Rural Australia

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 20, 2008

Ben Doherty

AUSTRALIA'S states should be abolished because they can't agree on anything, while differing laws over areas as diverse as road rules, rail gauges and genetic engineering were cruelling Australia's rural economy, the 2020 Summit heard yesterday.

While he wouldn't acquiesce to dispensing with the apparatus of states, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said jurisdictions within Australia squabbling over how many trailers a truck could carry was "barking mad". He committed his government to addressing the generations-old arguments and said the larger issue of state co-operation needed to be addressed.

Former National Party leader and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, who is co-chairing the rural stream of the summit, said examples of inefficiency caused by disagreement between states were rife.

"If you drive a road train down National Highway 1 from Darwin, you have to stop and disconnect one trailer and leave it at that border in the middle of nowhere near Cunnanurra before you can legally proceed into Western Australia.

"You then have to send another rig back to pick up that trailer because Western Australia says a maximum two trailers and the Northern Territory a maximum three on that same federal highway." -- BEN DOHERTY

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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