Freight

The freight industry is critical to the Australian and New Zealand economies. It comprises road, rail, sea and air transportation including supporting services such as warehousing, storage, freight forwarding and customs brokerage for both domestic and international trade.

As the freight task grows and perceptions of its impact increases, governments face increased community pressure that can lead to restrictions on freight operations. This creates the need for communication campaigns towards the community on the significance and value of freight whilst understanding and addressing possible community concerns.

Austroads commissioned research on ‘Best-Practice Approaches to Road Freight and Communities’ to develop guidelines for best-practice strategies and supporting materials for national, state/territory and local road managers to communicate the importance of freight to the community.

To reflect the different types of campaigns that road managers may consider, the project developed a communication strategy incorporating three levels of campaigns:

• The Tier One (Broad Campaign) is pitched at a high level such as national, state/territory or regional campaigns. It is broad based with generic messages of the significance and value of freight.
• The Tier Two (Localised Campaign) is aimed at more localised or specific freight issues such as a re-routing of trucks through an area or a proposed major new route to be developed. Whilst localised, it may cover several local municipalities across a city or several regional towns.
• The Tier Three (Local Government Campaign) is a specialised campaign for local governments to use to promote freight or explain associated impacts within a local municipality.

In this webinar, Drew Gaynor, Anthony Fisk, Christina Chin and Jack Doyle present the key findings of the review, focusing on:

• The importance of the Social Licence to Operate concept.
• The development of the communications strategy encompassing the three levels of campaigns.
• The ‘toolkits’ developed to guide road managers on the necessary steps required to undertake a campaign and the communication tools to inform and engage with the community.

The presentation slides can be downloaded from the supporting documents tab after logging in.