Public Statement — National Freight Data Hub

The Freight Industry Reference Panel welcomes the Australian Government’s 2021-22 Budget commitment of $16.5 million to establish a National Freight Data Hub. We view the Hub as a critical enabler of the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy’s commitment to improve freight location and performance data.

As we emphasised in our independent statement on progress last year, accurate, timely and comparable data are essential to achieving current actions.

The Panel encourages all levels of government and industry to work together to support the objectives of the National Freight Data Hub. We need consistent data collection to create high quality datasets to measure freight movements by mode through supply chains. For this to be achieved, both governments and industry will need to ensure the task is well-resourced and coordinated.

We also call on governments to use the National Freight Data Hub and other data available to them to provide a baseline for national action areas under the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy so that progress can be tracked over time.

We look forward to seeing this important project develop as it will help ratchet up ambition and deliver real results through the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy.

For more information on the Freight Data Hub, visit the prototype website.