Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Something very important happened this week in this building. There was a joint delegation of employer groups, businesses, employees, owner-drivers, gig workers, academics and the Transport Workers Union. They came here with a very clear, strong and united call for this parliament to urgently legislate minimum standards in the road transport industry that will ensure that their industry is safe, viable and sustainable.

When you have businesses, unions and workers—the whole industry—uniting around a common cause we must listen to them. They are telling us loudly and clearly that the pressure from the top of the supply chain and the pressure from Amazon and Uber are sending good Australian transport companies to the wall and are killing and maiming workers and families on our roads. This year alone, 109 people have died in truck crashes and there have been almost 200 insolvencies in the trucking industry. Even employer groups who supported the abolition of the RSRT in 2016 are calling for the government to act because they are being crushed by supply chain pressures.

No other industry would accept 109 people being killed in six months. Why should we accept slaughter and bloodshed in our workplaces? I say to those Liberals and Nationals who opposed minimum standards in road transport: 'You have blood on your hands.' There have been almost 1,300 people killed in truck crashes since the abolition of the RSRT, which has been replaced with nothing. Eleven food delivery riders have died. How many corpses need to be strewn across our roads before you say that enough is enough? How many funerals are enough?