Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Sterle, for that great story—and for your compliments to me. That is a great story, but I want to tell you a scary story. This is a very scary story. It is about scary government, stupid bureaucracy—I do not know where the opposition fits into this—and the New South Wales farmers. I will give them a cheerio call just for trying to have a go. It is all about the national heavy vehicle driver fatigue legislation, which is designed to make driving safer and the work conditions better for drivers in Australia, and to harmonise the laws across the states. For some strange reason New South Wales is completely dysfunctional; as a matter of fact, there ought to be emergency powers to get rid of the government. But I reckon this is making out a case for New South Wales farmers to down tools until sense is returned to the RTA in New South Wales. They are introducing driver fatigue laws which do away with the 100-kilometre exemption. In other states at the present time if you work within 100 kilometres of your base you are not subject to these laws. But, in New South Wales, you will be, from 29 September—next weekend.

Now, I do not know why no-one else has raised this—you try and get across everything you can, and it is a state issue—but owners of trucks that have a gross vehicle mass of more than 12 tonnes, which includes trucks that carry eight tonnes—a four-tonne truck with an eight-tonne axle—are going to have to have a logbook and they are going to have to log everything they do in the truck. I will just read out some things that you are going to have to log if you are a farmer. This is silly stuff.

If you are stripping a crop on your farm—Senator Johnston, you had better listen to this—and you are carting the wheat from the paddock to the silo on your farm—that is, you are not going onto a public road—you have actually got to log the time that you drive the truck. If you are driving a truck and a public road goes through your place—there are plenty of them—and you cross the road, you have got to log the crossing of the road. This is in a book; this is paperwork. This is a nightmare. If you are working on the truck—if you have got a truck, say, with a stock crate on it and the gate on it breaks and you are welding it up—you have got to log that in your logbook in the truck.