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

It's timely that I speak on one of my favourite subjects. Everyone in this building knows—everyone knows!—my passion for the Australian transport industry and our supply chains. No-one would doubt where I'm coming from and no-one would ever say that I sneak up on them, because I've been coming for 46 years on this angle and I'm not changing now!

I want to talk about some anomalies, particularly on the east coast of Australia. I love the rail industry and I love shipping, when it has Australian seafarers and Australian ships—and there are those poor, exploited foreign seafarers who have finally caught up with their employers and will be paid properly; that's a good thing. We're an island and we rely on transport. I know that this industry is about nine per cent of GDP and that we're integral to every conversation in this nation. I say 'we' because I'm still a truck driver. I still run triple road trains between Perth and Kununurra, and all ports in between. I can't wait to escape here and get out there. I do it for charity; every single cent I earn is passed on to charities of my choice. I don't get to touch the money, and nor do I want to touch the money. My mates say, 'We're so short of truck drivers, if you help us out what charity do you want the money to go to?' A lot of it goes to victims of domestic violence in Aboriginal communities, helping out kids with sporting activities and helping out the old people by supplying them with used furniture—all free of charge. Everyone knows my history with the road transport industry, even up to today, and when I talk about the road transport industry my feet are firmly planted in those steel capped boots at the end of the Kenworth accelerator pedal. And I love every minute of it!

But I want to raise some anomalies while we're here. The average age of our truck drivers now is 53. Think about that: 53 years is the average age. I have to tell you that by the time the men and women out there with a steering wheel in their hands are 53, their bodies are starting to hurt at every angle. They're still sleeping in their trucks in the middle of the summer and still sleeping in their trucks in the middle of winter. Most of us haven't been to university. I say, quite proudly, that it's great for kids who want to, to go to university. I know that back in 1975 the two wasted years of my life were years 11 and 12, because I did not want to be there. I couldn't wait to follow in the footsteps of my father and become a long-distance truck driver. And I'm so proud to say that I didn't leave school, I escaped! A lot of our truckies did the same. And I'm so proud to say that my 32-year-old son is a triple-road-train operator. He's been pulling triple road trains now for 12 years, following in his old man's footsteps.

But I have to say that a lot of us didn't leave school because we were dumbos; a lot of us left school because we just wanted to get out and start working. A lot of us wanted to get into an industry where we could start making a living—where we could start carving out a living—where we could, for goodness sake, even start earning money! And mum couldn't wait for us to get out too, so she could charge us board! So I took this decision by the time I finally reached year 12 that I didn't want to be a brain surgeon, I didn't want to be an archaeologist or a—

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A lawyer?

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

Or a lawyer—although you need them now and again, especially in this job! And I didn't want to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. I followed in my old man's footsteps. But I want to raise a few things with you. There is nothing more important to our men and women in the road transport industry than road safety. We live and breathe road safety every single second of the day. We live and breathe it while we're sitting behind the wheels of our juggernauts going down the highway. Our wives, partners and families at home live and breathe that same fear of that phone call which may come in the dead of night or at some time during the day. Trust me, I've experienced that. But I never experienced what my father put my mother through in the 60s while she was trying to raise three kids and he was running east-west across the Nullarbor when there were no mobile phones and no internet. You had to rely on getting to a phone.

My dad had to ring his boss to say: 'Tell mum, when she comes with the kids on Friday in the EH station wagon, to pick up me pay cheque. I'm still alive and I'm somewhere between Sydney and Adelaide.' Or he'd be between Adelaide and Perth. That is how we lived. I never realised, when I followed in my father's footsteps, the fear I had put into my mother's heart, 'Is he all right out there?' By then we had a telephone, but I wasn't ringing mum. I was a young truckie, and I tell you what: I was 10 foot tall and bullet-proof. I didn't think about the fear every time they heard there was a truck accident in the north of WA: 'Is he all right? Is he still in touch?' It never hit home until my son picked up the steering wheel, and I started thinking, 'Oh, my God, 40 years ago my mum was going through this with her husband and then her son.'

No-one can ever, ever accuse the industry or even dare think that the road transport industry, the truckies and the trucking industry do not have road safety at the forefront of their minds. I am all for making our roads as safe as possible. I wear the badge of the SARAH Group proudly on my chest, as I did for years in my previous role as the shadow assistant minister for road safety, because it's something I believe in and am passionate about. How is it that we can kill 1,200 Australians a year on our roads, and yet we think this is just part of business? If 1,200 Australians were being killed in another industry, could you imagine the outrage? Let alone the 100-odd truck drivers we lose each year in rollovers or in crashes, and people just think, 'Well, it is a road statistic, part of doing business.' It is not part of doing business.

I want to raise some anomalies with you while I stand up to support our truckies and their families in road safety. I say, if anyone does the wrong thing, throw the book at them. But I want to highlight a very dear friend of mine. He's an interstate owner-driver who's been running interstate on the triangle between Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane for 20-plus years, a really good operator. His name is Frank Black, and a lot of people in the trucking industry know Frank Black. We are very dear friends. Frank and I were having a conversation in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. I'm not putting the blame on the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, which has to enforce crappy laws. If I have to, I'll retract that statement; it is not the one I was going to use, but I will use that one. It's their job to enforce the laws, but they don't make the laws.

I want to highlight some of the stupidity in New South Wales, and it's not just confined to New South Wales; the same goes in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. You have to have a logbook. Everyone knows long-distance truckies have to have logbooks, and you can imagine how many logbooks long-distance truckies fill up over 20 or 30 years. There are two blocks on the front of the logbook. One asks: where does your truck live? Where is it based? That's fair enough. The other one asks: who are you and where do you live? That's also fair enough, although most of the owner-drivers have their names plastered all over their trucks and their names are on their licences, so it's not hard to work out. But in this crazy situation on the eastern seaboard, when you get your new logbook, if you don't fill out the one block asking where you live it is a $711 fine. Do you know that, on the eastern seaboard, if you fill your logbook out and you make a spelling mistake, you're going to cop a $700 fine? That's a week's wages for a lot of truck drivers. Seriously, are you going to go home and tell mum that you can't pay this week because of the NHVR gorilla? That's what I'm going to call it. This is what happened to Frank, the gorilla went through Frank's truck from back to front. Frank is an ex-diesel mechanic, so you could eat your dinner off his engine and have the sweets off the diff. I'm telling you, he's a top operator. This gorilla went through his truck from back to front trying to find something, and all they could find was he hadn't filled out his name in his new logbook. Even though his licence says who he is and his truck says who he is, they done him.

I want to give you a couple of other stupid, ridiculous example of what goes on in New South Wales, while they are out there picking on our hardworking men and women of the road transport industry. Here is a classic. If you are driving quickly, so quickly you can't stop at a school crossing sign—a pretty serious charge—the fine is $603, not $711. Crazy, right? If you fail to comply with a hand-held stop sign—we call them the lollipop operators in WA, the people who stop traffic for the kiddies crossing in a school zone—the fine is $603, not $711. This nonsense carries on all the time. There is another one in Sydney and Melbourne where the tram stops are. If you go through the tram stop and you don't stop—I believe it's law that you've got to stop there; we don't have trams in WA, so I don't know, but this is what I'm told—when the tram pulls up and people are alighting from the tram, the fine is $200. Our truckies are being pinged for logbook infringements for $711 for a spelling mistake or for not putting their name on the front because it's about the 50th book they've had. Where in the world does that improve road safety? Some inspectors on the side of the road are trying to reach a KPI. I'm writing to all the ministers, police and transport and road safety officials all throughout the eastern seaboard. This nonsense has got to stop.