AITPM Technical Forum – 15 September 2004 RAA’s Response to Auslink At its meeting on 15 September, held at Transport SA, RAA Traffic and Safety Manager, Chris Thomson, gave a presentation to the SA Branch Technical Forum on the topic "RAA”s Response to Auslink". The session was attended by 22 members and friends. As is generally known in the industry, Auslink is the new national transportation funding policy agreement between the federal government and the states, launched in June 2004. South Australia was set to receive $391 million of nearly $8 billion allocated in the first round of funding, representing a 4.9% share. It was felt in most circles within South Australia, that this state got a pretty poor deal, considering we had nearly 8% of the population. The RAA, in particular, took up the challenge to try to get an improved deal for SA, and Chris gave an insight into the ‘behind the scenes’ activities that go into mounting such a campaign. The RAA formed an alliance with the South Australian Road Transport Association, the Freight Council of SA and the Committee for Adelaide Roads, and together they mounted a campaign with activities on two fronts – a public campaign to muster the support of the general population, together with intensive lobbying of both the federal ministers and their opposition counterparts. They also worked closely with the Department of Transport and Urban Planning, to ensure that their claims and cost estimates ‘were in the right ball park’. The first part of the public campaign consisted of the placement of full page advertisements, together with a mail out of over 200,000 postcards, from which they received nearly 50,000 returns, which was a great response from the public. Federal Ministers, opposition shadow ministers, and candidates in the SA marginal seats were lobbied to great effect. The cause was no doubt helped with the announcement of the federal election (but that was always coming – it was just a matter of when), together with the presence of three or four marginal seats in SA. However, having 50,000 responses from the public no doubt posed a very real political threat. The campaign paid dividends with the Federal Coalition announcing on 15 September (the same day as our Technical Forum!) that SA would receive an additional $118 million out of the additional $290 million that was to be distributed nationally. This represented over 40% of the additional funds, and brought the allocation to South Australia to a much more equitable share. Chris’s presentation gave an insight into the behind the scenes activities that are an integral part mounting a campaign such as this. It is an aspect that most engineers and practitioners would not see, and for this reason, was a most interesting presentation.

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