National Freight & Supply Chain Strategy

To position Australia to meet its emerging freight and supply chain challenges, Commonwealth, state and territory infrastructure and transport ministers endorsed the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy (Strategy) and National Action Plan (Action Plan) in August 2019. The Strategy and Action Plan set an agenda for integrated national action across all freight modes over the next 20 years and beyond. The Strategy and Action Plan can be found at www.freightaustralia.gov.au.

Developed by all Australian governments with extensive input from industry, the Strategy commits to national action in four critical areas:

  • smarter and targeted infrastructure
  • enable improved supply chain efficiency
  • better planning, coordination and regulation
  • better freight location and performance data

2023 Review of the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy

When the Strategy was established in 2019, it was the first time governments agreed to a national foundation for improving the efficiency, effectiveness and reliability of Australian supply chains. However, over the past few years, supply chains have experienced ongoing and compounding disruptions of the scale never envisaged when the Strategy was being developed.

While the foundation of the Strategy remain strong, infrastructure and transport ministers agreed to bring forward the first five-year review of the Strategy from 2024 to 2023 to ensure it remains fit for purpose and is delivering on its objectives. The 2023 Review was a targeted review and it:

  • Assessed if there are gaps in the Strategy’s goals to ensure the Strategy remains relevant, such as decarbonisation, supply chain resilience and drawing on lessons learned following significant disruptions (such as floods, bushfires, pandemics, and global impacts).
  • Considered the performance of Strategy to date and priorities for the next five-year National Action Plan focussing on nationally significant actions for coordinated implementation across jurisdictions.
  • Proposed a small number of national, data-driven and high impact national key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor implementation of the Strategy over the next five years.

The Review Report outlined the key findings and made 6 recommendations. The Review Report can be accessed at the link below.

Next Steps

The refreshed Strategy and new 5-year National Action Plan are currently being developed in line with the recommendations made in the Review Report. It’s anticipated they will be provided to infrastructure and transport ministers in 2024.

To learn more about the 2023 Review, please visit www.freightaustralia.gov.au/2023-review.

Freight data

The Commonwealth has committed to establishing a National Freight Data Hub, including arrangements for data collection, protection, dissemination and hosting. See the National Freight Data Hub page for the latest information.

To inform the development of the National Freight Data Hub, the Australian Government commissioned the iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre to review the freight data needs for industry and government, and how better data could improve operational and planning decision-making in the freight sector. The iMOVE report can be found below.