Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I think the five minutes of Senator Edwards was disorderly, but that is not casting aspersions on your good self. I would not do that, Mr Deputy President.

As I said, on this side of the chamber, there are those of us who fought for years to give our Australian truckies the opportunity to leave home and get home safely in one piece and to be sustainable, because they are constantly faced with a barrage of challenges and costs. We talk about this side of the chamber. May I—through you, Mr Deputy President—mention Senators Williams, Cormann, Ryan and Ruston, who all of a sudden, in a one-hour period today, have all become friends of the trucking industry. I sit here and I do listen at times. I actually do listen if I can stay awake long enough with some of the rubbish that goes on in here. But how dare they in one hour today decide to become friends of the trucking industry, to be worried about the on-road costs of Australia's heavy vehicle industry, when in this chamber last year every man and woman of them, to a T, voted against the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal? They voted as a bloc, proudly, after filibustering debate, against safe rates for Australia's truck drivers. I find it highly hypocritical. In fact, the level of hypocrisy in this place does not surprise me, but today it did tweak a little nerve.

I have to just continue there. I think to myself, 'Are they standing up for Australia's trucking industry, or are they standing up for Australia's transport operators, those small businesses like I was for 11 fantastic years?' I built my own little business; I fed my family; I built a house—with the great support of my wife. I could not have done it without her. She was home bringing up two babies while I was away every fortnight running between Perth and Darwin on my own. There was no fatigue management in those days. There were no safe rates. There was no Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. There is now today. I say thank you to the Labor government, thank you to the Greens for their support and thank you to those great Independents, who realise that truckies do deserve to get home safely to their families.

I will come back to the accusations from those four senators. How dare they pretend to be friends of the trucking industry! I invited the Leader of the Nats to have a debate—I will not use the word 'blue' because there are sooks on the other side who want to report me—in any trucking yard in Australia with any trucking operator about the value of safe rates. None of you picked it up. The Leader of the Nats did not have the intestinal fortitude to bring on a debate with me, at his calling. None of you stood up for Australia's trucking industry. You are friends of the trucking industry? Who are you really friends with? The ATA? Is it the major operators? Or is it Coles and Woolies? (Time expired)