Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay my respects to Col Neal, a wonderful tip truck owner-driver who was the section head for the Transport Workers Union in New South Wales. Col was an owner-driver who spent a lot of his time going to excavation sites and demolition sites. He also organised workers as owner-drivers, making sure they got paid. That industry was one of the toughest industries in which to make sure you actually got paid.

When I first met Col in the very early 1990s, Col was in a dispute; I was called down then as a full-time official for the Transport Workers Union, and he was in a dispute. People hadn't been paid for two months. They'd paid all their costs for fuel and their own wages. They'd tried to support their families, they'd paid for their trucking costs, and he was at another dispute trying to organise those payments to be properly made. He got a phone call from some workers—they had very early style mobile phones—to say that some owner-drivers at Wattle Grove had been underpaid. They said, 'How long before you get down here?' He said to them: 'Well, it will take us a couple of hours to sort this problem out here. The developer hasn't paid the contractor, the contractor hasn't paid the workers and the workers haven't been paid for two months, and they've gone through all these expenses.' The guy said, 'Well, you better get down here real quick because we won't be staying here for long.' Col said: 'If you want to go home, we'll meet tomorrow morning. That'll put some pressure on the employer to make sure they actually pay'—because he'd been waiting for a couple of months as well. The guy said, 'No; I've got a live grenade next to my foot.' Wattle Grove was an old site from an old Army base which had been turned into a housing estate, which I subsequently lived in some 10 years later—ironic!

When we got down there, Col sorted the problem out. He was my mentor. He was a great supporter. He was a person who understood what it was like to be on the tools, and gave me a great understanding of what it was to be an independent owner-driver and that you stand together with your mates to make a difference. Thankfully his mate didn't get his foot blown off, and Col also got his payment for him. I had the great pleasure of being part of getting those payments made to one of his mates.

Col was also a life member of the Transport Workers Union, as an active owner-driver. He was a member of the branch committee of management. He was a very outspoken person; he sometimes gave me a hard time, and that's probably not a bad thing because I always respected that. He was always honest even when I didn't agree with him, and he was always honest when I did agree with him. He was a great person to have around you because he could say to everybody in the union what they needed to be to make a difference.

When Col turned 68, he sold his truck and retired. But such was his dedication to organising and supporting his tip truck drivers that he returned to the TWU's tip truck section on a part-time basis for many years. In 2012 I was proud to present Col with life membership of the union. Col continued to advocate on behalf of drivers. When the previous Liberal government threatened to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, Col said: 'The Howard government tried to take away our rights at work but we stood and fought back. In 2007 we turfed them out. I'm not going to lay down and watch WorkChoices return, and I'm not going to stand by and see my kids and grandkids get ripped off.'

While we didn't win the fight against the abolition of the RSRT, today we have broad support from owner-drivers and road transport employees, clients, academics and even gig companies to empower the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards in the sector. It's people like Col who actually say the fight was worth fighting. This is a major accomplishment, reflective of the decades of hard work from Col and others like him who advocated on behalf of owner-drivers and what he taught all of us.

When we get down to the next year, that will form part of Col's legacy. Col also had some tremendous accomplishments outside his working life, most importantly his long and happy marriage to his wife, Ros, who is such a wonderful, wonderful human being. (Time expired)