David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This discussion about the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is very important for this nation. The coalition has a long history of supporting safety in the workplace, particularly in Australia's transport industry, but the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal has brought with it a lot of complexity that has not really addressed the safety issue. We all support safety on our roads. It is a given. One death on the roads is one too many. But how the so-called Safe Rates campaign translates into safety outcomes is not clear. Let us look at the safety record before the Safe Rates campaign came to fruition. In 2011, 185 people died in road-trucking accidents. One is too many, let alone 185, but if you look at the three years previous to that before any of this came to fruition, there was overall a three per cent reduction in accidents involving articulated heavy vehicles. For heavy rigid trucks there was a 14.7 per cent reduction in accidents and fatalities. Overall, in the 10 years prior to the introduction of the tribunal there was a 20 per cent reduction in road-trucking accidents. When you look at the massive expansion of road transport in that time it is really showing a downward trend in accidents rather than an increase.

What really will make a difference to road safety is better roads. In the next few years we have in front of us the biggest road-building campaign by a federal government in the history of Australian government. In the Lyne electorate the road transport industry is front and centre of all our industries. Trucks bring stuff into the electorate and take it out of the electorate. Whether it is industry taking stuff in and out of Taree or Port Macquarie or over to Gloucester, we depend on roads. And what has the coalition got for the Lyne electorate? We have $16 million on the table for the Buckets Way—long overdue—to be delivered this budget. All that road transport going between the Manning Valley and out to Gloucester and down to Newcastle will benefit from it. Look at what we have got on the Pacific Highway—$1.129 billion committed to upgrades north of the Oxley Highway intersection up to Kempsie. We have got increased money for Roads to Recovery. We have got increased money for black spot funding. Safe roads make for improved safety.

The other complexity concerning the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is that as well as looking at pay rates for truckies and their conditions, it has factored them into commercial arrangements. In my particular situation, theoretically, when a cattle truck turns up to take a load of animals off to the saleyards or to the abattoirs everything should go through the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. For red tape, one only has to look at this situation. It does not make sense. We want to cut red tape and make the workplace and the arteries of our commerce and tourism safe. In the Pacific Highway upgrade we are going to get more rest stops. We are going to get separated dual-lane highway. This will lead to an increase in safety much more than using safety as a trojan horse for unnecessary regulation and for trade unions to be involved in commercial arrangements between customer and provider. We all support road safety and our initiative is going to achieve much more of that than trade unions being involved in commercial arrangements that are not part of the deal. So I think a long-term commitment to improving the transport infrastructure will be a great outcome for people in the trucking industry, for the tourists and for all those family members that have been affected by accidents on the roads. (Time expired)

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