Page 272 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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outcome. In December 2009 COAG agreed to the implementation of a national rail safety regulator which would administer the rail safety national law.
Both the national law and the regulator are hosted by South Australia. The national law was passed by the South Australian Legislative Council in May 2012, enabling the states and territories to apply, or reference, the law in their jurisdiction. The regulator, while based in Adelaide, will have branch offices in each of the states and territories that had rail regulators before January 2013.
Regulating the ACT’s small amount of rail operations will be done by the regulator’s Adelaide office. In practical terms, a single national rail safety regulator will cut red tape by providing the rail industry with a consistent and reliable co-regulatory approach by enabling those rail operators who work across multiple jurisdictions to have one national accreditation certificate instead of having to apply for accreditation in each jurisdiction in which they operate. In addition, one set of rules will apply to an operator’s safety management systems and operators will need to respond to one regulator rather than multiple regulators.
The national law, which is applied by the bill, establishes the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator and the responsibilities and obligations of all persons undertaking work that affects or could affect rail safety in Australia. Key features of the national law include: general duties that apply to responsible parties along with the statutory recognition of shared responsibility for rail safety; risk management criteria based on the requirement to ensure so far as is reasonably practicable that rail operations are safe; detailed requirements for the development and contents of safety management systems; clear criteria for the accreditation of rail infrastructure managers and rolling stock operators, and the registration of managers of private sidings; requirements for consultation and communication, particularly when planning a change to railways operations; specific duties on other parties to protect safety of railway operations, including those performing works on or near rail infrastructure and parties loading and unloading rolling stock; a hierarchy of sanctions and penalties where breaches of rail safety requirements occur; and requirements for the contents and accessibility of the national rail safety register to be maintained by the regulator.
While the national law applies to the entire rail sector, including freight and passenger rail, it does not apply to some classes of railways. The national law clarifies the railways to which it does not apply. Examples include non-moving displays and some amusement railways; a railway used only to guide a crane; a railway used only by a horse-drawn tram; and a railway that is privately owned and operated as a hobby on private property and which does not cross a public road and to which the public has no access.
Railways with a track gauge of less than 600 millimetres also do not fall within the scope of the national law. In the ACT, the Kingston miniature railway which is run by the Canberra Society of Model and Experimental Engineers and the privately owned and operated Weston Park railway do not fall within the scope of the national law. However, the Australian Railway Historical Society, which is the sole ACT-based rail operator running rail operations out of Canberra into New South Wales, and NSW Trains, which provides commercial rail passenger services between Canberra and Sydney, are impacted by the national law.
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