Climate change and environmental sustainability have become increasingly significant in Australia. Greater pressure is placed on Australian transport operators, including the rail industry, to address these crucial public concerns. Holding this view, the CRC for Rail Innovation commissioned the Environmental Regulations Pertaining to Rail project to determine the impact and costs of the current lack of harmonisation with respect to legislation and regulation pertaining to the environmental performance of the Australian rail sector.

Key findings of the Environmental Regulations Pertaining to Rail: Towards a Case for Change Preliminary Report (Phase 1) are outlined below.

• There is a need for harmonisation in three areas: (1) the structure of environmental legislation (the framework); (2) the administration or regulatory processes; and (3) the actual prescriptive regulations.
• There is little information regarding the nature and extent of inconsistencies in environmental legislation and regulation that impact on Australian railway operations. The Commonwealth, State and Territory governments each have the power to regulate in three major areas of the railway business: structural reform, access and safety (accreditation) regulations. Various levels of regulatory reform have been undertaken in each of these areas. Environmental regulation is a fourth area impacting on railway operations, although no investigation of regulatory harmonisation has been undertaken to date.
• From the interviews conducted, inconsistencies between State environmental regulations clearly have a negative economic impact on the industry, particularly with regard to the State regulation of noise. Industry participants from the following organisations were interviewed: Pacific National, Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), QR, RailCorp, and Rio Tinto Iron Ore.
• Harmonisation of regulation is ultimately about two issues: (1) administrative efficiency (i.e. reducing paperwork through consistent processes within consistent frameworks), and (2) improving environmental regulations (consistency in practice) as a means to optimise economic benefits.
• Harmonisation of environmental regulations could potentially be achieved by the following means:
• • Strengthening industry’s calls for more optimal government frameworks, processes and regulations.
  • Strengthening industry’s capacity to self-regulate by moving beyond quantitative regulatory targets.
  • Working toward overcoming industry fragmentation through appropriate forms of industry cooperation on the matter of regulation.
• The ability of industry participants to work through the issues collaboratively within the industry and, later, with appropriate regulators will determine the degree of success in any change initiatives. Greater involvement of the industry in the policy formation process is required.