Back in August 2007, I posted an item on the Tasmanian Times in regard to transport safety and Gunn’s proposed Pulp Mill. The major error I made was using what was probably too high an estimate for truck related crashes, deaths and injuries over the life of the mill to 2035.
Having acknowledged that, I can add that my estimations of the costs of individual road crash trauma were on the low side, while my thoughts on Pacific National’s exit from rail in Tasmania were all too true.
I am still concerned that if the mill is built, the serious and dangerous issues around road transport have not faded, and may be worse. At the same time, the potential for rail haulage may have decreased, and there is still no legislation or any other guarantee ensuring what can go by rail, will be on rail. It remains a commercial decision for Gunns.
What has changed significantly, and is a source of great concern, is that the change in wood supply for the mill to all-plantation wood supply, means that the transport of wood to the mill will be to an unknown extent, along different roads than under the original plan. At the same time, the Minister for Infrastructure has acknowledged recently (late Feb 2011) that Gunns has not supplied the government with updated information on wood supply nor related transport routes. Minister O’Byrne acknowledged that DIER would need to revise road infrastructure safety requirements for any route changes.
It is critical to safety of all Tasmanians that if the mill proceeds, that all public roads used by truck traffic to and from the mill, meet “Safe System” standards of safety. Nothing less than that is totally unacceptable in terms of road safety, public health and safety and of workplace safety (of the truck drivers and any other person driving during employment).
The Australasian College of Road Safety and other expert bodies, strongly argue that road conditions contribute to crashes occurring, and the severity of crash outcomes. Australian Transport Council notes that making infrastructure safer, more ‘forgiving’ is critical to the ‘Safe System’…“Improving the Safety of roads, is the single most achievable factor in reducing road trauma. (ATC)”
Yet even when locations, or lengths of road are known to be high-risk, it may take twenty years and longer before remedial safety upgrades are made. This is well-documented for roads nationally.
Given the often long lead-in times for safety auditing, planning upgrades/new construction, gaining funding and then constructing road upgrades, if this mill is to proceed, it is imperative that revised assessment of transport developments is put in train as a matter of urgency.
It is also critical that proper “Safe System” approaches are used. We need to move beyond saying such and such a road has only had X crashes over the last Y years and Gunn’s Mill will only generate Z additional number of truck movements, so there is no need to upgrade.
That’s a concern I have given the tightness of budgets, and old ways of thinking about road safety. The “Safe System” is about assessing risks and removing hazards, just as been done in the air and rail safety systems for decades, and by best-practice workplace safety systems.
The old “Unsafe System” culture used to say that ‘no crash means no problem’. That’s more than just a nonsense- it’s dangerous, anti-safety thinking. In air and rail, risk incidents are recorded and analyzed to assist avoiding further risk with potential for crashes, death and injury. In contrast, two trucks passing within centimetres is considered acceptable, and even if a car runs off road to avoid an erring truck (or vice-versa), there is generally no expectation of it being recorded and reported.
At the same time, there is no effective mechanism for follow-up actions when road users are put at risk by the unsafe actions of other drivers. None of this is ever safe, and should not be part of the “Safe System” approach agreed to by all Australian jurisdictions. Sadly, too often tragically some of it is perpetuated for various reasons (budget limitations, intransigent bureacratic and political attitudes, poor data, delay in research being translating into action etc, inexperience – of road designers/engineers, not drivers in this case).
If the mill is to go ahead, and provide the purported benefits for Tasmania and Tasmanians in monetary and employment etc, it would be unconscionable to have a related second-rate, third-world transport and road safety system and the negative human and financial costs that go with it.
Another major concern with this issue is that if there are substantial upgrades needed, requiring significant funding (as even modest road upgrades do), will that money be diverted from elsewhere in the Tasmanian road infrastructure budget? If funded by Federal Labor, and if not “new money”, what other vital Tasmanian transport/ road safety projects will be delayed as a result? Given the demands from across Australia for funds for new and upgraded road and rail infrastructure easily exceeding $100 billion dollars over the next ten to 15 years, and so many projects not on Infrastructure Australia’s priority lists, then we would be looking at “Magic Money”. That’s the kind of money like the $2.1 billion promised by Federal Labor for the Paramatta-Epping rail project in Maxine McKews NSW electorate just before the last federal election.
If the mill does go ahead, without the roads being upgraded, it would create a serious problem under changing workplace safety and public health law. There’s a potential for a legal challenge that would go all the way to the High Court of Australia.
Such a challenge would probably need a QC working pro bono as it would be a lengthy and costly process, so it will be interesting to see if someone wishes to take up the cudgels if the mill goes ahead.
Earlier on Tasmanian Times: Mill: transport deaths and injuriesMill: transport deaths and injuries
Protesters stop logging operations in High Conservation Value forest
A group of protesters have today walked into a working Forestry Tasmania logging coupe situated in High Conservation Value forest in North-Eastern Tasmania. The protestors are from the grassroots, non-violent direct action group Code Green, formerly known as CODE (Community Opposing the Destruction of the Environment).
“What we have here in Tasmania is unique and it is worth protecting.” Dr Searle said. “Code Green no longer has any faith in the forest peace talks and is publicly withdrawing our support of this process. In 9 months of negotiations we have seen no change in logging practises in these precious forests. Every area of forest that falls could have been national park but is now lost forever,” she said. “We are calling on our State and Federal governments to put an end to all native forest logging in Tasmania.”
The area where this action is taking place is an area of beautiful, native old-growth forest that is home to a healthy Tasmanian Devil population.
“The government and timber industry have failed to implement a full moratorium on logging of HCV forest by March 15th. We are very disappointed that this has not occurred, and are concerned that a true moratorium on logging in Tasmania’s HCV forests will not result from the current forest negotiations,” said Dr Lisa Searle.
