John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I appreciate that. As I said on 16 March in this place, this order is going to send people broke. It is not about the rate they get for carting their main load. I gave the example of livestock transport. When they cart their main load, they might charge $4.50 a kilometre for a four-deck sheep crate with a load of about 400 sheep. They run home empty and the one-way rate they charge covers them to come home empty, so, if they get a backload, that is a bonus. I gave the example of bringing home a few rams. If you go 500 kilometres, you have to charge about $800 to bring 10 or 20 rams back on a backload, in one pen on the bottom deck. What would happen then is that the grazier who ordered the rams to be delivered would get a bill for about $800. That grazier would then go to his stock and station agent and say, 'What are you doing charging me $800?' There would be a hell of a blue as a result of that and the agent would say, 'This is this new order. The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal has brought this on.' That truckie would then never get another job with that stock and station agent. It is simply unrealistic. It got even worse. If you took two-part loads, you had to charge the full rate for each part load. The backload was the problem. We have many examples. One truckie, Senator Lazarus, carts from Adelaide to Brisbane and gets a good rate and then loads up and goes from Brisbane right through to Perth and gets a good rate, but he charges just $2½ thousand to go from Perth back to Adelaide. He was happy with that, but the order said that he had to be paid $6½ thousand for a part load to go from Perth back to Adelaide, so he lost his job. He had to run back empty. He did not get anything—he would be out of business. Here is the problem.

This was supposed to be all about safety. I can guarantee you that the owner-drivers are good, safe drivers. As I said to them yesterday, when they are going down a hill, they have the Jacobs engine brake on. They go back through the gearbox and use the engine to slow down so that their brakes are cool and are there for an emergency. They are not riding their brakes and wearing them out because the owner-driver has to replace them. If you drive for a big company and wear the brakes out, the company has to replace them. It is in the owner-driver's interest to look after and maintain their rigs, simply to save on costs.

When this bill came in, of course, there was a hung parliament in the other place. It was supported by the then member for New England, Mr Tony Windsor, who just let it go through, along with an independent member, Mr Andrew Wilkie, the Greens member, Mr Adam Bandt, and even the member for Kennedy, Mr Bob Katter. Let me talk about him. Mr Katter, a big supporter of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, was paired during the vote on the bill. Mr Katter was not present—he often does not vote—but he supported the introduction of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Even recently, Mr Katter remained a staunch supporter of the RSRT. On 26 March 2015, Mr Katter held a joint press conference with the secretary of the Transport Workers Union, Mr Tony Sheldon, and signed on to the Transport Workers Union's campaign to maintain the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. I wonder if he ever thought that it would be sending people broke.

Just recently, I signed a letter with Senator Sterle to send to this tribunal because we saw truckies who were renewing their contracts and were going to get paid in 90 and 120 days. They were happy with the rate, but they would not get paid for three months. They had to pay their wages in seven days, their fuel bills in a month, their lease payments on their trucks and trailers in a month, and their tyre bills, maintenance bills, spare parts bills and service bills in a month, but they would not be paid for three months. We wrote to the tribunal and said, 'Why don't you make an order that all transport contractors be paid in a maximum of 30 days?' That would have been a good order. It is not the rate; it is getting paid on time—that is the big issue. They are happy with their cash flow and happy with their rate; they just want to be paid on time, which is only fair. Life is about fairness. But, of course, we never heard from the tribunal.

Returning to when we tried to delay this order, it was supported by the Transport Workers Union through to October and supported by everyone else to 1 January next year, and, in its arrogance, the tribunal said, 'No, it will start on 4 April.' So NatRoad went to the Federal Court in Brisbane on Saturday, 2 April, from memory, and had it delayed. Then, of course, along came the Transport Workers Union into the court the following week to have that injunction removed. So they did not want to delay it at all; they wanted to bring it straight in. I wish they were with us talking to the truckies, Senator Lazarus, over the last couple of days, including in Tamworth on Saturday, when we had a big gathering with the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, Barnaby Joyce, and others. Those people are really hurting.

The point is that we all want people to be paid fairly, whether they are an employee or a contract truckie or whatever. Life is about fairness, as I say, but this order meant that they could not get a backload. It was destroying them. They just were not getting the jobs. Some of these big companies that have contracts might say a contract was for $2,000 to bring a load back from Brisbane to Melbourne and they might have to pay more under this order. They were actually contracting in the long term and losing money when they paid the owner-drivers, so they were not going to use the owner-drivers. They would use their own drivers in those companies because the order does not apply to them. This is a crazy situation. Thank goodness for people like Mat Munro—I really appreciate Mat Munro; he does a magnificent job for the Australia Livestock and Rural Transporters Association; he briefed me on this more than a month ago; hence my speech then—and Bill McKinley from the ATA and NatRoad and those people who really put in to see that this bill gets through and the whole tribunal is thrown out, because it is simply hurting up to 35,000 small Aussie battlers. These are people in business who may mortgage their houses and who, if they do not get back to work, will lose their houses and have their rigs repossessed.

It will flow right on through the communities. Go out to any country town, big or small, and there is your livestock and grain carrier. And where does that carrier buy their fuel? From the local fuel agent. For the tyres, spare parts and servicing it is the same thing.

Even if you are in the game of selling new trucks, Mr Acting Deputy President Edwards—and I know a dealership down your way; in the last two weeks it has had 14 new prime movers either cancelled or put on hold. Four-and-a-half million dollars' worth of sales of new trucks were cancelled or put on hold because of this order. What is that doing for the people employed in that business? I am not going to name them; I just respect them for giving me the information from South Australia.

That is why this order simply has to go. These people, these owner-drivers, work very hard. On the weekends they are there: greasing their rigs, looking after them, servicing them and seeing that the tyre pressures are right and the brakes are adjusted on the trailer. I did it all myself for many years. So it was good to actually get behind the wheel of a truck again this morning, to join the group and show my support, along with many, many of my colleagues—especially Minister Cash, who I think has done a magnificent job in handling this issue.

I express my gratitude to the crossbenchers for their open-mindedness on this issue. They can see how wrong and how bad this order is and what it is doing to small business.

I come back now to the tribunal itself. Why didn't they delay this? Why didn't they listen to the people from all sides? Even the Transport Workers Union wanted it delayed.

Senator Singh interjecting—

Senator Singh, they wanted it delayed until October. That was their submission. You cannot deny that. And now you are trying to make a fuss about it because you are nearly to the death knock of this whole—