Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to debate this private member's motion. The proposition that remuneration equates to safety is flawed. It has no basis in fact. Yet it is this flawed and unsubstantiated thinking that led to the establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not expecting you to take my word on that; rather, let us go to the government's own Regulatory Impact Statement in 2012 on the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Amongst other things, it said, 'data at this point in time is limited and being definitive around causal link between rates and safety is difficult'. It leads me to rise to speak on this motion today on two fronts.

Firstly, Barker is home to a large heavy vehicle industry. Indeed, some 2,000 of my constituents are long-haul truck drivers. The very establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal does them a disservice, because it pre-assumes that the majority of road accidents are actually the fault of the heavy vehicle driver. That is false and does them, as I say, a great disservice. Why then did we see the establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal into 2012? Well, it might not surprise you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to learn that the Transport Workers' Union have been campaigning for the introduction of so-called 'Safe Rates' for a number of years, claiming that substantial wage increases for road transport drivers will have a positive effect on the safety record of the industry.

Any work-related injury or fatality in the road transport industry is one too many. I speak, as did the previous speaker, from a position of personal knowledge, so it hurts me when people coming to this place and use workplace safety as a cloak to mask a different agenda. Clearly, this different agenda are the claims of the Transport Workers Union. Let us call this motion for what it is—it pains me to do this. This is cheap politicking by the member for Perth. Worse, it is a further example of the opposition putting the interest of union bosses in front of the national interest. It might be that the member for Perth is looking to improve her standing, given that she was the parliamentary secretary for Western Australia during what can only be described as an outrageous defeat of the ALP in WA.

I was thinking about union influence and was reminded briefly of the attempts by the Leader of the Opposition to crab-walk from the influence of unions in the Labor Party and also, over the autumn recess, of the comments made by the member for Bendigo that, in fact, union bosses do not exert enough influence on the ALP. The reality is that in relation to the overall incidence rate of work related entries in the transport industry there was a 20 per cent reduction between 2002 and 2012—rates of accidents have decreased.

What, then, of the coalition's position? The coalition detailed its plan in May 2013, well before the last federal election. We undertook to undertake an urgent review of the operations of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Consistent with our commitment, the government commissioned a review—that was conducted by Rex Deighton-Smith—shortly after the election. The review focused on eliminating duplication in regulation and ensuring that regulations and policies for approving safety performance in the road transport industry are based on credible evidence. The coalition government has received the review and is carefully considering it before making any decision. As I have said, the nation from the member for Perth says cheap politicking and deeply hurtful to me. It is yet another example of the opposition putting union bosses' interests ahead of those of the nation. If the opposition was genuinely interested in ensuring the safest possible roads it would wait to see the review and examine it in a calm and methodical manner, not simply come in here and move a motion on behalf of their mates in the TWU.

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