Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to acknowledge the hard work of truck drivers and the role they perform in our community. I particularly note more than 1,000 professional drivers I represent in the electorate of Greenway. I congratulate the Transport Workers Union for its outstanding and ongoing work to improve safety issues for its members in the trucking industry and in particular the vehicle maintenance problems recently highlighted at Cootes Transport, which are a concern to all of us as we share the nation's roads. Nobody wants unsafe trucks on our roads, least of all the drivers who spend their working lives driving them. But right now too many in the industry are forced to choose between taking trucks off the road for important maintenance and the possibility of losing a contract or even a business.

After strong campaigning by the TWU, the Roads and Maritime Services and police raids on trucking depots in New South Wales have uncovered hundreds of instances of poorly maintained and dangerously unsafe vehicles operating on our roads. The tragic consequences of this systemic maintenance neglect are accidents like the one late last year which killed two innocent men in Sydney's northern suburbs as they drove to the beach. These men and the hundreds of people killed each year in heavy vehicle accidents are not the only victims of this systemic under-maintenance and forcing down of rates in the transport industry.

This week at Cootes hundreds of hardworking men and women, who through no fault of their own have been risking their safety in unsafe vehicles, are now facing losing their livelihoods as Cootes loses contracts. My thoughts are with these people and I congratulate the TWU for its work in making sure these people get all their entitlements. (Time expired)