Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with truck drivers from around Australia who had driven to Canberra to have their voices heard. Again this morning I had the opportunity to meet with owner-drivers who had travelled from around Australia to have their voices heard in the nation's capital. Australians should not have to drive thousands of kilometres and spend thousands of dollars of their own money to fight for their jobs. These are not paid protesters; these are Australian mums and dads who are passionate about their industry and passionate about the future of our nation, and they are being told by the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and some independents that they are not worthy of taking to the roads and continuing to provide the enormous service they provide to our community.

The member for Gorton, in his contribution, would have us believe that the Prime Minister is acting on some sort of whim or that he does not like an individual decision of the RSRT. But the member for Gorton conveniently ignores the hundreds of people who drove to Canberra yesterday and are on the front lawns here again this morning. He conveniently ignores the long list of organisations—and I will quote from some of them—who oppose the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. There is Toll Holdings, who say:

… we don't believe the RSRT is the best way to improve safety for either big or small operators.

The Australian Trucking Association says:

The ATA has been urging the Government to repeal the—

Road Safety Remuneration Act 2012—

and abolish the Tribunal as a matter of urgency …

The Livestock and Rural Transport Association of Western Australia has said, 'Unfortunately, many small family operations will find it increasingly difficult to survive in this environment.' NatRoad has said:

These effects will be disproportionately felt in rural and regional areas …

The National Road Transport Association has demanded the Turnbull government immediately withdraw this ill-conceived order.

This is not a Prime Minister acting on a whim or a government making it up as it goes along. This is a government responding to legitimate concerns of owner-drivers throughout Australia who, right now, fear being forced out of work, forced out of their industry and unable to meet their family commitments. The member for Gorton and I agree on one thing: too many people die on our roads. But this tribunal is simply not the answer. Bizarrely—and I think this is the one particular point that bells the cat on this issue—the original legislation for this tribunal does not even sit in the transport portfolio, which has responsibility for road safety around our nation. It sits within the employment portfolio. It sits within industrial relations. This was never about road safety.

As someone who came to this place without a great deal of interest in party political games, I am not someone who gets too much involved in the political cut and thrust. I try to build consensus. I try to get things done within my community and work with either side wherever possible. Sometimes you just have to you pick a side on an issue like this. As a regional MP and as a transport minister, I am proudly on the side of small business owners. The Liberal and National MPs from around Australia gathered here today cannot wait to come to the chamber and vote to keep these good people in business in the future. We want to keep Australia moving. We want them to play their role in keeping Australia moving. We want to vote to protect these small business people. It remains to be seen whether Labor, the Greens and some Independents actually want to sack them.

Over the past few weeks I have been contacted by dozens of owner-drivers, many of those in Gippsland. They are concerned. They have many concerns, but I will try to cut right down to the point of their major concern. They feel the RSRT order is discriminatory, and they are right. They feel it is confusing and too complex in the time frames they were given. Keep in mind that these are largely mum and dad operations. They do not have a human resources department. They do not have a legal department. They do not have an accounting department. They do not have the capacity within their small organisations to comply with increasingly complex legislation. This order from the RSRT specifically singles out owner-drivers for treatment that no-one else in the industry cops. In the past month this debate has heated up in the public sphere. No-one from the other side has even been willing to attempt to justify why this RSRT order, this Labor tribunal, singles out owner-drivers in the way it does.

Let's just remember who these people are. These are our local owner-drivers in small communities like Gippsland. They have lease payments to make on their trucks. They are significant investments. These are small business people by any definition. More than likely they also have a mortgage to pay, kids to get to school and all sorts of things we all deal with on a daily basis. These are small business people.

It is not just about them as truck drivers; there is a whole supply chain which reverberates throughout regional communities in particular. If you have a small regional operator in a town like Murchison, for example, that driver more than likely buys his tyres locally. He more than likely purchases his fuel before he heads off on the road. He probably uses local mechanics. He probably got a sign-writer to help get his rig set up in the first place. They are a significant part of their local community. I am proud to stand with them here today and vote with them to make sure they continue to have an important role in the Australian transport sector.

As someone who comes from the regions, like all of my National Party colleagues—and I note that the Deputy Prime Minister is here today as well; he spoke very passionately in favour of small business owners yesterday at the rally here in Canberra—I know how important the trucking industry is to our nation and that the owner-drivers are the backbone of the sector. As the transport minister I also know that the Australian government's move to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is necessary and it is vital to do this so that these mum and dad truck operators can continue to be in business in the future.

There have been two damning reviews into this tribunal that have shown that the tribunal has not been effective in making the industry fairer or safer, despite being in operation for four years. In life, we all make mistakes. It is how you respond to those mistakes that matters. The Labor Party made a mistake by introducing this tribunal. It was under enormous pressure from the Transport Workers Union and it buckled under that pressure. But, having made that mistake, I appeal to those opposite to help us clean up the mess, because this tribunal has nothing to do with road safety.

Submissions to the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal from small business operators did not change the tribunal's decision to mandate this unfair pay order on only one sector of the industry. The tribunal has refused to pay any heed to the owner-drivers who say that the road safety remuneration system risks harming their businesses without doing anything to improve the safety of the industry.

Safety is at the heart of the government's approach to transport. I acknowledge the former speaker's passionate references to the number of people who die in the heavy vehicle sector and on our roads. Tragically, it is true that the road transport industry is one of the most dangerous industries in Australia, with a fatality rate over 12 times the average rate for all industries. But the reasons behind road accidents are complicated. They are often tragic. But the facts tell us that targeted and practical initiatives are what make the biggest impact on reducing accidents, not tribunal rulings.

An important point is that a recent study has found in respect of heavy vehicle fatalities that in 84 per cent of cases the heavy vehicle driver was not at fault. That is an important point as we debate the RSRT. In 84 per cent of cases the heavy vehicle driver was simply not at fault in the accident. Although there has been a steady and encouraging decline in road deaths involving heavy vehicles in recent times, we all—members on both sides—accept and acknowledge that one death is one death too many and one serious injury is one serious injury too many. That is why this government wants to prioritise its efforts in a way that will lead to genuine road safety outcomes for the heavy vehicle industry and the broader community. As I said, it has been proven time and again that pragmatic, practical and targeted initiatives will have the most impact on road safety, not a ruling from a tribunal.

Assuming that the legislation successfully passes the House of Representatives and the Senate over the course of this week, the government wants to pursue a reallocation of the funding from the RSRT to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator to expedite a number of critical initiatives to improve the safety of the heavy vehicle industry. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator already has a comprehensive safety work program underway, including such things as: utilising technology to facilitate fatigue management; programs which target roadworthiness, including a baseline survey of 9,000 vehicles to test the health of the vehicle fleet around the nation; and consistent inspections and enforcement across Australia.

I am the first to acknowledge in this place that there is more to be done in relation to road safety. Our work on road safety is never-ending at a Commonwealth level, at a state level, at a local community and, absolutely, at the household level when we get behind the wheels of our cars or our trucks. While we are proposing to the state ministers that funding from the scrapping of the tribunal can be used to strengthen our technology and reprioritise the safety measures that will work on the roadside, there are a range of initiatives that I will bring to the various state ministers in the coming weeks to seek their support on.

In addition to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator's work, which, I might add, has the support of industry, the Commonwealth has been investing record amounts in infrastructure, because we understand that providing safer roads is part of the equation. It is a complex equation. It is about safer roads, safer drivers and providing an environment where people take responsibility for their own actions. We will be working with our state colleagues in continuing to roll out our record investment in safer roads and, along with better support of the NHVR, the government is working to achieve real safety outcomes for the heavy vehicle sector and the broader community.

I want to mention a couple more things in relation to safety. I have found it appalling and contemptible that, in recent weeks, the Transport Workers Union has rushed to the media on every single occasion, every time, there has been an accident involving a heavy vehicle and a fatality and, somehow, tried to link that tragic event with the RSRT. On the weekend, we had the horror, across our nation, of 10 people dying in accidents involving heavy vehicles. And again today we have the TWU putting out a press release somehow trying to link those two events—in this case, there were three accidents. The causes of those accidents are not known. Quite rightly, there will be a full investigation into the causes of those accidents. In at least one of those accidents, the immediate reports from the scene were that a car pulled out in front of a B-double truck. I do not know what the TWU thinks it is doing by seeking to blame drivers in circumstances where the evidence has not yet been given to a coroner or anyone else. I just appeal to the TWU: if you want to have a rational debate on this issue, end the contemptible and disgraceful behaviour of seeking to politicise the road toll in the manner in which you have in recent weeks; stop putting out those press releases until you know the facts of the accidents.

Everyone cares about road safety. We were down there this morning on the lawns of Parliament House and there were families there. Those people who were there, the owner-drivers, care about safety for an obvious reason: they want to get home alive. They want to get home and get on with their lives and do their jobs. That is why we have the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator working for the industry. That is why there is enforcement of fatigue management, why there are police on the road enforcing speed limits, why there are roadworthy checks and why the government—and I acknowledge that former ministers Mr Truss and Mr Albanese are here, and the current minister—invested in road funding in black spots and investing in new rest areas for the heavy vehicle sector. It is a complex equation. It is about safer drivers, safer roads and all of us working together as a community.

But the point I made earlier and the point I want to emphasise again is this tragic loss of life on our roads. It is a tragic fact that it is normally not the heavy vehicle driver at fault. We need to remind ourselves of that as we have this debate. Yes, the heavy vehicle industry has a safety problem in terms of the number of people who do not make it home alive or who make it home but with serious injuries, but in most cases—up to 84 per cent of the cases—it is not the heavy vehicle driver who has caused the accident to occur in the first place.

I am proud to represent the National Party and a coalition which has a Prime Minister, in Malcolm Turnbull, a Deputy Prime Minister, in Barnaby Joyce, and an employment minister, in Michaela Cash, who were all out there yesterday talking to the owner-drivers. They spoke about the importance of small business; the important job they do, as mums and dads, out there every day on our roads keeping our country moving. They all said that owner-drivers were the backbone of the transport sector. I believe them and I support them in their efforts. I urge the Labor Party, the Greens and the Independents to have another look at this legislation, to acknowledge that you made a mistake by introducing this tribunal, which has absolutely nothing to do with road safety. I urge those opposite to get on with the job of helping us clean up the mess that they left behind and help us get Australia moving again.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Road Safety Remuneration Repeal Bill 2016 and the Road Safety Remuneration Amendment (Protecting Owner Drivers) Bill 2016. Last month, 25 Australians died in traffic accidents that involved heavy vehicles. Last year, the death toll was in excess of 300 for accidents that involved heavy vehicles. That is more than double the number of people who sit in this House of Representatives—and that is just one year. No government serious about the welfare of Australians would accept this dreadful statistic without trying to do something about it. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, who just spoke, is correct in referring to some of the other programs that are about doing something about it that have bipartisan support—the Black Spots Program. The program that I introduced that is no longer a specific program—the heavy vehicle safety and productivity program—was about identifying areas for rest stops on highways right around the country. It is something that, as I drive down the Pacific Highway or the Hume and have a look at the new rest stops that have been built as a result of the conscious decision to include that as part of the economic stimulus program, I am very proud of.

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was also a necessary component. The minister said, 'Let's not politicise this issue', and yet to bring in this legislation today, when parliament sat for five weeks out of seven earlier this year during which this issue was not raised at all, says it all about the politicisation of this issue. This is unworthy legislation to be brought in during a special sitting that was not mentioned in any of the correspondence between the government and the Governor-General just weeks ago, when the Prime Minister made the absurd decision to prorogue the parliament and to pretend that this is the first day of a new parliament. I have been in this place for 20 years. You have first days of parliament after you have elections. Tony Abbott won an election in 2013; Malcolm Turnbull has not. The proroguing of the parliament and the pretence that this is somehow a new parliament with a new agenda is politicisation in the extreme.

To bring in this legislation does no credit to the minister or to anyone on that side of the chamber, because this tribunal has been in place since 2012. Those opposite have had three years to raise something about this tribunal and yet there has been nothing from them—no piece of legislation seeking to amend the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal or how it would operate, and no submission to the tribunal when it was deliberating on making this determination. There has been not a word from those opposite in the government. Yet now we have the ultimate politicisation of road safety and this issue.

Just last month I attended a breakfast function here in Canberra. I heard from a truck driver named John Waltis. He offered up a statistic that was so disturbing that it should concern every member of this House. He has attended the funerals of 52 truck drivers killed on the job. That is 52 families that have lost their breadwinner, their father, their mother, their sibling or their child. In a nation as big and prosperous as Australia, a nation that relies heavily on road freight, we have a responsibility as legislators to ensure that road safety is paramount when it comes to regulation of the industry. Death rates for the road transport industry are 12 times the average for the entire workforce.

Safety must not be a matter of political engagement. Yet today we are being asked by a desperate government to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, an organisation specifically established by the former Labor government to focus on road safety in the trucking industry. There is nothing deficient about the tribunal, but this government has made such a mess of running the country that it has decided to target this organisation as part of a cynical re-election campaign. Because of the government's failures it cannot run on its record. Indeed, this is a government that has been in opposition for its entire three years. Now the latest expression of its opposition mentality and focus is to reject safe rates.

If you are opposed to safe rates, it must mean by definition that you somehow support unsafe rates. At the heart of this debate is that simple view. If you do not believe that there is a connection between pay rates and safety then by all means argue that, but you must argue it on the basis of evidence. Every study that has been done, including the 2008 report of the National Transport Commission, the Jaguar Consulting report of 2014 and the PricewaterhouseCoopers report released just months ago, has shown a clear link. The PwC report, for example, recognised at page 86 that commission orders reduce crash rates between 10 and 18 per cent. Common sense tells you that that is the case. If people are paid for eight hours to do a task that in reality takes 12 hours, corners will be cut and those cut corners endanger not just truck drivers but all road users. That is why this legislation demeans all those good people across the parliament who worked on these issues for so many years—people like Paul Neville and others who during the Howard government produced the House of Representatives landmark committee report Beyond the midnight oil.

This legislation did not come from nowhere. We had hearings in this parliament in the lead-up to the creation of the tribunal, having proper consultation with industry, academics and experts. This was not something that was dreamed up. Indeed, the argument somehow that this is about the Transport Workers Union is so absurd that it shows no understanding of the industry. Members of the TWU who work for the big companies like Linfox and Toll organise their pay rates through enterprise bargaining between their union and their employer. This is for people who are outside of the industrial system, people who are owner-drivers, who are not in a position to negotiate in a collective bargaining forum and say that you cannot pay unsafe rates. That is the task of the tribunal—to make sure that you cannot have circumstances whereby people are put under pressure: 'Do it for this rate or we will get someone else who will.' It is similar to the opposition that we on this side of the House had to Work Choices legislation whereby an individual waiting to get a job could be told: 'Do it for $3 an hour even though you should be paid $20 an hour. If not, the person behind you will do it for that amount,' and destroy any ability for collective bargaining.

This is a government that is just determined to have scare campaigns about trade unions. This is the next step. We have had the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation that will create a different set of laws for people who work in the construction sector from the rest of the workforce and here we have a cynical attempt—something that has not been argued for until the last couple of weeks in terms of looking for an election issue.

The former government did establish a tribunal, following the publication of a series of reports and following extensive—extensive—consultation. It was about stamping out practices like speeding, not taking rest stops and using amphetamines and other drugs to stay awake. There is no dispute that these facts are there, and they were accepted by an all-party committee that backed the creation of the tribunal.

Consider the evidence of a truckie named Andrew who told the New South Wales industrial commission that he was required to work so many hours that he would hallucinate while driving. Andrew said he once imagined he saw another truck doing a three-point turn on the highway up ahead and stopped. As traffic banked up behind him, another truckie radioed to ask why he had stopped in the middle of the road. There was no truck up ahead.

Another driver named Robert revealed in a 2011 survey that he had asked his boss for time off to have his tyres replaced in the name of safety. The boss refused. Not long after, he was driving along at 100 kilometres per hour with a full load when one of his tyres blew out. 'It's sheer luck no-one was killed,' Robert said.

Before the creation of the tribunal, too many trucks were moving around the nation's highways being driven by people forced by economic necessity to adopt practices that put their lives at risk—not just their lives but those of other road users. The tribunal provided orders that can include minimum pay levels; clear conditions for loading and unloading; waiting times; working hours; load limits; payment methods, payment periods and other means of reducing pay related pressures; and practices and incentives which contribute to unsafe work practices. The bottom line here is that truck drivers should be able to earn a decent living without having to risk their own lives or the lives of others. That is why we call them 'safe rates'.

Key figures in the National Party clearly indicated that they knew where we were coming from when this legislation was carried. This is what New South Wales senator John Williams, a former truck driver, told the Senate on 20 March 2012:

We are talking about safe rates. We are talking about what truckies are paid, especially the contractors when they unload at Coles and Woolworths. I do not have a problem with what you are proposing.

Later on, on 16 March this year, Senator Williams said this in the Senate:

When the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was put through this place when Labor was in government I did not have a lot of bad things to say about it because, as a former pig farmer, I know how Woolworths treated me. I know what the big end of town does to the small Aussie battlers, as I call them.

We have had a look at the expertise that is there about the connection between road safety and pay rates. Indeed, The Conversation had a look at these issues and asked Professor Michael Quinlan, the director of the Industrial Relations Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, to review the evidence, including the PwC report. Professor Quinlan found that drivers being paid per trip drove an average of 15 kilometres an hour faster than drivers on an hourly rate. Let me read his verdict. It says:

Albanese was correct. There is persuasive evidence of a connection between truck driver pay and safety.

I cannot fault The Conversation on its academic rigour. They also asked a US academic, Michael Belzer, an associate professor in economics at Wayne State University in Detroit, to review Mr Quinlan's findings. He described Mr Quinlan's report as an excellent summary of the issue and backed its findings.

This, today, is all about politics. The parliament exists to provide a venue for debate. Often we agree, but sometimes we do not. But what we should not be having a debate about is road safety. What we should have in terms of road safety is an absolute commitment from everyone in this parliament to do whatever they can to decrease the likelihood of deaths and accidents on our roads. That is why I will strongly oppose this legislation that has been brought forward in such extraordinary circumstances.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is incredibly important that I express my views on this, and my views are also reflecting the views expressed overwhelmingly by the people who have come down to Canberra—away from their work and away from their capacity to go out and earn a dollar—because they know full well this is about their livelihood and their future.

I do not have to explain my position again because my position is the same as it was at four past 10 on 20 March 2012 when I voted against this, and my position remains the same. I am going to do my very best today to be part of a process of making sure that we repeal this and get rid of this tribunal. Let's not for one second believe that we do not have a concern about safety. Of course we do. This is not about safety. This is what has happened to it: it has created a funnel to take owner-drivers out of work and to put other people in their jobs. Good luck to and God bless the Transport Workers Union—good on them! But it is not their right to be a part of a process that drives other people out of work, and that is what is happening here.

The people we saw at the front of this building today, and the people who I saw at the rally in Tamworth are good people—decent people. They are law-abiding citizens. They are people trying to make a buck—people who are trying to make sure that they have the capacity to pay for their families and to give themselves an opportunity, an opportunity that is available to someone who might not have had the best education and who might not have had the capacity to be born as lucky as others or with the wealth of others. But they have decided to try to get ahead in life by the sweat of their own brow.

We need to support that, because that is the dream that so many Australians hold. It is epitomised by what you see on the road when you see trucks moving. When I see trucks moving I know that it is the sound of an economy moving. It is the sound of produce moving—the sound of cattle moving around, sheep moving around, cotton moving around, coal moving around and iron ore moving around. It is produce going into the supermarkets for people to buy. It is the sound of an economy, and we have to make sure that that sound of an economy keeps going.

This is not just about the mum-and-dad operators, who are overwhelmingly the owner-drivers—the dad in the rig and the mum looking after the books. As an accountant, I do not have a heavy-vehicle licence but my wife does.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does she drive trucks?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection. I think that the Labor Party today should be wise and honourable enough to say that this has not worked out in the way that I suspect they thought it would work out at the start. It would be disgraceful to think that they would stand by a decision today which is obviously hurting people. Why would they do that? The decision was originally made by the Labor Party and the Greens and, especially, the Independent, Mr Windsor—he backed it as well. Mr Oakeshott, I have to give him his due, did not vote for this; Mr Windsor did.

But it is not just about the owner-drivers—not just the mum-and-dad operators—it is also about the tyre fitters. I would see them, as an accountant, and there is a whole heap of money that goes to tyre fitters. They try to keep the owner-drivers on the road. There are the mechanics, there is the fuel bill, there are truck sales—this is basically all the sections of small economies. You can go to a little town—a little town like Wobbegar—and that is one thing that you will find there: you will find an owner-operator with his rigs. He is also a source of employment for a lot of people around the area.

If you try to pick up a load from some of the remote areas—from the back of Eulo, or the back of Barragan, or into the hills behind Weabonga or up into Emmaville—then guess who is going to pick up the load? Guess who is going to go to pick up your cattle? It will be an owner-operator. An owner-operator is the one who will turn up there with their truck to get your produce to a sale, to keep that family on the land going, to keep that truck operator going and to keep the people who supply that truck operator going—to keep our economy going.

Before they even start, these owner-operators have substantial bills to pay. The lease payments on average would be around $6,000 for a decent rig, and if you are going for one of the new ones, like the Kenworth T909, it is probably more than that. So you would have about $6,000 or $7,000 in payments before you even pass go. Of course, you have to pay your registration. That is about $30,000 a year, so there is another 2½ thousand dollars a month that you need for that. Then before you can even pass go you have to pay your insurance—there is about $12,000 there, so that is another $1,000 a month. With the bits and pieces you are not shy of $10,000 before you even start—before you even pick up a load.

What this legislation has done means that they cannot pick up a load. I will tell you why, Mr Deputy Speaker. Basically, in very rough form, your back loads have to be at roughly the equivalent charge of your forward loads. So if I picked up a load at Tamworth and ran it down to Thomas Foods International in Adelaide—let's say it is 60 steers or something—it would be maybe $5,000 or $6,000. That is the price for going down.

Now, if I live in Tamworth but my rig is in Adelaide and I have to get it home. I cannot live there—there is only so long that you want to live in your cabin for. I have to turn around and get it home. It does not matter what happens; it is not 'safe' to say, 'Well, you can't pick up anything on the way back.' But I could say, 'Oh, I could pick up a couple of bulls and run them back up then at least they will pay for a bit of my fuel. I will be able to help myself out a bit and pay for some of my costs to get back to Tamworth.' But I cannot do it under this legislation! I can do it, but the rate that I charge means that there is no way on earth the person will pay for what I have to charge them to run that smaller load—maybe it is a couple of pallets of beer or something that I pick up to run back. The rate that I have to charge puts me out of the market.

So what do I do? I still have to get my rig home. I get the rig home, but I do not get any money for it. Obviously, on both instances, I am driving myself out of business. This is absurd, because the problem is that other people can do it. The bigger operators can do it—to be quite frank, the operators where the Transport Workers Union are the members driving the rigs. They get to do it. This is just completely and utterly at odds with what our nation is supposed to be about. Let's compete on fair terms.

If you want to talk about fairness, let's have these people competing on fair terms—not driving the mum-and-dad owner-operators out. They are doing what we believe a person should be able to do in an economy: start and, by the sweat of their own brow, go through the economic and social stratification of life to find themselves in the best possible position and the highest level of freedom. They can be masters of their own ship—that is, masters of their own rig. They can basically wear their own uniform, pay for their house and have the greatest control over their own future. They work hard, and they are happy to do it.

But today they are not working. They are down here, and they should not have to be down here. They should not have to spend their time, their money and their efforts. Some of them came down today from Rockhampton because they know that this has to be changed and that they have to keep the pressure on people to change it.

The other thing I can assure us of is that when people start running out of money that the safety issues we want them to control are not going to be controlled. They need to change their tyres to deal with the wear and tear, they go through a king pin or they go through all the issues—like the brake lines. These issues are assisted by keeping people viable financially by allowing them to pick up loads. It is not by keeping them in a corner and restricting them from getting access.

I think about some of these people—the Welshes of Kootingal, or the Cruikshanks, or the Harrisons who I knew up at St George, or Stockmaster at Tamworth, or Laurie's Haulage at Manilla or the person who used to pick up a lot of our cattle—Bullier Johnstone out at Surat—these are the people who are so fundamentally a part of our towns and, fundamentally, we have to make sure that we look after them.

What will also be interesting today is that we will deal with this issue as quickly as possible. I know it looks like the Labor Party are standing by this piece of legislation—why, I do not know. But it will be interesting to see where the Greens are. I was up at Tamworth the other day and there was a unanimous resolution from the floor. We had Mercurius Goldstein from the Greens. We also had Rob Taber there as an Independent. It was a unanimous resolution in support of getting rid of this. It will be interesting to see whether the Greens resolution in Tamworth is the same as their resolution down here.

Every time I see an owner-driver, I see the pride that people have in their rig—how clean they keep it. I have known people who would not let you into their truck with your shoes on. You had to take them off, put your shoes beside it and go in your socks. It was pride they had in it. You have a look at them; they are clean. They are a reflection of their lives. It is their home on the road, and they treat it as their home. What is happening in this parliament—and, as I said, we never voted for it; Darren did not vote for it and I did not vote for it—is that we have to make sure that that pride that is reflected in their lives and their works is also reflected in the way we support them today in our vote.

I hear and do not like the insinuation when they continue to bring up the issue of accidents. Let me remind you that 84 per cent of accidents between a car and a truck—and we wish there were none—are the car's fault, not the truck's fault. These people are the professional drivers. They spend their whole lives on the road. With owner-drivers it is lower still because it is their rig, it is their insurance bill and it is their load that they are dealing with.

Let's not start pointing the finger. We note that human error means there will always be accidents of some sort, but we are trying to deal with them with better roads and monitoring logbooks. These issues, not sending people broke, deal with safety. This is not an issue about how the scalies operate on the road. This is not an issue about the hours you are supposed to work on the road. This is not an issue about the conditions of the road. This is an argument determining what a person, an individual, a mum-and-dad operator—can pick up so they can stack up their books so they can get their rig home so they can keep themselves financially viable.

It also inevitably brings us back—and I saw it today, when I was listening to the noise of the people driving around, blowing their horns in their trucks as they went around. I had heard that before. It is an indication of the chaos that you get from a Labor-Greens-Independent government. It is an indication of the absolute chaos that we have seen before—the chaos we saw when they closed down the live cattle trade. All of a sudden, the northern cattle producers—they said they were just indulgent rich pastoralists, but it was absolutely devastating to the whole cattle industry. Now we have seen it again in owner-operators, mum-and-dad operators in the truck industry. Once more they have all come down here as a memory for the Australian people. This is another leftover of the chaos that is created by a government that does not understand how business works, that does not understand how people work, that does not look through the ramifications of the decision and that, more importantly, even when those faults are discovered and clearly on display for everybody to see—what is worse than everything else is to hear that, after they have seen all these people turn up, we have the Labor Party coming to the dispatch box and saying they have not changed their minds.

If the Labor Party, the Greens and the Independents win the election, they will bring this back because it is their policy. It is what they believe in. They can say it was a mistake in the first instance, but it is no longer a mistake; it is their policy. Everybody has to remember that. When you go to the ballot box at the forthcoming election, if Labor, the Greens and the Independents win, they will bring back their policy.

I hope we get this thing kicked out. I hope it gets through the Senate; we will see how we go. I commend the work of all those who have come down here. But let's remember: we have a battle today to get it kicked out, but we have a battle in the next month or so to make sure it stays out, and the only way it can stay out is if Labor, the Greens and the Independents stay out of government.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have got to commend Barnaby for that—15 minutes of absolute nonsense and a clear indication that he has no understanding of the transport industry. He got up and spoke about how they have to protect this and protect that. I put it to you this way, Deputy Prime Minister: if it were farmers, would you be thinking the same way? Would you not want farmers to be paid a fair amount of money for their work? That is exactly what you are doing today.

I have spent 20 years in the transport industry in a whole range of things, whether it be driving trucks, selling parts, servicing vehicles or even doing the bad stuff of driving tow trucks at heavy vehicle accidents. I have seen what happens. I have seen each and every day owner-drivers coming in who are being forced to work for less money and longer hours just to make ends meet. Every day they are forced to work longer and harder, and it is not right and not fair. There is absolutely no reason—unless you are doing the bidding of the IPA, which this government is doing—to sit there and say truck drivers do not deserve a fair rate of pay.

Quite often trucks will be sitting down at the wharfs, waiting to get loaded on. They sit there for five or six hours, trying to get on, and then they get told, 'You've got a slot in Sydney and you've got between 5 and 6 pm to get there; and, if you miss that, you're out for another six or seven hours.' That happens all the time in this industry. So what do the drivers have to do? They do five or six hours work. Then they have to hop in the truck and drive for another 10 or 12 hours to make sure they get there on time to get their slot or they basically wipe out a day. They do not do that because they want to; they do that because that is the way they are being forced to do it. That is why I speak very strongly against this bill.

I remember the days. Obviously the Deputy Prime Minister has read a catalogue and named a truck, but he obviously does not know much about those trucks. When I worked at Freightliner Australia, we went out of our way each and every day to make sure the owner-drivers who came in to get parts or service were looked after quickly to get them back on the road, because we knew they were not making any money when they were sitting in that workshop.

If you have been to an accident and seen when a set of dual rear wheels come off because someone has not been given the time to go and replace the wheel bearings—and a set of duallies come off at 100 kays an hour—let me tell you, that makes a mess a big mess. When you go to freight-forwarding places and they say: 'Look, just chuck these extra couple of palettes on. You're a little bit over weight, but you'll be alright. Get going. You've got eight hours to get to Sydney from Melbourne.' Then you get caught at the weigh station. It is not the freight forwarder that gets the blame; it is always the truck driver. Owner-drivers and truck drivers are always the ones that cop the blame in these situations. It is not fair and it is not right.

If the government was fair dinkum about looking after people, they would not be just walking out the front and getting their jollies because a truck came past blowing its air horn like we just heard; you would actually get in there and find out what goes on. You would find out about the conditions they are working under; the fact that they have to bust their chops day in, day out and take shortcuts to make sure they make their times.

We heard the Deputy Prime Minister talk—and I thought it was very disparaging the terms that he heard. He said, 'truck drivers are not the best educated'. I think that is absolutely appalling. It is absolutely appalling for him to come into this place and disparage truck drivers and owner-drivers like that. I tell you what: most of those guys would be a lot sharper than that bloke will ever be. It is just wrong to treat people so badly and think it is fine because the IPA have told you to drive down wages and conditions. That is exactly what this is about. If you fair-dinkum want to talk about road safety and looking after people, then pay them a proper wage so they do not have to shortcut the system and so they do not have to take get assistance and take illicit substances to keep themselves going.

I have done many runs from Melbourne to Sydney and I do not know how people do it. I take my hat off to them, because it is the most boring road to drive on. When you are doing it two or three times a week, it gets very boring. You do those midnight runs where you run out of Melbourne at eight o'clock, you get to Tarcutta, you drop your trailer, you turn around and you run back again. You have to work flat out. You do not have time to stop. You do not have time to have a rest. You have to make sure you keep going and going and going. And they do that each and every day.

You think about the maintenance issues. Something simple like—I don't know—a Horton fan clutch. It costs 1,500 bucks, plus fitting, for that one part. But that puts your truck off the road for a day. Most owner-drivers are not earning a lot more than that a day. Then they get to their destination and—as the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out again in his ignorance—there is talk about backloading: 'If you do it for cheaper, that's okay.' No, it is not. Let's be honest. Backloading is nothing more than getting owner-drivers to lower their rates to get back home.

That freight has to be moved. Why shouldn't it be moved at an appropriate rate? Why shouldn't it be moved at a rate where someone is actually going to be able to pay their bills and put food on their table, and not have to panic that if they are 10 minutes late they are going to be stuck for four or five hours? It is unfair and it is wrong. That is why we need to have a Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

We got there because this independent tribunal has the power to make these remuneration orders, approve and assist with collective agreement negotiations, and conduct research into pay and conditions and related matters that can affect safety in the road transport industry. The tribunal conducts its work in an open and transparent manner—an accessible way—which has been lost in this debate.

It is well canvassed that a decision by the tribunal in December 2015 is the cause of this. The tribunal spent more than 12 months consulting on a proposed order to set payment rates for owner-drivers. Then it released a draft order, along with a statement for further consultation. There was some criticism of the proposed payment rates. So the tribunal sought to get more information from stakeholders about their views. But the information was not forthcoming. I think that that is an important thing to note. The big companies said, 'No, this is no good', but they did not supply information to show why or to show how it could be better done. They just said, 'Nah. We just want to make sure that people are paid fairly.' It is part of the belief that we have to drive wages and conditions down.

We know that when people go out and buy themselves a new truck, a new trailer and all that, they could be sitting there with $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 worth of debt hanging over their head and they cannot afford to be sitting around waiting. You have to keep going and going. So what happens is the big fat cats at Coles and the like will sit down and say, 'You come in and you do the trip for $1,200? There's a little bloke who'll do it for $1,100.' So you will do it for $1,000. And you keep lowering and lowering and lowering. This continuation of trying to remove safety nets, to lower wages and conditions, is just another Work Choices by stealth so that the government can stand there and say: 'It's not us; it's the industry.' It is not the industry.

People are desperate to have work, to build their dreams, to put food on the table, to pay their bills. They will do what they have to. Again, I go back to the point earlier: if we took truck drivers out of this equation and put farmers in, I could guarantee that the National Party would be up in arms, screaming: 'Farmers deserve a fair right. They deserve fair pay for their produce.' I do not disagree with that. You should be entitled for a fair day's pay for your work and you should be entitled to be remunerated properly for the investment you have made.

But, outside of a farm or outside of a business or any place, truck drivers are on our highways. They are running up and down in 62½ tonnes worth of steel—and more and more plastic these days—in their vehicles, working hard to try and make a living. To sit there and say that we do not think they deserve a fair day's pay is appalling. It is absolutely appalling.

These people, people I know, run up and down the highways and work their butts off day in, day out. They hardly take a decent rest break. As we used to always say: they are the lifeblood of this nation

They keep this nation moving. We have seen examples of accidents, and I have been to them, where people were overtired or going a bit hard trying to get to their destination to make sure that they made it on time so they could get paid.

In some cases, these guys are forced to wait three or four months to get their pay. Not many small businesses can carry themselves for 120 days, but truckies are forced to do that while continuing to pay $1.40 per litre. On a trip from Melbourne to Sydney, you would put in 1,200 litres, running on tyres that are between $300 and $600 apiece. A universal joint can break at any given time, and you are looking at $200 to $400 plus fitting for a universal joint. I know; I have been out to do repairs on trucks on the side of the road. It is not a simple thing. When you have truck driver walking up and down, pacing, because he knows he is going to miss his slot, you know the extra stress it is causing him. It is not fair that they should be treated this way. The people who drive our trucks, and the families they feed, are so important to our communities.

I very strongly oppose this government's IPA agenda in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If there are issues with the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, why didn't the government do something about it? Why didn't they put in a submission to say how we can do things better and how we can manage this process properly? They did not. Instead, they just came in and said, 'Just get rid of it. It doesn't suit our ideological beliefs, so we'll get rid of it.' It is not the right way to do it. The government should really take the time to sit back and just for once think about something. Get the Prime Minister to make a decision and stick to it for more than 24 hours, to make sure that we look after the people who are driving up and down our roads.

The Hume Highway is a highway that is probably the main artery for road freight in this country. It is a really magnificent road, particularly in Victoria. It is a good-quality road and a safe road. Why do we have accidents on it? Why do we have so many accidents, particularly down towards the bottom end, towards Melbourne? We have that because people are tired, overworked, overstressed and rushing to try to make ends meet. We in this place would be very unhappy if all industries were treated this way; so why do we treat truck drivers as second-class citizens? Why do we think they are uneducated, as the Deputy Prime Minister said? It is not right and it is not fair.

The government use this and say, 'This is just the TWU.' Thank God we do have the TWU. There was a great case I was reading about this morning. An owner-driver had been ripped off $24,500. He had to take a loan out on the mortgage on his house to keep his business running because he had been ripped off by an unscrupulous operator. It was not the government that came and helped him; the government could not give a toss. It was the TWU that went out and helped him get that money back, put it back into his house, take that stress and anguish away from him and give him and his family an opportunity to keep running and keep growing his business.

We see the government walk out and stand next to some people, do some signing and get a selfie—which is about the depth of the ability of this government—and then walk off and say, 'Yes, we must get rid of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.' The challenge I put to you lot opposite is: go and spend some time in the entire sector—with the drivers, mechanics, tow truck drivers and everyone involved in there—and have a look at the pain and suffering you are going to cause. You are not just going to put people out of business; you are going to drive people into very serious health issues and, in some cases, suicide.

Do not do this. Support the people that are out on our roads. Support the businesses and give them a fair go. Do not wipe out this tribunal. Stand up, do the right thing and the grown-up thing, and work to actually find a better solution, because each and every day there will be another crash on the road and another truck driver injured, and you in government will have to sit there and ask yourselves, 'What have we done to stop it?'

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise today to speak on the Road Safety Remuneration Repeal Bill 2016 and the Road Safety Remuneration Amendment (Protecting Owner Drivers) Bill 2016. I will say that I do have some credentials to speak on this: I hold here my heavy vehicle driver's licence.

It is a shame that the member for McEwen is scurrying out, because I would like him to hear some of my comments. I agree with many of the things he said about safety and truck drivers, but what he did not say was that, unless he owned any of those trucks he had supposedly driven in a previous career, he would be exempt from the regulations that are in place at the moment. It was not the IPA that wrote to me in great distress about losing contracts, losing their house and losing their truck; it was the truck drivers in my electorate. That is why I am speaking today, not because of some right-wing think tank. I am speaking about small business owners who are being discriminated against. It would be really nice if the member for McEwen and others actually spoke the entire truth. Unless you own your own truck and drive that truck, these regulations do not count.

Over the years we have had extensive changes to fatigue management, the weights that trucks can take and compliance. A whole range of safety measures have been put in place. That is not what this legislation is about. It is called safety legislation, but if it were about safety why wouldn't it affect all truck drivers, not just the ones who own and drive their own truck?

The way it works is this: you own a truck and you go to a ready reckoner, and if you are the owner it asks how many years of experience the driver has on how many axles and for the configuration of the truck. They will come up on that ready reckoner with the rate you can charge. So far so good. It sounds good to me because I agree with the member for McEwen that truck drivers should get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. The problem with this is that it comes up with an amount per kilometre which is higher than the going rate, so the members of the Transport Workers Union that are working for the big line-haul companies, and those companies, do not have to pay this amount.

I can go onto this ready reckoner and, if it comes up with the rate which is higher than my competitors, I have got a couple of choices: do I break the law and take a chance that I will not get caught or do I charge the higher rate and not get the work? These people are in a real bind. Despite the contact I have had through my electorate, I spoke to Greg, a truck driver from Melbourne, this morning and he already has had to park his truck because the rate that he has been told he has to charge is higher than the going rate. The contractor that he was working with has gone out and bought a couple of other trucks and employed drivers so that he is exempt.

This is not about safety; this is about anticompetitive behaviour. It is un-Australian because one of the great dreams of people is to be their own boss. There are a few ways you can do that and being a truckie is one way. But to do that, you have probably got to mortgage your house to get a deposit on the truck, then you have got to find a finance company that will back you and then you have got to get a contract that you can rely on to make your monthly repayments. It is hard work but at least you are your own boss and that is a great aspiration for people to have.

A truck driver and contractor from Tomingley, just south of Dubbo—he is trying to set up a small farm there—who runs a triple road train through to Darwin every couple of weeks, contacted me. He drives and owns one truck. Driving a triple road train is a fairly specialised occupation and purchasing a triple road train is incredibly expensive. But he was prepared to do that to have an income for his family and hopefully as off-farm income so they can establish their small property. Now he cannot compete with the other large trucking firms that are exempt from this.

We had the member for McEwen called out as a mechanic and as a tow truck driver but, unless he owned those vehicles, this legislation would be irrelevant to him. Never before have I seen such discrimination through legislation. If he wants to go back to the Hansard of 2012 like I did, he would find out that he only has to read the final speeches in detail from the then shadow minister, Warren Truss, to see these problems were highlighted in 2012 when the tribunal was set up by the member for Maribyrnong, when he was the minister for industrial relations. Those problems were highlighted, and the members of the coalition voted against it. One of the crossbenchers voted against it. If the member for Kennedy had not been paired as a Labor vote and the then member for New England, Mr Windsor, had not voted with the Labor Party in the hung parliament, this legislation would not have even got off the ground—that is how close it was. Do not talk about the coalition not being engaged in this until the last moment; we spoke about this in 2012 when the tribunal was set in place.

Not very often do we debate things in here that actually have an actual day-to-day impact on people. The guys I spoke to out there this morning were saying, 'Is this going to be done today? Is it going to be done tomorrow? What happens if the Senate gets caught up debating the Building Construction Commission? We cannot wait till after the budget week because, quite frankly, we have got a payment to make before then.' The trucks of the six drivers I spoke to this morning were parked. They were specialist trucks. A couple of the guys I spoke to were running flat tops, not the taut liners that you mostly see running up and down the highway, specialising in the types of loads that they take—steel, machinery, things like that—not the boxed commodities that you generally see going up and down the highway. They had no work.

No one more than me believes in a fair day's work for a fair day's pay or understands the need for road safety. I have got in my electorate the Newell Highway from Goondiwindi on the Queensland border to Peak Hill. In the last two weeks I have done 5,000 kilometres in my car and half of that would have been on the Newell Highway going up and down through my electorate. It is not the truck drivers that are the issue with safety on the roads; it is the other users of the highway that they have to contend with.

What is different to what you saw 10 or 15 years ago is, if you go down that highway at five o'clock in the morning, there are dozens of trucks parked off the road with the drivers having sleep breaks as per the recommendations for safety on the highway. One of the things that this government and the previous government put money on were rest areas on the highway so that truck drivers could get off the road to get a sleep away from the traffic and with facilities like toilets.

This tribunal needs to be abolished. It was a gift to the Transport Workers Union from the member for Maribyrnong when he was the minister. They have abused the power they were given. We need to make sure the drivers are protected and that we have safe rates, but we do not need to financially ruin individual people who have a dream of being their own boss or move those people across to be drivers for the large freight forwarding logistics companies, where they would be working for a wage. They need to have a fair wage. I have no problem with people who choose to work for a large company, no problem at all. But why are we discriminating against people who have a dream of being their own boss? This is not just a matter of losing your job, because when you cannot make the payment you not only lose the truck but also you more likely will lose the house. What about the market for second-hand trucks coming up when these people exit the industry? The market will skydive down. The finance companies that are going to end up with all these trucks on their books are going to be incredibly pressured, because the big line haul companies do not buy second-hand trucks. They buy new trucks. There will be very little market as these people exit the industry.

The member for McEwen also mentioned cut-price back loads, and I agree: a freight is a freight. But, in my electorate, there are a lot of owner-operators that are in the stock transport industry. Many of them are mostly running B-doubles, some are running road trains, over large distances. There are a lot of sheep and cattle that come from Western Queensland down to places like Dubbo for sale and slaughter. If there was an opportunity on the way back up to maybe pick up a load or to take a mob of stud cattle or whatever, to cover some of the cost of fuel, what is wrong with that? Under this legislation a full kilometre rate has to be charged, which means they are priced out of contention.

I strongly urge my colleagues on the opposition benches to abandon their speaking notes handed down from the Transport Workers Union, and to think about the great Australian dream of being your own boss, working hard and getting ahead under your own hard work and initiative. This needs to be repealed. It needs to be done today. Never before has there been a more important piece of legislation for owner-operators and small business people in Australia. I commend this bill to repeal the tribunal.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is one issue that the previous speaker, the member for Parkes, forgot to address. In the back load, when you take on that cheaper load to cover the fuel, you are undercutting another truck driver. Taking on the cheaper load means you are undercutting somebody where it might be their first load. The whole point to this tribunal was about setting up safe rates. The whole point of this order was about being paid for every hour that you work. This is so rich coming from a government that stands up and rants about farmgate prices. Yet, once it gets loaded onto the truck, they are not interested in the workers who carry the load getting a decent rate of pay. Every time you turn around and drive back up the highway at a reduced rate, you are undercutting the other truck driver that wants to charge a proper rate.

It is wrong for government members to stand up here and say that all owner truck drivers are opposed to this. I have had countless owner truck drivers contacting me to say that they support the decision and that they are tired of being undercut by those who they call the 'cowboys' in the industry. I have had owner truck drivers say to me that the rate that they charge is higher than what the tribunal has ordered. It is wrong for government ministers to stand up here and say that all owner truck drivers are opposed to it, because it is just not true. The purpose of the tribunal is to set in place minimum standards. It is to set in place minimum pay for employee drivers and owner-drivers. It is about road safety. For government MPs to say that this has nothing to do with road safety is also misleading.

My electorate is a country electorate, and there is the Calder Highway that runs straight through the heart of it. When I first became the member, somebody gave me some advice: 'Unless it's road crash, Lisa, you may not get the media to come.' It was a really cynical view about the media in Bendigo, but it also painted a reality of how often there are accidents in the Bendigo area, because we are a major transport route. We have trucks carrying product to port every day, intersecting with a large regional community. The Bendigo Advertiser in April 2016, 'Fuel tanker rolls at Inglewood':

… the fuel tanker was travelling north on the Calder Highway about 7.45pm when it lost control entering Inglewood on a sweeping bend …

This is just one accident from the last few weeks. In the Bendigo Advertiser in March, 'Calder Highway reopened after truck rollover':

VicRoads has confirmed all lanes of the Calder Highway at Big Hill have reopened … following a [truck accident in a] two-vehicle crash at 7am.

In the Bendigo Advertiser, January 2015, 'One killed in Lockwood crash':

The collision involved a truck and a car at the intersection of Lockwood Road and the Calder Alternate Highway.

In the Bendigo Advertiser, April 2015, 'Trucks collide on Calder Freeway':

White paint spilled across two lanes on the Calder Freeway today when two trucks collided …

The Bendigo Advertiser,March 2014, 'Workplace tragedy: man killed in truck accident at Newham'. The Bendigo Advertiser, November 2012, 'Truck driver killed in horror Calder crash'. The Bendigo Advertiser, November 2012, 'Truckie dies in river crash'. Bendigo Advertiser, November 2012: 'Three dead in overnight crashes'. Bendigo Advertiser, 2012: 'Driver airlifted after Midland Highway crash'. Quite tragically, the list continues. To stand here and say that this order is not about safety is wrong. I know it, and people with country electorates know it. This decision by this government to abolish this tribunal says one message loud and clear to people in regional areas: 'We do not take road safety seriously. We are not interested in doing everything we can to ensure road safety.'

I just read out a sample of the articles that have appeared in my local paper about accidents and collisions—some of them, tragically, fatal—involving truck drivers. As the previous speaker said, they are here just blaming car drivers. It is not that simple. It is not that simple.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.