Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like most members on this side of the House, I understand the value of small business. Ninety-seven per cent of the businesses in my electorate of Fowler qualify as small businesses—that is, 10,500 businesses. In the past a lot of these people would have been bricklayers, electricians—a whole host of things. They are required to register their business in order to maintain their employment but, nevertheless, small business and independent contractors are one of the fastest areas of growth, particularly in south-west Sydney where I come from.

One and a half thousand of these small businesses are truck drivers. They are independent contractors, owner drivers. They have set up their businesses. They have gone out like other businesspeople and borrowed capital to set up a business. I do not know if it has caught you by surprise, Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper, but it has taken a long drawn-out campaign by the Transport Workers Union and other people such as Lindsay Fox to draw attention to this particular category of small business.

I, together with other members in this place, sometimes go and visit the various truck stops we have in our electorates. I have got one down the road called Uncle Leo's. I go in there and have a cup of coffee and a sandwich with the fellas as they are negotiating a truckload of fuel to get themselves home to Queensland. They will go home to Queensland with a truckload of fuel. They are compromising everything: time and themselves with regard to their logbooks and other things. They are trying to make a quid out of their business. That is why people enter into businesses in the first place.

To date we have seen people's reluctance to grasp the significance of fair rates in the transport industry. These fair rates are not meant to apply to someone who is a day worker working for a trucking organisation; these are for the operators of small businesses.

This significant initiative was introduced by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport today in the second reading of the road safety bill. It is designed to give these people a fighting chance at their business, to make sure they are paid fair rates. Compromise is occurring, which is affecting safety. About 250 deaths occur on the road each year involving heavy vehicles. An accident involving a heavy vehicle normally would have very significant consequences for not simply the drivers of those vehicles but also other road users.

Compromises are being made—compromises in respect of safety; compromises in respect of work practices; and compromises in respect to hours—and I have personally witnessed people negotiating a truckload of fuel to travel from Liverpool back to the Gold Coast, and that would be the cost of freight. If you want to divide up what the cost of freight is, I think it would be pretty cheap by the end of that run.

The other major thing that these truck drivers running their businesses complain bitterly to me about—I know they are not in the aviation industry—is the slot times they are given for arriving to unload their vehicles, and that time can change. They can sit around for anything up to 10 or 14 hours waiting for their slot time, so they become a mobile storage unit. They are out there with their 16-wheelers, with their refrigerated units keeping food cold, and all the rest of it, and they are not getting paid for that. They are given their slot time to arrive. If anything, we are taking an enormous step just in that alone in respect to small business.

I know that is not the tenor of this debate, which is focusing on what is occurring in the mining industry. Although I have a connection with mining, I am at a loss over this, as are most people in my electorate who do not have any connections with mining. I have had sons do very well out of working in the mining industry. A lot of young people have seen mining as not a bad way of life: getting involved, generating a lot of income over a short time and then going into another business. That is what my son did.

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