National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy

Introduction
The recent combination of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic has made us, as a nation, acutely aware of the essential role of the freight and logistics industry.

The National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy provides a strong foundation for the excellent partnerships formed with industry and governments and will continue to be strengthened as we reflect on progress made.

The Freight Industry Reference Panel was created to provide Infrastructure and Transport Ministers with an independent industry perspective on the Strategy’s delivery and industry a clear line of sight on actions being undertaken through the Strategy.

This survey will support the Panel in developing this advice by gathering industry views on progress. Feedback from this survey will be published as part of the Strategy’s annual report.

Each year the survey aims to gauge:

Awareness of the action areas
Whether you consider governments are working on ‘the right things’ to deliver results and
How well you think the actions are progressing.

This year, the Panel is also seeking broader industry views on:

Reflections on the Strategy and ongoing lessons learned from COVID
The burden of unnecessary freight-related regulation
Innovation across the sector
Community attitudes to freight.

Relevant documents, including the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy and National Action Plan, that may assist you in answering the following questions can be found at www.freightaustralia.gov.au. This questionnaire should take no longer than 20 minutes to complete.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire.

Regards,

John Fullerton

Chair

Freight Industry Reference Panel

QUESTIONS 1-5

Questions 1 to 5 relate specifically to the four ‘critical action areas’. For the first four questions, we are interested in understanding your awareness of the Strategy’s four critical action areas and your views on whether they are progressing well.

You will be asked to rate each against three things:

Awareness: How aware you are of any associated projects under this action area (0 – not at all aware; 5 – very aware),
Targeted: To what extent you believe government actions are targeting the ‘right thing’ to meet the broad policy objective (0 – actions are working against the intended objective; 5 – will fully meet the intended objective),
Progression: How well you think government actions have progressed (0 – haven’t progressed at all; 5 – are well on track and/or complete).

Question 5 gives you the opportunity to identify other measures you want governments to consider.

Q1: Action Area 1: Smarter and targeted investment

	0	1	2	3	4	5	N/A
Awareness
Targeted
Progression

Q2: Action Area 2: Enable improved supply chain efficiency

	0	1	2	3	4	5	N/A
Awareness
Targeted
Progression

Q3: Action Area 3: Better planning, regulation and coordination

	0	1	2	3	4	5	N/A
Awareness
Targeted
Progression

Q4: Action Area 4: Better freight location and performance data

	0	1	2	3	4	5	N/A
Awareness
Targeted
Progression

Q5: Drawing on lessons learned over the COVID pandemic and natural disasters, do you have any broad reflections on the four ‘pillars’ / action areas of the Strategy, or new action items you want governments to pursue under the existing four pillars?

QUESTIONS 6-8

The next three questions focus on the collection and publication of freight data.

Q6: How important do you think it is for governments to collect better freight data in a timely manner to assist decision making?

	0 (not at all important)	1	2	3	4	5 (very important)	N/A
Strategic or historical data (>1 month old)
Near real time data

Q7: Of government data which can be made publicly available, how would you prefer governments to publish it: Access to rich APIs exposing granular data which I can transform and add to my own datasets OR Curated products such as dashboards and visualisations where I can identify trends and download aggregated data as an Excel spreadsheet

	APIs	Mainly APIs, some visualisations	Both equally important	Mainly visualisations, some API	Visualisations	N/A
Preference

Q8: How willing are you and/or your organisation to provide data to government which would assist decision making?

	0 (not at all)	1	2	3	4	5 (very willing)	N/A
Strategic or historical data (>1 month old)
Near real time data

Comments

QUESTIONS 9-16

The last group of questions seek your views on a range of issues affecting supply chains.

The questions relate to the six intended outcomes of the Strategy, including resiliency, fit-for-purpose regulation and community acceptance of freight operations.

Q9: Looking forward, what is the biggest challenge to the ongoing resiliency of your supply chains?

Q10: The Strategy aims to achieve ‘fit for purpose’ regulation that balances efficiency with safety, security and sustainability. From your point of view, which are the areas that incur the biggest cost/time burden on the freight sector that should be improved? (specific examples encouraged)

Q11: The Strategy encourages industry to pursue innovative solutions to meet freight demand. Over the past 12 months, how would you rate the level of innovation in your business / sector?

	0 (none at all / BAU)	1	2	3	4	5 (leading the way)	N/A
Innovation

Comments (specific examples encouraged. If you provide an example of innovation, and are willing to be contacted about the possibility of it being included as a feature item on the freightaustralia.gov.au website, please email freightstrategy@infrastructure.gov.au).

Q12: What are the biggest barriers to innovation or digitisation in the freight sector?

Q13: The Strategy promotes an informed understanding and acceptance of freight operations. COVID-19 has assisted in this regards, with more Australians appreciating the essential nature of freight and supply chains. Over the past 12 months, how would you rate the change in community acceptance?

	0 (significantly worsened)	1	2	3	4	5 (significantly improved)	N/A
Innovation

Q14: Has your organisation undertaken specific activities in the past 12 months to improve community acceptance of freight operations?

Advertisements (radio, tv, print, social media,etc)Grants / funding for community programs/assetsSponsorship for community activities (e.g.fares, sporting events, etc)Workshops, Community consultation groups/panelsOther

Q15: Are there any other comments/suggestions you would like to make?

Q16: Lastly, are you completing this survey as (select one):

National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy – 2021 Stakeholder Survey