Source: Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand
Today’s announcement by Transport Minister Chris Bishop that the government is taking three steps to keep our freight system “trucking along” has been met with cautious optimism by national road freight association Transporting New Zealand.
Chief Executive Dom Kalasih said that while the announcement was positive news, the Government’s target to double the value of New Zealand’s exports in 10 years meant that ambitious freight reforms were essential.
“Transporting New Zealand is concerned about whether this announcement will deliver the transformative changes we need and how long they will take to implement.”
“If the Government wants to meet its export goals, we need larger, more productive trucks on the road, and heavy vehicle driver licensing reform that help address long standing skills shortages. This can be achieved through the Government’s ongoing land transport rule reform programme – we just need the timeframes moved up.”
Transporting New Zealand is also welcoming the refresh of the National Freight Demand Study. The freight association raised concerns with the Minister when the work was paused by Ministry of Transport earlier in the year.
Demand studies had previously included data on mode share between road, rail and coastal shipping, and inter-regional freight flows.
“The Government is currently relying on pre-COVID freight data (2017/2018) to inform transport investment, so an update is well overdue.” says Kalasih.
“Having up-to-date mode share data will also show whether the significant investment into rail over the past few years has resulted in yielded any results, or whether it shows that road has extended its competitive advantage.”
“Despite best efforts and significant financial support to increase rail freight activity, there’s been a steady decline in rail freight of about 20 percent over the last 5 years. KiwiRail’s FY2023 freight target was 4.36 billion net tonne kilometres, but its actual activity in FY2025 was only 3.37 billion net tonne kilometres.”
“In order to handle the forecast 55 per cent growth in freight over the next 20 years, the Government needs to be ensuring value for money from transport investment, across road, rail, and coastal shipping.”
“The Minister of Transport has a great opportunity to show some leadership and put rail on notice – all freight investment needs to produce results.”
Kalasih said that the establishment of the Freight Advisory Council could also be useful, particularly if it replaced some of the current transport stakeholder groups.
“Let’s keep the Council focussed on a few priority issues, and hold ourselves to account on the results.”
