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

I too rise to take note of the report. A number of very salient points have been made in the chamber by both sides. The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was never about getting rid of owner-drivers, it was never about lessening their competitive influence in the economy. It was always about the ability for them to pay their fixed, variable and labour costs for transport and operate in a safe way. What has been characterised here, in a very polarising debate, is an absolute tragedy for the transport industry. There will continue to be people who will lose their livelihoods, their trucks, their homes and, in some cases, their lives, through unfortunate means and also through accidents in road safety. This was the first ever attempt to put a base in the industry, through which you could not fall, for the true costs of business, your fixed costs of business, the cost of putting a registered, insured and viable truck on the road—to be able to put fuel, tyres, oil and maintenance into that vehicle on a measurable scale, to get some reward for your labour and, dare I say it, perhaps even have a chance of making a profit. The Transport Workers Union has always been in favour of owner-drivers making the true cost recovery model plus some profit.

Senator Back made a good point about pen and paper. You can fly an aircraft from Bankstown to Adelaide and you can lodge the flight plan on your iPad. Unfortunately, in the transport industry you have to do it by logbook—and those logbooks are checked by up to three or four different jurisdictions as you move around the country. Owner-drivers face the awful reality, if they transgress a couple of times—three times in New South Wales—of having their driving privileges removed. They can no longer drive in New South Wales if they breach their logbook or incur fines and the like.

I return to the central theme in all of this, which is that safe road practice, driven from a safe recovery model of fixed, variable and labour costs, will allow people to do their job safely, safeguard other road users and continue to contribute in the marketplace. Senator Back mentioned Toll Transport. Well, a very good friend of mine has been an owner-driver at Toll Transport for 32 years. He brings his vehicle to work, he brings his fuel to work, he brings his rego and his insurance to work and he makes a modest income. His tax bill—and I think he would be embarrassed if I tell the Senate—is in the order of $14,000 a year. That is the sort of tax bill he will pay, and that is based on a reasonable level of turnover. But you do not have to be Einstein to work out that you can get a job as a labour-only employee and pay more than $14,000 tax per year. So Toll have a vested interest in making sure owner-drivers are in the marketplace—as do Linfox and all of the major transport companies.

What really happened here, in that purely political red haze of a double dissolution, was that a number of people got all excited and threw away 20 years of research which links pay and conditions with road safety. If you buy a brand-new car—and most of us in this place will be almost given a brand-new car—every two hours it will say, 'You've done two hours of driving, have a rest.' In every new car that is sold in Australia there is a rest reminder that says, 'You've been driving for two hours, have a rest.' In the awards of the Transport Workers Union, and in the normal practice of the industry, if you had a rest every two hours you would probably get the sack. You do four hours before you have a rest—and it does not matter whether you are tired or not, it is to get the job done. This debate has been purely political, it is extremely cynical and we are going to pay the price. The Australian public is going to pay the price. The economy is going to pay the price. For as long as I am in this chamber, I will come back and report on the deaths and injuries in heavy vehicle road transport as a result of the abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

Question agreed to.