Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will. I get emotional on this because this is my livelihood, as you know. I've got diesel running through my veins. I can't help this. I get so passionate. You gave them the thumb. You didn't vote for it. Senator Roberts, it's not right to say this is union folly. I've just gone off and announced who has been working on this for six or seven years. The whole transport industry united to come together to give us a safe, sustainable and viable transport industry.

I promised my colleagues I wouldn't speak for long on this. I'm going to park Senator Glenn Sterle, a Labor senator from Western Australia, over here. I'm going to park the same bloke, who is a proud life member of the Transport Workers' Union not because I've come through university and thought: This is a nice union. I want to join them.' It's because I was a truck driver. I still am a truck driver, ladies and gentlemen. Three generations of the Sterles are truck drivers. My son is still out there. Two weeks ago, I did a two-up run, a lovely 909 with three trailers to Broome, to keep my hand in. This is what I do. When other people are out gardening, I go truck-driving. I want to talk about Glenn Sterle, the owner-driver, in all my years, when I was at Ansett Wridgways, which was then gobbled up by TNT.

Let's talk about fuel. My wife and I lived through the Falklands War. Trust me, when I'm coming home from the Northern Territory and I heard that a war's broken out, my first reaction as a truck driver owner-driver was, 'My goodness me, what's that going to mean for my fuel bill and our fuel bill?' I lived and breathed that. Fortunately it didn't go on for long, but the first thing I did was get back to Perth. We didn't have mobile phones in those days. I put up a notice on the notice board, got all the owner-drivers together and said: 'Boys'—and they were all boys—'we're going to go in there, and we're going to dust up Ansett Wridways, because we ain't carting their freight up and down the highways to the goldfields, to the south-west, the eastern states, the north-west and the Northern Territory supplementing their clients. No damn way.' It was a pretty easy decision. It was either they pay us the fuel levy or we park the trucks up.

I still say that today. Why should the trucking industry—there were some contributions from over here. I know you're going to pull me up if I start mentioning some of the rubbish that came out of Senator McKenzie's mouth, so I won't say that. But I am someone who's paid the fuel bills and someone who understands what it means when you kiss the wife goodbye and the baby on the head while there's still the bill on the fridge—you know the magnet on the fridge, the finger with the ribbon tied? I'm talking to the truckies now. I am one of those of us who have actually been in small business. You can all answer for yourselves. I don't know what your background was. Mine's small business in the trucking industry. I know how darn painful it is as you're going up the highway and you're trying to navigate a bunch of other road trains and other users, while, in the back of your mind all the time, is: 'My goodness me, I haven't paid that bill because they haven't paid me. Ansett's been a bit slow.'

While I sit here and hear some of the rubbish that comes out today, I want to put the truckies' position there. I don't speak just for owner-drivers; I speak for every trucking company in this nation because 70 per cent of our industry is small- to medium-sized business. I still call it 'our industry' because I'm still a damn proud activist in this industry. We started with one truck, and then we had the opportunity to buy a second and third. That's what's made this nation so great—that truckies could drag themselves up by their bootlaces to become something in this nation.

But to listen to some of the diatribe that this is a union folly—this is what I heard earlier on, through you, Deputy President Brockman—and asking why small business should have to pay the way—well, what about us truckies who are small business? I say this with the greatest of respect, to my colleagues across the chamber: when you talk small business, do you know how insulting it is to us owner-drivers in the trucking industry, in small business, to hear that we don't matter but the corner shop matters or the shoe shop matters or the farmer matters, to hear, 'You truckies are not the same as small business, so why should we have to pay your fuel costs?' I have to get that off my chest because I've got a burning fire in here, and it's been here for 50-odd years. I will defend the trucking industry to my very last breath. Enough of the talk. Get this bill through. We're not the bank of Australia. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but someone has got to pay for our fuel costs.