Re: [Vic]Report confirms open access fears

["Rod [comtrain]" <freight_man@hotmail.com>]

Actually the bad smell is coming from the Bracks Goernment!
If you need to spend $200 millions to upgrade the crappy track Kennett
handed over to Freight Australia, you also need to set the access charges at
a rate that enables you to get a just return in a reasonable time frame. The
Victorian Government is hell bent on allowing the Losing bidder, that is
Wiscon Central. an unfair advantage, by setting unreasonably low access
charges.
This will allow many interested Companies to bid on the profitable traffic,
as well as the not so profitable.
If you as an operator decided to cut your rates to the bone, and were able
to win all the wheat contracts. Freight Australia would be expected to
continue to service all the unprofitable trains.
Of course they would soon go broke, call in the recievers, and Victoria's
name would be mud all over the World, as far as Foriegn Investors are
concerned.
Freight Australia, need to control their tracks. They can only charge what
the market will bear, and their charges WILL reflect the highly subsidised
Road transport competition. I think Bracks will back down, if Freight
Australia will not upgrade the tracks, who will...... Victorian Government?
.......Australian Government?
maybe Paul Moore or ATN ??
They should butt out! They leased the Railways off for 40 years, they are
not paying for it, so they have no more right to intimidate their operators,
than you or I do.Freight Australia have continued to run almost all of the
Services they inherited, and grown the business about 40%. They have
Victorias Country Freight System in the BLACK, which has never been done
before. Victorias rail system has a very limited life without maintenance,
and more importantly, the cash to upgrade the lines. My conservative
estimate, is we have less than 5 years to fix them up, and the major
derailments are almost upon us now..so get your cameras ready.
Rod [comtrain]

Anthony Morton <amorton@mudguard.ee.mu.oz.au> wrote in message
9au6vf$a3p$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU">news:9au6vf$a3p$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU...
> >http://www.theage.com.au/business/2001/04/09/FFX9C8FO9LC.html
> >
> >[....]
> >
> >Three commission reports found that national competition policy had gone
too
> >far and could prevent firms building new infrastructure crucial for
> >long-term prosperity.
> >
> >Commission chairman Gary Banks warned that the quality of Australia's
> >infrastructure was at risk if the Federal Government did not
substantially
> >water down the regulatory regime imposed on assets worth more than $100
> >billion. "It is important to have an effective regulatory framework for
> >essential infrastructure services," Mr Banks said. "But regulations
should
> >avoid promoting competition and lower prices at the expense of the
necessary
> >investment in this important area. Otherwise consumers could eventually
> >become worse off."
>
> So let me get this straight.
>
> Ten years ago these Productivity Commission people were urging
deregulation
> on us in order to increase competition and get the economy working on
perfect
> competitive free market principles.
>
> Now they're urging deregulation on us because governments have apparently
> been _too_ successful in encouraging competition.  So deregulation wasn't
> meant to give us a competitive free market after all.
>
> Does anyone else detect a bad smell here?
>
> TM
>