Page 1063 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
It covers accreditation, registration of rail infrastructure managers of private sidings, safety management, provision of information about rail safety, investigation and reporting by rail transport operators, drug and alcohol testing by the regulator and enforcement officers, Australian safety recordings, auditing of railway operations by the regulator, compliance and enforcement measures, exemptions, review of decisions, and general liability and evidentiary provisions.
If a reportable incident were to occur in ACT rail operations, the regulator would concentrate its investigations on ensuring safety compliance and an operator’s management of safety risk, while an investigation of the overall rail safety system for deficiencies and possible improvements would fall to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which had its role expanded in January 2013 to cover rail safety investigations nationally.
A single National Rail Safety Regulator will cut red tape by providing those rail operators who work across multiple jurisdictions with one national accreditation certificate instead of having to apply for accreditation in all the jurisdictions that they operate within. 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 ones.
While the national law applies to the entire rail sector, including freight and passenger rail, it does not apply to some classes of railways, such as non-moving displays, some amusement railways and railways used only to guide a crane, to mention a few. Also railways with a track gauge of less than 600 millimetres do not fall within the scope of the national law.
In the ACT this means that the Kingston miniature railway 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, the sole ACT-based rail operator with operations out of Canberra into New South Wales, and New South Wales trains, which provides commercial rail passenger services between Canberra and Sydney, are impacted by the national law.
The Australian Railway Historical Society has expressed its strong support for the national law and desire for the government to adopt the legislation. As the society holds accreditation under the national law for its operations in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, when the national law is implemented in the ACT the regulator will vary the society’s existing New South Wales rail safety accreditation to cover its ACT operations. Similarly, New South Wales trains will have its accreditation varied to include its operation in the ACT.
The national law allows jurisdictions to exclude a railway or class of railway from its scope. For example, Victoria has prescribed that tramways or light railways are not subject to the national law, whereas New South Wales has determined that the Lake Macquarie light rail and a number of heritage rail operations are subject to the law. In regard to the potential future operation of capital metro, the government will consider whether to apply the national law to light rail in the ACT.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video