Wednesday, 3 December 2025

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:51): (2210) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Ports and Freight. The government recently published Victoria Delivers: Victorian Freight Plan 2025–30. It is a nice shiny document with a bunch of nice shiny statements contained within it and some pretty nice pictures too. This document was apparently drafted with input from a wide range of stakeholders, and it says many of the kind of things that you would expect: freight is really important; many of the products that Victorians buy come from overseas, and a large portion of these come through our ports; and 3 million containers per year are handled by the Port of Melbourne. But there is one aspect of this report that I want to focus on: the rail freight network. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the South Dandenong rail freight intermodal terminal. This represents a vision for future productivity and efficiency for freight in the south-east. When completed, it should offer the opportunity both for importers and exporters to more rapidly shift containers to the ports. The government mentions this project throughout all kinds of strategy documents going back years, and this is exactly the type of investment and innovation that will be needed both to keep Victoria competitive and to deliver on the stated objectives of the government’s own freight strategy. But as frequently happens in Victoria, after getting a clear picture of someone trying to build something amazing, I get the story of why it is not happening. It is the government, and it nearly always is.

It is quite depressing to stand there right on the ground where a sophisticated freight terminal is ready to be built, and look up and see the rail spur constructed, the signal lights switched on but the terminal not being built. I am told there are two key things holding back the completion of this project. One is certainty about freight pathways on the network. The other is the equalisation of charges for road and rail freight at the Port of Melbourne. Despite all of these various plans and strategy documents highlighting the need to shift more freight to rail for efficiency, for environmental reasons, to reduce the impact of road freight on our road network and to simply expand capacity, the investment is not happening. The reason it is not happening is that rail freight is currently penalised with higher charges, and this is holding back the investment that would complete the South Dandenong rail freight terminal. My request is for the minister to work with the port authority as soon as possible to equalise freight charges between road and rail and enable the investment to complete the Dandenong South project.