Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to make a contribution in this debate on the Road Safety Remuneration Repeal Bill 2016. I want to put on the public record at the outset that the minister, the Hon. Michaelia Cash, is really putting politics over substance here. A political win for her has been put over decades of research and an enormous amount of work by competent, professional, highly skilled people. For the minister to say, in a very disgraceful comment, that this is about the TWU putting money into its coffers or filling its coffers, or some such thing, is an absolute disgrace.

I have been a member of the TWU since 1975. I know, have spoken to and worked with more drivers than Senator Cash will ever meet. I know the things that they go through on a daily basis. I know all about fixed costs of transport, variable costs of transport and labour costs of transport. These are things that I actually grew up with in all of my working life until I entered this place. I know all about visiting families who have had people in their families not come home from work. I can recount to you a story, Mr Acting Deputy President Edwards, of a police report where the driver was slumped over the wheel of his cab. The steering wheel was drenched in blood. The inquest proved that the person had ingested some amphetamines. He had an ulcer that had burst in his stomach. He vomited and drowned in his own blood. He was not taking drugs for a high, for a kick or for some fun. He was using those substances to get his daily work done. His schedule was so horrific, never-ending and ceaseless that, to actually stay awake and contribute to the economy, he had to take drugs. They are not isolated circumstances. No-one knows better than the Transport Workers Union of the worth of the owner-driver to the economy and to our society—no-one knows better.

For those students of history, most of the branches of the TWU were formed by owner-drivers. The South Australian branch of the Transport Workers Union came out of the Federated Carters and Drivers' Industrial Union in around 1900. The 11 miles from Port Adelaide to the city was the transport connection from the port to the city. Those carters and drivers formed the industrial organisation which became the South Australian branch of the Transport Workers Union. No-one can say that the TWU does not know owner-drivers. No-one can say that they have ever failed to represent them industrially. In the fixed costs of bringing a truck to the road—the registration, insurance, the leasing payments—these are easily readily quantifiable amounts. The variable costs—the tyres, the oils, the lubes—are easily readily available quantifiable costs. And for the labour costs, you go to an award, you take an award rate, you put a casual loading on it, you add your superannuation, you add your WorkCover, and they become an easily quantifiable rate for an owner-driver.

It may surprise this chamber, given some of the contributions we have had here today, that since 1984 there has been a contract determination in New South Wales which has done precisely what the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal has done today. Since 1984, owner-drivers in New South Wales have been able to access an owner-driver determination which prescribes fixed costs, variable costs and labour cots. The world did not fall down in New South Wales. In fact, New South Wales has the highest remunerated drivers and, particularly, the highest remunerated owner-drivers. They are not out of work. They are still contributing to one of the largest economies in Australia in a useful, productive way.

What has happened here is that the trips over 500 kilometres interstate have, for the first time ever, had sensible researched, credible costings attributed to the cost of bringing your truck to the market. No owner-driver in this country should be afraid to charge those rates. You, Mr Acting Deputy President Edwards, as a person of some business acumen and experience, would not put a truck on the road unless you could get your fix costs, your variable costs and your labour costs. And, dare I say it, for all of the hard work that they do, perhaps a little bit of profit would not be out of the question. That is what the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is trying to bring about. For there to be a knee-jerk reaction, which is what this is—a disgraceful political attack for political expediency—to just go out and throw out 20 years of hard work and 20 years of research just for political expediency, you hope it you might get you a few votes at the next election. And I have not even touched road safety!

I can speak on road safety. As a former National Transport Commissioner, as a director of the Motor Accident Commission of South Australia, as an acting chair of the Road Safety Advisory Council of South Australia, I do come to the argument qualified to talk about road safety. As a person who does drive—unlike the Honourable Deputy Prime Minister who in lieu of an eight-hour drive took a helicopter—last week I did my 800 kilometres on the road to attend a rural South Australian meeting. When I got back, dare I say, I was little tired, because 800 kilometres and three hours at a meeting—there's 11 hours. I did that once. Owner-drivers do that seven days a week, and put more on top. They will do 14 hours of driving, they will do their service in their own time, they will wash their trucks in their own time—and they do take pride in their gear, as Senator Lazarus has said. They are totally committed, professional people who are entitled to recover the true cost of doing their job. That is what this tribunal allows them to do. It allows them to be in the marketplace and say—and I read the other day that to take three trailers from Adelaide to Darwin, with a $280,000 truck, was $6,000; $4,000 in standing costs. Two grand for six days work and you are bringing $300,000 worth of gear to the job. That is if you can get a little bit of backloading; you might be a little bit in front of that. The true cost of doing that job one way is seven and half thousand dollars. That is the epitome of the problem—the true cost of doing it.

These people are being forced to do work at less than the true cost of recovery, and they have been doing it for years. I have seen friends of mine who have bought trucks, operated them for two years and operated them with the absolute commitment that God has given them—20 hours a day would not be unusual for them—only to find that, at the end of two years, they have eaten the truck. The truck is worth a lot less than what they started with, and they have nothing to show for it. The companies that they are employed by are paying their fuel bills because they cannot afford to pay their fuel bills. Some of these trucks will do two kilometres to a litre. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that if you are doing 3,000 kays that is $1,500 bucks, minimum, before you start recovering your tyres, your lubes and your oil.

Let us talk about road safety. There is one thing that is very clear: you can stop eating and you can stop drinking for a fairly lengthy period of time but one thing you cannot do is deny sleep. Sleep deprivation is cumulative. If you go with four hours sleep and then another four hours sleep, eventually you are going to fall asleep, and you will not be able to control that. I have spoken to drivers who have fallen asleep on the road with their 50-tonne trucks and travelled for a considerable distance. If they are doing 100 kays, you do not have to be a scientist to work out that if there is something in front of them it is not going to be good. You cannot avoid sleep. When you have drivers who are stretched financially, who need to work to pay that fuel bill, pay that mortgage, pay that truck bill and pay that wage, then they will push themselves to the limit. But there are limits to what you can do when depriving yourself of sleep.

There is an old story about the first coronial inquest into transport, where a carter and his driver had had an accident. The driver was killed. The inquest found that the horse was blind. The driver forgot to turn the horse and off it went, the cart rolled over and then the driver was dead. The question now is: how many blind horses is a driver in charge of when he has a power nap or a sleep deprivation event? The answer is 500; a 500 horsepower motor. If you fall asleep for 60 seconds, it is catastrophic. You cannot deny your body sleep. There is a serious problem with overwork, underpay and road safety. We, the community, are paying for that.

We do not say that paying everybody more money is going to fix all problems but it will take the pressure off. Look at some of the transport companies of renown: for example, Quikasair—it is a fancy name. Did you know that Quikasair were actually proved to be as quick as air? The ACCC consigned an airfreight parcel in Victoria. It went to the airport and it went in a Quikasair truck, which we used to call 'bitumen Boeings'. It was delivered in Adelaide at the airfreight price; they were fined several million dollars for doing this, but they still do things very, very efficiently and quickly. I was called to a depot where a high-speed transport operator was not only high but also he had driven from Sydney to Adelaide in just over 12 hours. That is 1,400 kilometres. How is that literally possible? It is possible because human beings take a lot of risks when there is a bit of money to be made and they have no rules to bind them—so, doped to the eyeballs and speeding all of the way.

There was a very famous coronial inquiry in South Australia where a driver did back-to-back Sydney trips. On his third way back, without sleep, he crashed into a car and three generations of a family were incinerated. He earned 14 years at Her Majesty's pleasure for that effort. This is a vigorous and very dangerous industry. If people cannot recover their true cost of coming to work, then something will give. Quite often it is something in the road safety area that gives if tyres are not changed and maintenance schedules are not met. I heard Senator Cash say, 'We could have a bit of gear in the truck that would fix all of that.' The Australian design rules do not feature crash data or journey data. If there is journey data in the imported trucks that come into Australia, the feature is actually taken out for Australia. In Europe you have crash data and journey data. In Australia, you do not.

The road safety aspect of this cannot be estimated. The cost to the economy is unbelievable. The cost to a lot of workers' compensation schemes around Australia is also extremely important. Dare I say, all of that has been glossed over because Senator the Hon. Michaelia Cash believes it is the TWU trying to fill its coffers. I have to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. We have invested 20 years in this effort; 20 hard years of convening all of the stakeholders in the industry, and of convening all of the experts we could find to prove the case, to prove the link between road safety and remuneration. We were successful. Now, with Senator Lazarus, Senator Lambie and others—perhaps Senator Muir will be on our side—it looks like it will all be thrown out without proper debate.

One thing that John Faulkner said before he left this chamber is that the really disappointing thing is that decisions are not made in this chamber after debate. Decisions are not made in this chamber after a good, long, hard and fulsome contribution from all sides of the chamber. They are done in tiny corners with secret deals. Here we stand today, with 9.30 pm as the cut-off, gagging debate and not even allowing a proper contribution from all interested parties. Why? Because of the narrow political interests of those on the other side and some people who have been snowed.

I will say, Senator Lazarus, I know owner-drivers probably better than you know owner-drivers. When I was elected as the secretary of the TWU SA/NT branch, I had a thousand owner-drivers vote for me and I never shirked the task of representing them, their families or anybody in that industry. To come in here and say, 'Oh, I made a mistake last week', well, that is not how it works. This is a vital segment of the Australian economy. It contributes magnificently. The only thing it is not good at is getting paid correctly. Most of these people will not be paying tax. Their accountant will be saying to them: 'You had better have a better year next year because these figures do not look good. You have eaten the truck—that has depreciated in value—and you have not provided for a new one, or you've taken a mortgage out on your house for what looks like a pretty bad business deal.'

It has to get more mature. People need to get proper remuneration for the fixed, variable and labour costs. Lots of these owner-drivers will work themselves to death

They will rely on their partner at home to do the books. I have met them. I have met single owner-drivers and their partners. I have met small companies with three, five and 10 trucks. I have sat down in their kitchens and talked about superannuation payments, wages payments, truck payments and how they balance all of these things together. The only thing they are not good at is actually charging for what they do.

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get independently costed figures into a deal which the marketplace should respect, because you cannot hire a driver who has not registered his truck, you should not hire a driver who has not got some sickness and accident insurance or some WorkCover and you should not hire a driver that has a poorly maintained vehicle. But they do because they do not pay them enough to do the job properly. They simply do not pay them enough to do the job properly. Quite often these drivers will have to show their costs to a company, and the company will then tell them, 'Take a bit out of here. Take a bit out of there.' It is an absolute disgrace.

This was, for me, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some sanity, some fairness and some real reward for their effort. Now, I understand what has happened. The hirer will say, 'I can get that transport company to do the job cheaper'—and they may well, for a week. But if there are 35,000 owner-drivers today in Australia, that means there are 28,000 to 30,000 jobs in Australia which no-one can pick up in a day. There is no company with that spare capacity. If they had that spare capacity, they would soon realise that you need to up-rate the business, because no-one is more efficient than an owner-driver. They get up in the morning, they wipe their chrome wheels, they clean their cab. They never charge for any of that. If they cannot even charge for the wherewithal of what they use in doing the job, they do not charge for the additionals.

I know lots of employee drivers who will not do anything on their own time. They wait till they get on the clock and they say, 'Fair enough.' Lots of transport workers get into work 15 minutes early and give the boss that because they do not like to be rushed. But owner-drivers are a most efficient people, except at claiming their costs. Now, it is pleasing to see that Senator Muir has stayed on the right side of the argument, but I have found Senator Cash's contribution very virulent, shrill and over the top. It is as if we are out to collect owner-drivers' money. How does that work? Please explain it to me? It is voluntary to join a union. You have to articulate a case to join a union and you have to ask them to sign a form and pay some money. There is no great big deal out there. There has not been a deal like that since I was a junior organiser—and there was a deal then, but we will not go into that.

The reality is this: we need to keep the Road Safety Remuneration Repeal Bill 2016 in place. I move:

At the end of the motion, add "and the bill be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 May 2016".

That, I believe, will give us the opportunity to look at this in the cold, hard light of day, instead of in the political red haze that has descended on this chamber. It is a political red haze—with double-D this and that and the rest of it. This is too important. This is about people's lives, both the road users' lives and the owner-drivers' lives. It is about them getting a respectable return on their great investment. It is about people being safe on the roads, free from the fear of injury or accident. I commend the amendment to the Senate.