Assuring Safety ‘So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable’ An Evaluation of the Rail Safety National Law 2012 and Its Ability to Secure Management of Risks to Safety in Operating Railway Environments - Anthony Bernard RALPH
Australian rail safety is governed by the Rail Safety National Law 2012 (RSNL), which imposes on rail transport operators (RTOs) a duty to manage risks to safety ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’ (SFAIRP). Despite the RSNL’s national harmonisation objectives and its integrated legislative framework, the operationalisation of SFAIRP remains persistently contested. Regulators and operators interpret the standard inconsistently, and the statutory duty’s interaction with the 30-element Safety Management System (SMS) architecture prescribed by Schedule 1 to the Rail Safety National Law National Regulations (RSNLNR) has received no systematic scholarly examination.
This thesis investigates how Australia’s RSNL conceptualises, operationalises, and enforces the SFAIRP standard across three research questions addressing: (1) the statutory architecture and its doctrinal foundations; (2) how SFAIRP is interpreted and implemented in practice by RTOs and the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR); and (3) the gaps and challenges that emerge from this operationalisation and the insights they provide. The research employs a critical realist epistemology and a three-phase sequential design integrating doctrinal legal analysis, qualitative empirical inquiry, and an international comparative benchmarking study.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with the groups of persons identified in Section 99 (3) of the RSNL who must be consulted whenever an accredited RTO seeks to have its Safety Management System (SMS) reviewed or varied and ONRSR officers, supplemented by documentary analysis and international comparison with UK, EU, and Canadian frameworks, the study will generate the first systematic empirical evidence base on SFAIRP operationalisation in the Australian rail sector. The thesis introduces the SFAIRP Reasoning Model (SRM), an original analytical framework developed through abductive synthesis of empirical findings, statutory architecture, and five complementary theoretical perspectives.
Findings are expected to demonstrate that RTOs treat Schedule 1 SMS elements as discrete compliance requirements rather than as an integrated safety reasoning system, and to provide evidence-based insights for regulatory guidance, industry practice, and legislative refinement. The thesis contributes to scholarship on performance-based regulation in high-hazard industries and offers a transferable methodological innovation in the 30-element scan.
Presenter: Anthony Bernard RALPH
Supervisors: Associate Professor Prafula Pearce and Dr Haydn Rigby
Where: CC.1S.468 and MS Teams
When: Thursday, 21st May 2026 at 12:00pm (AWST)