Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with pleasure to reflect on the decision of the Senate in the last few moments, voting 36 to 32, to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. What is this tribunal about? Well, the one thing we know it was not about was safety on roads. We know that already there is in place a National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, an instrumentality and a person highly respected in the industry. In fact, if the then Labor government under Ms Gillard as the Prime Minister had been more interested in safety, they would have been more interested in working through the Heavy Vehicle Regulator to be able to achieve what all of us in this place and in this country know to be a very high priority, and that is the highest level of safety on the roads.

But this is not related to safety at all, as has been eloquently stated by many people in this place and outside it. This was simply a barefaced attempt by the then Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, to pay back the labour unions that were supporting her in 2011 and to give them a tribunal which would force the end of owner-drivers—the 34,000 or 35,000 owner-drivers who are the backbone of the heavy transport industry in this country. They would have been forced into one of three circumstances: bankruptcy, becoming an employee of one of the larger companies, or having to themselves attempt to become a larger employer.

In an article recently, Ms Grace Collier eloquently gave the example of a small transport person moving livestock around rural areas, charging, for example, about $140 to $150 to pick up a load of sheep to take them to a market or bring them back from the market. As of 4 April, what we actually saw was a circumstance in which, by law, that man would not be charging about $170; he would have to charge about $740 as an owner-driver. What would the farmer do? He would dispense with his services. And do you know what the interesting thing would be if that farmer then engaged the services of a trucking company with a truck being driven by an employee? Do you know the sort of fee he would be charged? The original $174. Just try and explain that to me—somebody on the other side—how the person who has been doing those deliveries for that time for that price would now be having to charge some $700 when indeed the farmer could go to a trucking company with an employee driver. Where is the increase in safety in that exercise? Can someone explain to me how it is all of a sudden a lot more safe if the first guy now charges $740 rather than $170, but the employee—the employed driver—can charge the same figure as the original and he would be back in the game? All this was an attempt—as we eloquently learnt this morning when I participated in the rally and the transit of trucks from the showgrounds into Parliament House—at getting rid of owner-drivers: nothing more, nothing less and it was shameful.

We now have a wonderful situation, as somebody said this morning when he looked around that crowd. He said, 'I see people in this crowd who are day-to-day intense competitors, but here they are today faced with the loss of their industry, the loss of their homes, the loss of their properties, the loss of their trucking and the loss of their businesses—they want to come together to improve the industry.' Let us do so. Let us use this new wave of enthusiasm and optimism across the industry to be able to achieve the increases we need.

People speak of safety in the industry and the best figures available to us are that some 85 per cent of major events or incidents involving trucks—accidents et cetera—are not the fault of the truck driver. Let us put that to one side for a moment in dispensing with this nonsense that this argument is about safety. Let us build on it. I was absolutely privileged this morning to be in the company of a Mr Ian Haig, a trucking contractor from Tongala and Wagga, and also to meet a Mr and Mrs Baker. They were absolutely full of the information that they were able to give me. And I said to them, 'How do we improve safety standards, because they are so important?' They said to me, 'This is the point, Chris: first of all, in many instances the trucking companies now use contractors to undertake their maintenance.' I asked the question: is it not possible to have a licensing system in place so that those service companies—the maintenance companies charged with responsibility of maintaining those trucks—are not themselves licenced and are the subject of independent audit to make sure that the standards are so high that when a truck comes out of their maintenance facility it is ready to go on the roads and it is safe? It was suggested to the industry the other day that the trucking companies and the owner operators should in fact be going over their own trucks after they have been the subject of a $150 per hour servicing, just to check it. That is not what we should be doing. And secondly, as a part of that, we know that we have a very high level of regulation but the drivers will tell you that those of them who are out on the roads, the inspectors, are often not focusing on where the important areas are. They are not focusing, for example, on driver behaviour. They are not focusing on log books. Put those inspectors into the maintenance facilities on ad hoc and changing bases so you do not get the friendships between the service organisation and the inspectors and have those inspectors make sure the maintenance operators are in fact doing the work that is required.

We have a circumstance with log books: this morning when I jumped in the truck at half past five, quarter to six, the fellow spent the first five minutes filling in bits of paper on a spreadsheet. I said, 'What are you doing'? He said, 'That is my log book.' He tried to tell me what he was doing; he was trying to explain. I said, 'And why isn't all this being done electronically?' We know when we go to a restaurant now the attendant takes our order on a small laptop or an iPad. Why in heaven's name are we using something as antiquated as an old pen and paper system with logbooks?

We do not want drivers driving when they are too tired. I speak as a fleet owner when I had a fuel industry business in Tasmania. I brought the first fuel industry B-double—a 60,000 litre B-double, rigid and quad dog combination—into that state. How interested do you think I was in safety? How interested do you think I was to make sure that my trucks, my drivers, my maintenance, my tyres were at the absolute highest level? That is what the industry wants and that is the direction in which we need to be going.

It is such a shame that we have had the vitriol and the arguments that we have had in this place, because had the Senate not bravely made the decision that it did tonight—and I thank those on the crossbench for joining the government—we were going to end up in this country with eight or nine large trucking companies, and at that point of course the customer base would be at the mercy of those organisations. I also refer to a statement today by the head of transport for the Toll organisation in the Australian Financial Reviewin which he made the point that they are the largest logistics transport company in this country. The points he made were interesting: first of all, safety is at the absolute top of their priorities; secondly, he wants to see the abolition of this tribunal; and, thirdly, he wants to see a continuation of viable owner operators in the business. He was also saying the opportunity is there for the entire industry to come together.

I am privileged to be able to have access to the services of my friend and colleague Mr John Mitchell from Mitchell's Livestock Transport in Western Australia. He is an innovator. He is a person who has designed and has on the roads in Western Australia innovative vehicles for the purposes of livestock transport. He is a person who has been here in Parliament House. I have had him speaking to ministers and to others with his ideas about how we improve effectiveness, efficiency and productivity in the heavy transport industry. He said to me, 'Chris, the opportunity now exists for us to broaden our horizons, to come up with a model involving industry, involving operators, involving regulators, involving inspectors, involving unions, involving drivers.' Let us use this opportunity that we have been given tonight, in the climate of the exercises undertaken in the last few days by owner-operators who have been pushed so far to the back of the wall that it is already causing family discord—and we understand, in fact, that even a suicide or more has occurred as a result of this. My final reflection is on the fact that even the TWU said to Ms Gillard in 2011, 'We want to see some industry people on this tribunal,' and she said no. And more recently, the TWU said to the tribunal, 'Let us defer this until next year.' The tribunal said no. They deserve what they have got.