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FACT SHEET
Rail Safety Bill 2009
� The purpose of the Bill is to introduce best practice and nationally consistent rail safety
legislation.
� Rail safety regulation in Australia is based on co-regulation. The key characteristics of
the `co-regulatory' approach are that rail industry participants accept accountability for
achieving required safety outcomes in return for the flexibility to identify and implement
the most effective and efficient means of addressing risks to safety.
� Under the Inter-Governmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in
Road, Rail and Intermodal Transport, the National Transport Commission (NTC)
developed nationally consistent model legislation to improve and strengthen the co-
regulatory system for rail safety. The model legislation was approved by
Commonwealth, State and Territory Transport Ministers in June 2006.
� Tasmania has agreed to implement the model rail safety legislation by the end of 2009 in
accordance with the Council of Australian Government's timetable.
� The Rail Safety Bill 2009 does not fundamentally alter the existing approach to rail
safety regulation in Tasmania provided through the Rail Safety Act 1997 and supporting
regulations. Rather it builds on the existing co-regulatory approach through the
implementation of a number of regulatory best practices.
� The major elements of the Rail Safety Bill 2009 include:
- General duties that require all rail industry participants that form the `chain of
responsibility' to ensure the safety of their railway operations.
- A system of accreditation to provide assurance that rail organisations have the
competency and capacity to operate safely before they are permitted to do so.
- Audit and inspection powers necessary to enable the Rail Safety Regulator to monitor
the compliance of duty holders with statutory duties and related accreditation
requirements.
- A hierarchy of compliance and enforcement powers and sanctions to facilitate an
effective and proportionate regulatory response to detected forms of non-compliance
by rail organisations and other persons.
- An array of checks and balances on regulator behaviour is included to ensure that
regulatory decision-making processes are timely, transparent and nationally
consistent.
- An obligation on road authorities to develop and implement an interface co-ordination
plan with the rail organisation with which the road authority has interfaces in the form
of road and rail intersections.
- An obligation for rail organisations to have and implement security management
plans and emergency management plans as part of their safety management system.
- An obligation on rail organisations to assess the competency of rail safety workers
with reference to recognised units of competence or qualifications and to maintain
records of competency of rail safety workers.
- Mandatory reporting and publishing requirements.