Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Being a truck driver is one of Australia's most dangerous jobs, and it can be a difficult one too. Among other issues, they face long hours on the road, often with late nights and early starts, pressure to make deliveries on impossibly tight deadlines and all sorts of weather to deal with. For decades, Transport Workers Union members have been fighting for fair rates for truck drivers and safer roads for all Australians. I commend the union, and all its officials and delegates, for their commitment to this important cause.

Australia must properly invest in its road infrastructure, and this investment must meet the needs of all road users. As I have said, truckies spend long hours on the road transporting freight around the country and around the great state of Tasmania, which I represent. But the government is failing to build the important infrastructure that truckies need. To the federal and Tasmanian Liberal governments, our truck drivers are all but invisible. Last year, the Turnbull government took the razor to infrastructure investment. According to the peak industry body Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, the 2017 budget slashed real budget capital funding to its lowest level in more than a decade. But, rather than be honest about it, the Turnbull government expanded its clever accounting and slick narrative, glossing over its infrastructure cuts with an illusion of activity. This is not only despicable; it is dangerous.

Recently I was in Launceston in Tasmania and I met with delegates from the Tas-Vic branch of the TWU. The Tasmanian TWU members raised concerns with me about the lack of safe places for trucks to pull over on Tasmania's major highways. A B-double is up to 26 metres long and it is approved to drive on a network of roads in Tasmania from Woolnorth in the far north-west to Derby in the north-east to St Marys in the east and down through Hobart to Geeveston. Anyone who has driven in Tasmania knows that some of these roads are quite windy and very narrow. A larger truck, obviously, can take a bit of extra time to slow down and to build up its speed again. It's a long distance from Burnie to Hobart; it's about four hours by car. Our truck drivers need to pull over at times, certainly for the call of nature or to check their loads or for many other reasons. Depending on the time of day and the size of the truck that the driver is in control of, there may be no areas where drivers can pull their rigs over safely. Drivers have had to make do pulling over on to gravel by the side of the highway. Stopping in this way is very dangerous, and it's definitely not suited to the task. Of course, there are no facilities for the truck drivers to use either. The drivers were telling me, once they leave their depot, there is often nowhere to stop, and that's just not good enough. We need to meet the needs of all of the users when building infrastructure, such as highways.

During the day there are some businesses that the trucks can pull over and make a purchase at before using the facilities, but during early starts and late nights—and we know there are heaps of those for truck drivers—those businesses are obviously closed. Some people I've spoken to in Tasmania have already mentioned the public toilets at St Peters Pass to me, but it's not possible for some of the biggest trucks to pull in there. Even if they could, it's in such a position that it's extremely dangerous for trucks of that size to pull back onto the highway and gather speed quickly enough, with cars travelling at 110 kilometres an hour coming up behind them. A prominent service station on the highway at Kempton is the only business open 24/7, but a B-double can't get in there very easily.

The Tasmanian Hodgman Liberal government are undertaking roadworks on the Midland Highway. It would have been a perfect time for them to plan some safe and appropriate pull-over areas for truck drivers to stop when they planned those extensions and upgrades. What is needed are pull-over areas similar to those in places on the mainland, where a couple of B-doubles can pull up, where there are toilet facilities and where the trucks can return safely to the highway. Perhaps funding may have been available if the Abbott-Turnbull government hadn't cut $100 million from Labor's funding for the Midland Highway upgrade. Sadly, the Hodgman government have failed to adequately plan infrastructure to meet the needs of these workers. They probably didn't even think of the truck drivers—there's certainly no evidence that they did.

Tasmanian truck drivers are being treated as second-class citizens, especially compared to their colleagues on the mainland, who have proper infrastructure to meet their needs. It's time for the federal Liberal government to properly fund road infrastructure, including making sure there are safe and appropriate facilities for all drivers. I would also like to mention that the Labor Party now has a shadow assistant minister for road safety, my colleague Senator Glenn Sterle. The federal Liberal government don't have any equivalent, and I don't think they ever have. That does show you their somewhat lack of commitment, I think, to road safety and truck drivers.

The second issue I want to speak on tonight is about Early Learning Matters Week, which is celebrated from 5 to 12 August. This week encourages early learning services to showcase the benefits that early learning has to children, their families and society as a whole. To mark Early Learning Matters Week, I visited the Lady Gowrie early education and care service in Kingston in Tasmania. As a former early childhood educator, I always really enjoy these visits. Can I just say a big thank you to the services manager, Karin Eickhoff, for inviting me and hosting my visit.

It is ironic that it was also the week that we learnt that the Turnbull government had snuck into the budget a $440 million cut to the National Partnership Agreement on Universal Access to Early Childhood Education. After extending the program one year at a time and refusing to commit to ongoing funding and a long-term future for the program, the government have finally signalled their intention to only fund it for one more year. The national partnership agreement provides funding for 15 hours a week of preschool. It's a very successful program that's been kicking goals across Australia. Since the former Labor government signed the first agreement in 2008, preschool enrolment has increased from 77 per cent to 93 per cent. We know from research that participation in early learning leads to a whole range of educational, social, emotional and health outcomes. In the UK a study of 3,000 children and their families found that high-quality preschool education had a number of benefits, including: an increase in children's intellectual achievement, concentration, social skills, independence, cooperation, self-regulation and peer relationships upon entry to school; improvement in pre-reading skills, non-verbal reasoning and early number skills; and a decrease in antisocial behaviours and the risk of developing learning difficulties later in life.

As I said, I am a former early childhood educator and I've seen the benefits of early learning with my own eyes many times over, so these research findings are no surprise to me. But, unfortunately, Australia is lagging behind many other countries around the world, which are now offering two years of early learning. Australia's public spending on early childhood education, as a percentage of GDP, is currently the fifth lowest in the OECD. By cutting a program that offers one year of preschool, Australia risks falling even further behind. If this cut isn't bad enough, it comes on top of a $20 million cut to the National Quality Agenda program, which delivers the National Quality Framework, and a new childcare subsidy which leaves one in four Australian families worse off.

In my home state of Tasmania, the CEO of Lady Gowrie, Ros Cornish—who I've known for decades—noted in an article in The Mercury that the government's decision to abandon the National Quality Agenda was:

… a great shock—done without any consultation with regulatory bodies or the early education and care sector.

It goes to show that, whether it's through child care or preschool, this government doesn't care about investing in early learning and it's quite happy to leave all the heavy lifting to the states and the territories.

Labor, on the other hand, has a record of supporting early education. We committed $970 million to create the program which gave universal access to preschool for four-year-olds—the program that this government has signalled will end after only one more year. We introduced the National Quality Framework to lift standards and quality in early childhood education, a program which was cut by this government in the May budget. We increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs and increased the cap to $7,500, relieving the financial burden of child care for thousands of families. I'm proud of Labor's record on early childhood education, and it's frustrating to see our good work being undone by this heartless and out-of-touch government. I'm sure most parents would agree that giving children the best start in life is a much bigger priority than giving $17 billion to Australia's big banks.