A little-known Federal Government report, given new prominence by a Senate inquiry, praises the trucking industry’s disaster response in the wake of Cyclone Yasi.
Recent Senate committee questioning has raised the have raised the profile of the Department of Agriculture’s Resilience in the Australian Food Supply Chain report.
By Rob McKay | June 4, 2012
A little-known Federal Government report, given new prominence by a Senate inquiry, praises the trucking industry’s disaster response in the wake of Cyclone Yasi.
The Senate is looking into the behaviour of the nation’s food processing sector but recent Senate committee questioning has raised the profile of the Department of Agriculture’s Resilience in the Australian Food Supply Chain report.
According to the department’s Assistant Secretary, Allen Grant, the report shows that “in broad terms, the [food distribution] system survived the floods quite well.
“The private sector in particular was well organised and well able to provide and distribute food in emergency circumstances.”
However, Grant qualified that by saying the system would struggle under multiple such emergencies.
Noting the “major challenge” raised by isolation of Queensland towns and the cutting of the Bruce Highway in many places, the report says: “The level of resilience was . . . high.
“In the event, food was delivered quickly and successfully.”
The contributing factors were dominated by the high-calibre problem-solving by transport operators and a cohesive collaboration between them and major supermarket chains:
These included:
- effective business continuity planning by the likes of Coles, Woolworths and Metcash
- capacity to source additional road fleet from NSW or from other industries
- well-developed communications networks between large food retailers and their transport providers and between operators and the Queensland Disaster Coordination Centre
- innovative routing, both in using inland routes and, in some cases, going off-road with farmers’ permission
- the huge additional effort by retailers, transport companies and other logistics providers, with up to 18-hour days worked during peak times.
Toll and Linfox were singled out for lending their expertise and cooperation with state disaster authorities.
Where road and rail were unable to be used the report noted retailers’ use of airfreight and seafreight
