The Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) has dragged the two-truck crash near Dubbo on Wednesday evening into its fight for “safe rates” despite not knowing the cause of it.
The union is revving up its campaign as the Road Safety Remuneration Bill heads to the federal Parliament for debate in the coming weeks.
The federal government plans to establish a new national road safety system that it argues will tackle speed, fatigue and dangerous work practices in the trucking industry, “to make Australia’s roads safer for all drivers”.
If launched as expected on July 1, a new Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal would have the power to set pay or pay-related conditions to “ensure safe driving practices”.
“This will save lives by ensuring that truck drivers are paid reasonably for the work they do, getting rid of the economic incentive for drivers to take unacceptable risks on our roads,” Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese has said.
But not everyone in the industry agrees that the safe rates approach will achieve the government’s objectives.
They include Dallas Brookfield, owner of Brookfield’s Transport Services at Eumungerie, the Australian Logistics Council, the NSW branch of the Australian Trucking Association and the Ai Group, a not-for-profit association representing 60,000 businesses employing one million people.
Mr Brookfield took the Daily Liberal’s call after TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon issued a press release on the Dubbo crash.
This newspaper yesterday reported of both truck drivers surviving Wednesday’s crash on the Newell Highway, about five kilometres north of Brocklehurst
“This latest appalling tragedy on our roads has regrettably highlighted the urgent need for safer rates legislation to be passed by Parliament to reduce the continuing carnage on our roads,” Mr Sheldon said in the statement.
“Whilst the full details of this tragedy have yet to emerge, it is sadly regrettable that major road incidents involving heavy vehicles will continue to occur whilst unsustainable pressures are placed on drivers.”
Mr Brookfield told of making a submission to the Inquiry into the Road Safety Remuneration Bill as a heavy transport carrier and a delegate of the National Road Freighters Association.
“Safe rates, whilst a great idea in principle... will have a huge amount of flaws in practice,” he said in it.
“After all, what I think is a safe rate, “Jo Blo” down the road thinks he can work for half, and “Jim Jones” up the other end of the road wants more than I. This situation exists now and it is the “Jo Blos” of this industry which is killing it, but they may have more influence on a committee than the hard working carriers out there who actually get a reasonable rate.
“A lower government-decided safe rate may end up pushing down the money those carriers were getting, thus having them either struggle or push them out of the industry entirely.”
Mr Brookfield rejected in the submission that safe rates could be developed when the costs met by the road transport industry varied depending on the “work they do, the type of equipment they require, the distance they travel in a year, the bargaining power they have for fuels and tyres....the hours they can work in a day, the roads they travel on”.
“The list of different costs throughout the transport industry is huge and this alone would make it impossible for any committee to devise any safe rates for our industry to adhere to,” he said.
Yesterday Mr Brookfield told the Daily Liberal: “A lot of drivers who run the Newell actually get a pretty good driver rate, so because of that there is no pressure due to money for them to technically push themselves.
“However, what you do have is a lot of so-called Safe-T-Cams, and restrictive driving hours. Because of the Safe-T-Cam drivers tend to have to push themselves to fit into the framework of a driver’s hours regime which does not allow a driver to drive to their body.”
He, like many others, is wanting more money spent on roads.
“If our governments actually put all money raised by oil and fuel taxes and excises into the roads and rails of this country we would have better road conditions,” Mr Brookfield said.
The inquiry is being conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications which is scheduled to meet on Wednesday.
The federal government has reported of about 250 Australians being killed and more than 1000 suffering serious injuries each year in accidents involving trucks.
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