Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have redheaded children, so I can say that sort of thing. It is okay to be a Weasley. We have this crossover. The same thing with transport, when you speak to people about running trucks, the number of rules and regulations which we have to deal with across state and federal jurisdictions. And sooner or later, we will have to drive this through COAG and ensure that these things run smoother. All these things happen and all these things cost business. In a city like Townsville you are not allowed to take B-doubles through the town, so you must break down on one side of the town, drive through the other side of the city, redeposit over there and ship them all around. Or, if you are making deliveries, into Townsville you have to break it down at Roseneath, as you come in from the west, and you take single trailers all around town back to where you want to go, thus necessitating an extra four-vehicle movements per day for that one truck. All those sorts of things do not have to happen. Those are the sorts of areas where business will thank us in the long run.

We have to work with state governments to ensure that we are coming up with the right answers on these things. Local government can participate fully and ensure that the streets they are going to use to put B-doubles through have the right access points. But, again, as I said before, it is easy to come in here and poke holes in this legislation because there is so much red tape in federal government. But as parliamentarians we should be on the lookout for reducing the burden on our taxpayers. We should be on the lookout for examples of things that just do not make sense. God only knows, there are enough of them around here. We have to back this legislation because if we stop and if all we do is add complication and add layer upon layer upon layer of all the stuff that people have to do, then we just do not get anywhere.

A friend of mine saw a 100-tonne coil of rolled steel in a single-axle tipper in China, basically tied down with an ocky strap. He said, 'They have no rules and regulations.' This thing was meant to carry about 42½ tonnes and it had 100 tonnes of steel on the back of it. So we do not want to end up there!

I was riding along a highway, in China, in the back of a car and I looked out the window and I saw plate steel sitting on the back of a truck. I could see outriding pegs there to make sure it did not slide straight off, but there was nothing holding it down. That is not enough red tape. We have to understand that there has got to be just enough red tape around mine sites, around businesses where people are being told that they can only reverse their car in, because that is the rule. There is red tape there about how you can park your car on private property and about how you can access your property, but all these things do not make it any safer, any quicker or any better. Those things are why we have to challenge ourselves to make sure that we have got the right red tape, that we have good, safe places to work, that we have good, safe roads.

We are regulating people out of the opportunity to have work. There was a letter to the editor in Townsville a little while ago now about the Snowy Mountains Scheme and about how there was barely a word of English spoken up there and yet we built this great big piece of infrastructure which is still fantastic today, but, if those people turned up today, they would not get a job, because they would not be able to pass basic workplace health and safety or basic English proficiency.

We have low-SES families in my city of Townsville. Someone wanting to get a driver's licence has to get 100 hours in a motor car before they can sit for a test. It is tough enough for anybody to get their kids 100 hours in a motor car, including time at night, let alone someone who does not have a car, let alone someone who does not have the wherewithal to get those things around. And we wonder why kids are stealing cars. Is it actually making these roads safer? We do not want unsafe roads and unsafe drivers, but is there something there that we are doing by layering regulation and appearing to make it safe that has the consequence of not making it any safer at all? This is what we have to deal with, and this is why it makes sense that we have to do this. I back the parliamentary secretary. I back the Prime Minister and the entire government on this because this is really important. I thank the House.

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