Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Last night on 7.30 families of delivery drivers told harrowing stories of the unreasonable demands Tip Top made on their contract drivers. One family of a driver told how one night after returning to work after having a lung removed he called in sick but was told he was under contract, so he drove until he had to give up work altogether and died later that year. Why did the Prime Minister abolish the independent Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and put nothing in its place to ensure safe and fair conditions for contract drivers?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, so called, set up at the behest of the Transport Workers Union, put 50,000 owner-drivers off the road—very cosy for the big union and big trucking companies.

Mr Albanese interjecting—

It is absolutely true. The member for Grayndler says it isn't true. He should have met some of those owner-drivers. We all did. He should get out more and meet people who are battling in their small family business to make a living. We take the safety of all road users, including truck drivers, very seriously. That's why we're investing $75 billion in infrastructure from this year, over the next decade, including in a number of programs that specifically target road safety. We listened to the owner-drivers. We spoke to hundreds of them, but there were thousands involved—small trucking businesses who were put out of work by the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, which we were able to abolish, another great step and a great advance that our government has taken to put small business first. We have also provided an additional $4 million a year, which Labor had allocated to this anti-family-business tribunal, to progress practical initiatives that will improve the safety of the heavy vehicle industry. They include improving the education responsibility, improving heavy vehicle monitoring, funding for research into heavy vehicle driver fatigue to inform the development of future fatigue arrangements, safer freight networks in high-risk areas, black spots, national heavy vehicle safety and productivity, and bridges renewal programs.

We are committed to safer roads and we're committed to backing safe trucking and safety for family businesses and truckers, whether they're working for themselves or for big companies. We're putting the resources in to back that. Labor set out to put 50,000 families out of business and, had it not been for the Senate voting to abolish that tribunal, those families would be out of work and on the breadline. That's Labor's approach to enterprise and hardworking Australian families. The alternative is what we do, which is to put more money into the pockets of hardworking Australian families, backing investment, backing jobs and backing enterprise. Labor hates that because, as he said to the BCA, he thinks a class war is just the ticket. Well, it's the ticket to disaster for Australia.