Regional Coal: Canberra bids for control of Australian ports to ease export bottlenecks

The federal government wants to take control of some of Australia's ports from individual states, in an attempt to reduce delays to valuable export shipments, AFP reported.

Prime Minister John Howard said proposals for a single regulator of export ports will be on the agenda at next month's Council of Australian Governments meeting, which groups the federal and the state and territory governments.

The proposal was raised Wednesday by Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson. He cited delays to exports such as those at Queensland's Dalrymple Bay coal terminal, where earlier this month 40 ships were queued up to load coal.

The Queensland Competition Authority took 20 months to sort out a dispute over port charges that delayed investment in new facilities there.

"For the whole supply chain to work properly... we can't have a major weak link right at the end of the chain," Anderson told reporters, citing problems also with the expansion of Sydney's Port Botany.

Howard told ABC radio Thursday the government does not want to take over the ports, particularly not those that were privately operated.

But the 20-month delay in sorting out the Dalrymple Bay dispute was clearly too long and a single regulatory authority could help smooth operations.

"I would like to talk to the states... and if we could reach agreement on a cooperative arrangement concerning a single stream of regulation then I think that would be better," Howard said.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has said the delays hit the balance of payments by robbing the country of export income. Demand for Australian commodities like coal and iron ore, especially from China, has been soaring along with prices.

In his budget earlier this month Costello forecast a current account deficit of 48 billion dollars (36.5 billion US, equal to 5.25 percent of GDP) for the 2005-6 fiscal year.

State governments were taken by surprise and criticised the way Anderson disclosed the plan.

Victoria's Transport Minister Peter Batchelor said it could not have come at a worse time for the Port of Melbourne.

"We are on the threshold of making very substantial announcements about investments, future investments," Batchelor said.

"To make those sort of announcements they require certainty and I think John Anderson's announcement runs the risk of actually causing the delay he's trying to prevent and we'll be pointing that out to John Anderson when he contacts us."

Queenland Transport Minister Paul Lucas accused the federal government of taking a "big stick" approach to the problem instead of coming up with money for infrastructure.

The Northern Territory government rejected any plans to take control of Darwin's port. The territory's Business and Industry Minister Paul Henderson said the federal government had shown little interest in the port in the past.

But the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the plan for regulation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

"We've got issues about exports, we've got issues about infrastructure and we need the most efficient regulatory structure we can get so that we can have the exports and the infrastructure that we want to boost the Australian economy," said chamber chief executive officer Peter Hendy.

Mitch Hooke, from the Minerals Council of Australia, said the move would boost investment and confidence in Australian exports.

Australia began the era of European settlement as a series of separate British colonies which federated in 1901. States still guard their powers jealously, sometimes to the detriment of infrastructure.

It took a century for all states to accept a common railway gauge.(*)