just want to touch on my little bit of local history with rail and how rail has played a very important role in my family. My family came to South Australia in the 1860s, and we discovered sheep and wool. One aspect of doing that is that we inhabited the arid lands or the pastoral regions of South Australia, which were not highly populated. There were two main elements that we were very good at, and those were fencing and water divining and finding water. Once we were able to water our stock and hold them in the properties that we were allowed to accommodate, then the next issue became transport.

One of the things we recognised as a family was that rail played a really important role in that. We still own three of the properties today, but I want to touch on two in particular. The two properties are called Wilgena and North Well. Wilgena sits right on the outskirts of a town called Tarcoola, which is a town that has been completely deserted. There used to be a railway population only of workers undertaking maintenance and repair on the railway line between Perth and Adelaide.

Up until recently we used that railway line for our mail drop-off. The actual train drivers were given the mailbags for our properties at Port Augusta, or some sort of change there, and then they would throw the mail out the window of the train that was passing down through the line. The train did not even have to stop. We had a very good service for mail when you consider that these properties are 400 kilometres north-west of Port Augusta. There is no regular mailman in that neck of the woods, but there is a train.

When inhabiting and developing this country, we recognised way back then that being right on the edge of the railway line and loading up our wool at Kingoonya or Tarcoola was a huge benefit for our sheep enterprises. We see the railway system being wound back in its emphasis because it is seen as expensive or not as effective or efficient compared with other modes of transport but, when our family owned land on Kangaroo Island, we recognised that it was more expensive for a bale of wool to travel from Kangaroo Island to Port Adelaide than it was for it to come from 400 kilometres north-west of Port Augusta to Adelaide.

We walked away from Kangaroo Island as a proposition. I do not mean that Kangaroo Island is not a good place to do business for agriculture, but our family has been continually driven by best practice and profitable enterprises, and that was one of the key findings of my family in the 1960s and 1970s when we decided that Kangaroo Island was no longer for us. There were one or two other issues, but that was the main linchpin, and we never saw it get better. When recognising the benefit of rail for our pastoral pursuits, there was no better example.

We used rail from the 1860s right through to that period as much as we could because the train used to stop at Kingoonya and Tarcoola and pick up our wool. It no longer does that, so we are having to use road transport. I am not sure of the exact reason, but I imagine that it is just too clumsy these days for a massive train to stop for two or three carriages of wool when it has thousands of tonnes of transport in place. My understanding is that the train lines are so busy with freight that the Australian rail network is not running half-heartedly: it is at full capacity.

I am not sure whether this is still the case, but I know that when the Howard government joined Darwin to Adelaide, it was considered a massive announcement. It was going to be a huge benefit to the state, but the extent of its success was really quite unknown. Certainly, in the mining boom days, trains were limited by their size. This could still be the case, though I have not heard the information recently. The capacity of the rail connection between Darwin and Adelaide was so full that the passing lanes—when a train heading in a northerly direction comes together with a train heading in a southerly direction and they have to go into bypass lanes—were not long enough to extend the trains.

It tells us that the capacity of freight on some of these train lines is working very well. I am not sure whether that is still the case today but it certainly was three, four or five years ago. It is my understanding that the freight lines between Perth and Sydney are running nearly at capacity as well, and that is one of the reasons why they cannot pick up our wool and product at Kingoonya and Tarcoola anymore.

Another thing we find of massive benefit to those two pastoral properties is that there is a mobile telephone communication network right down the rail corridor between Perth and Sydney. Our homesteads are within five kilometres of the rail, and all our employees are able to enjoy a mobile telephone network 400 kilometres out from Port Augusta. If you took away the mobile telephone network from our city counterparts, they would think they could not live the next day; they would barely be able to breathe. That is really important.

When we find employees and staff for these stations, we tell them that they are only five minutes out of Tarcoola—not that there is anything there anymore—and only five minutes out of Kingoonya, which still has an operating hotel and drinking hole and sees a lot of backpackers coming from overseas. The rail line still has a really important role to play in keeping these small communities actively working, bringing some of the benefits expected by our society today as obvious rites of life.

Coming back to our home area down in the MacKillop region, Regional Development Australia is currently undertaking a rail review looking at the old network that used to operate on the Limestone Coast. We used to have a railway line that would travel down through Bordertown, down to Naracoorte, on through to Penola and then through to Mount Gambier. That railway line system has not been used for at least 20 years—my memory fails me there.

Another network used to run between Naracoorte and Kingston and I am, unfortunately, old enough to remember when that train used to run. Our family farm in the MacKillop area used that railway network to load our wool onto the Reedy Creek railway station. We would load our little Ford truck with about 40 bales and then load them onto the trucks there, and once a week the train would come along, pick up those bales of wool and take them on to Adelaide. It was the most effective way of transporting our wool in the late seventies and early eighties until that railway line was pulled up.

Another thing to note is that a little town called Lucindale in the centre of my region, which has the Lucindale field days, had the railway line going past on its way to either Naracoorte or Kingston. In its heyday, when the land all around there was being developed into soldier settler farms in the fifties, it had one of the busiest railway stations for fertiliser in South Australia, if not Australia. Thousands of tonnes of fertiliser went through the Lucindale township—and all through rail.

This Regional Development Board study, which I think Dr Liz Perkins is currently conducting, is looking at whether this railway network system should be reinvigorated or whether we should discard it completely and look at other transport modes. I really do hope, I suppose I have my fingers crossed, that in some shape or fashion a rail network may have a role back on the Limestone Coast.

With this review, they are again looking at not just the railway and the cost of transport but also what it means to the road network if we do not have a railway line in play. In other words, what would we save by operating a rail network down to the Limestone Coast compared to everything being via road transport? I am really looking forward to the findings of this review; I think it is one of the first that looks at both aspects of the railway network—a mode of transport plus the savings from keeping freight off our road network for other forms of transport.

Another thing that was really pleasing to see was that the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, the Hon. Tim Whetstone, came to Bordertown and gave a sum of money to a development called an intermodal development. In this development at Bordertown we are seeing empty Chinese shipping containers filled with product from the Limestone Coast, put onto the railway line at Bordertown and then railed into Adelaide, through the Port of Adelaide and then back to China.

At this stage, we can see some log go in these containers, but it could also be grains and other products. We are already seeing these terminals at a few big grain stations in Victoria, where they are filling containers with grain that are then going on the rail network and on to the ports and overseas. It used to be that you would see all the raw grain being trucked or railed, loaded onto a bulk ship and taken overseas in that form. We are now seeing the use of containers reinvigorating rail.

Thinking of that, we are seeing rail in Victoria and New South Wales being expanded. I recently heard that in Victoria some of the railway lines are being upgraded, not torn down or closed down but upgraded. In fact, it is actually the grain network, the grain handlers, taking responsibility or putting some funding towards the upgrades of these railway lines, not just the state government and not just the national railway systems. They are recognising that rail has a role to play.

Another thing I learnt is that in New South Wales and Victoria what used to be failed, little railway grain delivery systems no longer used by the rail system are now being reinvigorated by leaving rail carts on the side of the railway lines for when the grain harvest is on. At harvest time, they can have storage of a thousand tonnes with 50-tonne to 100-tonne grain carriages left vacant at the side. When the grain comes off the harvesters, it goes directly into the grain cart, straight onto the railway system, directly to the port and then on to overseas markets.

It is a great privilege to speak to this topic. I believe rail should play an important role in South Australia, and making sure it works under the best practices of OHS is a good thing. I welcome the amendments to this bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Ms Cook.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.