Webinar: Best-Practice Approaches to Road Freight and Communities

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 will 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.

There will be a live Q&A at the end of the session to have your questions answered.

Drew Gaynor, Principal Consultant with Level 5 Design, provides transport advice independently to government and the private sector. Drew has 23 years of government and private sector experience in all modes of transport with particular reference to freight. He was Director of Freight and Logistics at the Western Australia Department of Transport before moving to Main Roads Western Australia undertaking strategic policy and planning projects in the Heavy Vehicle Services and Network Operations divisions. He then took up a position at ARRB as the Principal - Transport Systems undertaking several heavy vehicle access related projects.

Anthony Fisk is a director at CGM Communications – a Perth-based consultancy delivering strategic communications across community, government and media. CGM specialises in social license campaigns and has worked on a number of significant infrastructure projects within the government and private sectors. Anthony has been working in senior corporate affairs, issues management and stakeholder engagement roles for the past 20 years and provided communications counsel to some of WA’s leading firms in the mining, education, property, utilities, technology and local government sectors.

Christina Chin has been pivotal to the delivery of several heavy vehicle road freight and guideline development projects in Australia and overseas. She is now the State Manager (Victoria)/Principal Consultant for Level 5 Design. Christina has been in the transport research industry for 15 years and has extensive experience undertaking road research and industry consultation.

Jack Doyle is CGM’s assistant researcher. He has an avid interest in public policy analysis and research, which he applies to provide in-depth analytical information and support to CGM’s teams and clients.

No charge but registration is essential. Can’t make the live session? Register and we’ll send you a link to the recording.

Register now!