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

I commend the member for Perth bringing this important motion to our attention. The government's lack of commitment to ensuring the highest level of safety on Australia's roads is of great concern, quite frankly. The government is yet to come clean on its plans for the future of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. This tribunal, bear in mind, was given the important task of establishing a safe road system based on safe rates for the Australian transport industry to ensure the safety of all road users. The tribunal should be left alone by this government and allowed to get on and do its job, which is to make our roads safer for everybody.

The road transport industry is one of the deadliest in Australia, with death rates 15 times higher than the national average. Fatality rates on road freight transport doubled between 2011 and 2013, which should be of concern to everybody. It is not only the workers in the industry who are affected, out of the 330 people who die each year in truck related accidents, between 50 and 70 truck drivers and the rest are other motorists and pedestrians. Australian truck drivers work hard to make a living, but they should not be expected to die to make a living. In addition to the loss of life, accidents involving heavy vehicles result in high economic cost to this country. Staggeringly, that cost is approaching around $2.8 billion annually.

Safety standards in the road transport industry clearly have an effect on our overall road safety. When truck drivers are overworked the safety of all road users is compromised. Clearly, the financial pressures being placed on our road transport companies and in turn on truck drivers by their major clients are compromising road safety. Truck drivers and their families and other Australian road users are being squeezed to death by the overwhelming market power of big retailers, such as Coles and Woolworths, which account for 33 per cent of road freight movements each day. In 2012 an industry survey of Coles's supply chain showed that 46 per cent of drivers were pressured to skip rest breaks, 28 per cent were pressured to speed and 26 per cent were pressured to carry illegally overweight loads. Delivery schedules set by our major retailers take no account of traffic, road works or other delays and force our drivers to speed and skip rest breaks in order to meet those impossible deadlines. We know what happens if they do not meet these deadlines: they lose their contracts.

It should come as no surprise that a company like Coles, which has donated more than half a million dollars to the Liberal party since 2004, was strongly opposed to the previous Labor government's measures to strengthen the road safety system. These companies are clearly profit driven; regrettably, concerns about safety are secondary. The government cannot afford to take the same position and needs to stand firm on the side of safety. No-one wants to see people die on our roads. This government cannot afford to abandon the extensive efforts initiated by the previous Labor government to improve road safety standards throughout our transport industry. Unfortunately, those opposite have already demonstrated their priorities, when, in 2012, they opposed the construction of new rest stops and parking bays to assist heavy-vehicle drivers to improve road safety.

I congratulate the Transport Workers Union, led by Tony Sheldon who has fought long and hard to protect not only his members, who work in one of the deadliest industries in this country, for its important campaign, which is based on improving safety standards for all members of our community. I urge the government not to abandon the efforts of the Labor Party over the last couple of years to strengthen and support road safety by retaining the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and not compromise the safety of transport workers and all road users. It is clear that safety measures in Australia's deadliest industry need to be strengthened, not abandoned.

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