The Guardian 21 May, 2008
Grain growers needs neglected
Grain growers in the Liverpool plains region of NSW have been faced with a bleak future because of the prolonged drought that has hit that area and others in rural Australia until good rains fell some months ago giving rise to a bumper grain crop. With good prices expected for their crops there has been some degree of excitement in the air with the prospect that some of the farmers’ accumulated debt because of the drought might be repaid.
There are thousands of hectares of sun-ripened sorghum being harvested in readiness to be transported to the larger centres to be either shipped overseas or being used locally as sorghum is basically used for stock food. The good fortune of the farmers has changed somewhat when it came time to load their harvested crops into either rail or road transport, with now a shortage of road trucks to shift their grain.
Farmers are at desperation point as the backlog of grain gets bigger and bigger with no extra trucks available to shift it. The reason for the shortage of grain trucks is that transport companies are faced with increasing costs; for example the ever rising cost of diesel fuel along with other consumables like tyres.
Lets not forget the sharp rises in truck registration and insurances, some of which is payable to the state government. These extra costs to the trucking companies are forcing some of the larger operators to reduce their fleet size, causing the shortage of available trucks to haul the grain to the silos at the shipping terminals. It is sad to see that there isn’t the same amount of trains hauling grain through the Hunter Valley as there is coal.
The government has and is spending millions of dollars of taxpayers money upgrading the main north-western railway line between Newcastle and Gunnedah, in the state’s north west, in readiness for the extra volumes of coal that is predicted will travel through the Hunter Valley on its way to the export terminals in Newcastle. There would seem to be an endless supply of money available for the coal rail lines but rural rail lines appear to be in a bad way with little maintenance done and they are falling apart all to the delight of the trucking companies.
The heavy gauge rail lines throughout the Hunter Valley seem the most pampered to date with hundreds of millions planned to be spent to speed up the passage of coal freight to the port of Newcastle, One project set to happen soon is the laying of a 10.6 kilometre third rail line past the Whittingham junction to north Belford.
This area is a problem for the rail freight people as it is where the lines meet from the lower Hunter and upper Hunter minefields, causing a bottleneck. The cost to state taxpayers to fix this situation for the coal producers is just on $100 million — very generous indeed! As coal producers’ profits grow and more need for a speedier return time for the trains is required once again the taxpayers of the state are paying in one form or another for all this pandering to coal mining companies. It’s about time public money was spent where it is needed.