Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

It is ironic that we are discussing a proposal for a separate authority with a separate set of laws for the road transport sector when the ALP's vehement opposition to the Australian building and construction commission was based on the so-called principle that we need one set of laws for all. So a special authority for the building and construction sector is described as unconscionable and unprincipled and it is said that it should be abolished, and so the gaggle of ex-union bosses and their Green alliance partners voted. Yet here we are, just two hours later, with the same gaggle voting for a separate authority with separate laws for the road transport sector. All of a sudden a separate authority and separate laws are good. It is principled and it needs to be implemented! This forked-tongued approach to public policy, disappointing as it is, should not surprise. It is in tune with promising that there will be no carbon tax and then implementing it.

Let's talk about the carbon tax and its impact on road safety. Labor senators may laugh. Senator Sterle may take a fit in his seat—I do not know what he is doing—but let me remind Labor senators of some quotes. It has been said:

Under the carbon tax, drivers will be forced to do longer hours, sweat their trucks further, have less maintenance, and that means more deaths.

And it has been said that changes in fuel tax credits and excise levels 'will result in more truck driver deaths and related harm unless drivers can fully recover their costs'. The quote goes on:

Truck drivers are approaching the union and asking how they can ensure the tax will not just be another hit on running costs that they won’t be compensated for. I reckon that’s a pretty good question.

Isn't it amazing? The Labor senators have now gone quiet because they recognise the person who said all these things: none other than the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, Mr Tony Sheldon. He was deliberately linking the carbon tax with the possibility of more deaths on our roads for the road transport sector. That is what Mr Sheldon said on Ten News on 11 July 2011. So here we have it. We know, courtesy of the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, that if you genuinely wish to reduce road deaths then you would repeal the carbon tax.