Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I note with dismay that the debate of the Road Safety Remuneration Repeal Bill 2016 will be gagged at 9.30 tonight. I thought it would be fair and reasonable that this bill be concluded some time tomorrow. That would give certainty to the sector.

Senator Lazarus interjecting—

Yes, but 24 hours, I think, would have been very clear. But I do not want to argue with Senator Lazarus about it. John Maynard-Keynes once said, 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?' Clearly, this tribunal, which I supported in good faith back in 2012, has turned into an unmitigated disaster. The payment order that was made a number of weeks ago is one that is completely unsustainable for this sector. I congratulate Senator Lazarus for his advocacy and Senator Madigan for his hard work in meeting with drivers in Ballarat a couple of weekends ago. He met with some 200 owner-operator drivers to hear what the problems are from the source.

When I supported this bill I was comforted in part by what then Senator Joyce, now Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, said about the bill. He said that he did not think there was a causal relationship between remuneration and unsafe practices. He said:

Even if a causal connection between remuneration and unsafe practices is presumed to exist it does not follow that establishing higher minimum rates or prohibiting certain methods of payment will result in drivers changing their unsafe practices.

He went on to say that there ought to be fairness for drivers in relation to this, and he said:

Without labouring the point, we are not emphatically opposed to this. We oppose it, but we are not going to town on it.

Senator Williams, someone who has had a lot of the experience in this industry and who I have a lot of time for, when he spoke on this said:

… we do not have major problems with these bills but we do question whether they will be the silver bullet to prevent deaths. I hope they are. We will see how these bills perform when they are introduced.

He also said that they would not go to town in relation to these bills or die in a ditch with them. No-one anticipated how bad the tribunal would be in its implementation. By the order it made, it effectively put at risk the viability of every owner-operator driver in this nation, and that is why there is a great degree of urgency in dealing with these matters.

The problem is that even if the tribunal belatedly is going to suspend the orders that will not help all those owner-operator drivers who are not able to get finance, who have had contracts cancelled and who are unlikely to get new contracts put in place while the spectre of this tribunal making another bizarre decision hangs over them. That is the problem. This tribunal has to go. We need to start from scratch, and we need to do so in good faith. I note that the minister has talked about issues of consultation, and I do want to acknowledge the work of Tony Sheldon, who I have worked with constructively on a whole range of issues and particularly when the TWU raised some really genuine concerns on behalf of employees of Qantas. I have been very pleased to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tony Sheldon in relation to that.

What we have here is a piece of legislation that does not work—a piece of legislation with unintended consequences that have been catastrophic for this sector. The Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order of 2016 shows you that this tribunal cannot be trusted in this sector. It is a tribunal that does not understand what happens in the real world with owner-operator drivers. Interestingly, two independent reports commissioned by the coalition government have shown that the RSRT is expensive and ineffective in achieving its aim—road safety. The PwC report dated January 2016, which I understand we saw only a few days ago, wrote that it considered 'the abolition of the System would result in significant net benefit to the community at large.' It also said that, in terms of stakeholder consultations with industry, there were limited research and conclusions as to the nature of the relationship between remuneration and road safety. More interestingly, there was a report by Jaguar Consulting back in April 2014, which we have only just seen, effectively, in the last few days. That 220-page report was scathing about the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and the system put in place. It said:

In sum, the evidence for the existence of linkages between remuneration levels and road safety performance is relatively limited, while there are difficulties in interpreting the specific nature and significance of any such links.

It goes on to say that this will not work in terms of safety. It was a scathing report and I do not understand why that report was not released publicly well before then. I do not know why the coalition did not release that 220-page report when it surfaced back in April 2014.

I want to acknowledge the work of the South Australian Road Transport Association's Steve Shearer, who has been a great source of fair advice. He has told me that SA Police tell him, and their interstate colleagues have the same view, that they need to focus on a small recalcitrant minority, which they put at five per cent or less, which includes repeat offenders or serious offenders, those getting it wrong all the time and the ones who get it badly wrong. They say that 95 per cent of the operators do the right thing. This is why heavy vehicle enforcement units in South Australia and their counterparts around the country use intelligence-led targeted enforcement against that small recalcitrant minority. Within that five per cent is compliance with fatigue laws—which includes waiting times—speeding and roadworthiness of trucks. All those issues are what the police are looking at. For any company getting it wrong with waiting times at distribution centres, whether it is the supermarket causing it or not, the police still deal with that issue with the truck operator.

It is fair to say that about five years ago there was a serious problem with waiting times at most distribution centres. Because of the work of the police and the industry itself, the waiting time problem at large distribution centres has been dramatically improved, and with that issues of fatigue. In South Australia's case, SARTA, the police and the department of transport have visited the distribution centres, explained their obligations and helped them to work out how to manage the arrival, loading and unloading of trucks to avoid these fatigue breaches. The tribunal was not instrumental in this. We have seen significant reforms and improvements in this area.

The Australian Trucking Association has said that if we want to get this right, if we want to have reforms, we need to have a mandatory code of practice to deal with a whole range of associated issues. I know that Senator Conroy does not have much time for the Australian Trucking Association, but the fact that they are prepared to have a mandatory code of conduct enforced by the ACCC to deal with issues of compliance, of fair remuneration and of unfair contracts is very significant. We need to have a mandatory code. Previously they were talking about only having a voluntary code. Minister Cash has made a commitment to deal with these issues. These are issues that will not go away.

The Australian Labor Party, the Australian Greens and those who oppose this legislation have every right to raise this matter right up until election day on 2 July, and I am committed in good faith to sit down with key stakeholders and deal with these issues, including a mandatory code, including additional resources for the heavy vehicle regulator, including dealing with those issues where we must do better. There are sham contracting arrangements, where we have heard that people through international treaties are allowed to be on our roads and drive heavy vehicles when there are real issues about their credentials to do so. That is something that I know Senator Sterle, as a lifelong member of the TWU, has raised. I agree with Senator Sterle—these issues need to be dealt with. But the tribunal has been an unmitigated disaster and that is why we must start from scratch, doing so in good faith with all the key stakeholders—with industry, with the unions, with the owner operators—so that we can get this right. The tribunal has been very destructive in this sector. Too many owner-operator drivers will go broke, too many of them will lose their livelihoods and their homes, unless we start from scratch. We need to do that by scrapping this tribunal and starting afresh.