Mr ST CLAIR (11:57 AM) —I welcome the opportunity to speak on the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts, Beyond the midnight oil: managing fatigue in transport. I spoke in the House at the launching of this particular report and I will now take the opportunity to speak in more detail.

I have listened to many of the previous speakers on both sides. I register my appreciation, thanks and congratulations to the chairman of this committee, my National Party colleague Paul Neville, the member for Hinkler. During the 16 months of this inquiry, he has shown a great degree of leadership and interest, and he has allowed the discussion to go on. I think it is tremendous and it reflects well upon the committee. The deputy chair was Steve Gibbons, the member for Bendigo, who took over from the member for Throsby who is overseas at the moment. Both of those gentlemen provided an insight from their perspective and they also provided leadership on a report that is so important to an industry culture change. The member for Corangamite said that this is a landmark report for the transport industry, and its recommendations show that.

I also pay tribute to government members of the committee for their input, which has made a difference. They represent electorates all over Australia—both city and rural based. The honourable members for Greenway and Lowe made particularly strong contributions at a time of extremely robust committee debate. That debate extended over many days and their input, and that of other committee members, was most welcome. At the end of the day, the report's recommendations are significant and will be held in high esteem within the transport industry.

The last time I spoke I neglected to thank the committee secretariat, which was originally under the control of Meg Crooks, who moved on towards the end of last year and was replaced by Grant Harrison. I thank both of them for their input. I also thank the research officers—Sarah, Leonie and Yolanda—who were involved in the inquiry. I pay particular tribute to Adam Cunningham who was committee secretary for this part of the inquiry. Adam did not have an easy task, but I think his experience of working on the railways in a previous life gave him a balanced and practical view of fatigue in the transport industry and how it related not only to rail but to road, sea and air transport. I thank him for his enthusiasm, for the way in which he went about drafting the report and for his keenness in debating the issues. When there were some very robust discussions, Adam found a positive way for us to proceed and arrive at recommendations. I congratulate Adam and give credit to his ability to produce a report of this quality.

I want to concentrate on a few aspects of the report that I believe will have a dramatic effect on the road transport industry. Several of my colleagues have referred to other modes of transport that are mentioned in the report. I shall make a few points that I think will interest the readers of the Hansard. The committee made 41 recommendations, of which about 23 related to the road transport industry. Although we also discussed other modes of transport, the road transport industry was certainly to the fore in many recommendations. I shall explore four issues today. The first is truck stops and rest areas for professional drivers who convey cargo and freight to and from Australia's capital cities and those who travel around rural Australia transporting stock to abattoirs and shifting stock between paddocks.

There is a relative shortage of truck stops, and specifically truck pull-over areas. Drivers travelling on our national highway network who feel tired and who want to pull off the road do not always find it easy to park vehicles that are probably a minimum of 16 metres long. In fact, it is often very difficult for drivers of B-double transports to find areas where they can pull off the side of the road and rest comfortably. In some of the larger pull-over areas they may find a weary caravan driver who has decided to pull off the road—that is good and shows a great deal of commonsense—but who has parked in the middle of the area, leaving no room for a truck beside, behind or next to him. That can be very frustrating for truck drivers.

I will refer later to the concept of drivers being treated in a much more professional manner than has been the case over the years by those who deal with them. One of the concepts mentioned by the member for Corangamite was that of changeover stations. For instance, a number of professional drivers live in the town of Kempsey and drive for national companies. They have the opportunity to live in a beautiful rural town. They drive to Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne and then are able to return home to Kempsey.

My little home town of Guyra, on the New England Highway, is situated, as most people know, midway between Sydney and Brisbane, on the main transport route for the nation's freight, which is then transported throughout the arteries of the road network. Our town also has plans to build a super truck stop which will accommodate up to 50 or 60 semitrailers at any one time. They will have the ability to pull over and park properly, next to an adequate facility which can provide them with proper food and with facilities such as showers, proper rest areas, et cetera. That concept has been developed over the last couple of years with the transport industry, and it will be developed much further. We need to have the involvement of the oil companies in this regard. The report certainly mentions that oil companies have a responsibility to look at investing some money on the roadside.

The report has brought to the fore the responsibility of governments, particularly the federal government, to look at the provision of hard stand areas to be strategically placed on the national highway network. Because of the massive cost of hard stand areas, it is very difficult for private enterprise to put them in, but it would certainly help to dramatically attack the issue of fatigue. So I commend that proposal to the government.

Another issue that I would like to touch on is recommendation 35, which refers to mandatory drug testing. Drugs within the work force are increasingly becoming a major problem. I have mentioned this in the House before. One large employer in my electorate cannot get enough permanent staff because 50 per cent of the applicants for the job at the workplace are failing the drug test. That is a major concern.

In another instance, in a firm in a major regional city in my electorate in which applications are covered by a drug testing system, over 40 per cent are failing drug tests; in other words, they have been detected as having taken illicit drugs. That is creating an artificial shortage of workers out there. That is really a tragedy in our society. I believe very strongly in the recommendation that has been put forward—that is, that there should be a drug free workplace. I think it is appalling that companies have actively promoted drug use amongst some of their drivers so that they stay alert. One of the most disturbing matters on which the committee heard evidence was that one company in northern New South Wales produced a newsletter which explained how to be aware of the effects of the drugs when they wore off. That is absolutely extraordinary. The company newsletter offered this disturbing advice:

For heaven's sake! The newsletter continued:

That is, when the drugs are not keeping you awake any longer. I think that is just appalling. The sooner companies start to accept responsibility for this appalling behaviour, the better. I was going to talk about slotting. I will not do so because it has been covered in the report. I know the member for Corangamite and most others on both sides have certainly discussed the issue of slotting.

I will give a brief example. This week, I was rung by a driver who had a timeslot at Hemmant, in Brisbane, for a Coles frigmobile with a load of both freezer and chiller material. The freezer material was packed at the front of the truck and had a timeslot of 7.00 a.m.; the chiller material had a timeslot of 5.30 a.m.—first in. The truck suffered a tyre blow-out on the way from Sydney to Brisbane. The driver had the tyre changed but then arrived 20 minutes late into the depot at Hemmant. At the window, when someone finally came and dealt with him—it has to be understood that often professional drivers are dealt with by warehousing people at the lowest common denominator, not in a proper and professional manner—he was told that he was late by 20 minutes plus the waiting time for his access to the chiller slot, so he had missed his timeslot and would have to forget it. He should go around to the freezer slot at 7 o'clock. But when he went around to that place, and shunted back and forth, he was told by the forklift operators, `No, we can't get to the freezer material because the chiller stuff is in front. You've missed your whole timeslot for the day. Come back tomorrow.' That is the sort of thing that professional drivers are having to put up with. That driver resigned from the company involved—a major transport operator—because professional drivers have had enough of being dealt with in such a way, without any recognition that they are very much part of this nation's wealth and of the nation's creation.

In conclusion: I was pleased that the shadow minister and member for Batman was here this morning and spoke. I must admit that I thought he might have tried to attack the report, but he did not. I commend him for that. He raised a number of issues, one of which was a draft code of conduct. He made the comment that it was a secret document, or it was very difficult to find. He could not find any copies of it. I have a copy here which I am happy to give him. If he had consulted the web site of Truck and Bus, which is a major organisation in Australia, he would have found that the draft code of conduct was sitting there on Monday this week, available for him to download it—as I have done. He obviously has no idea when it comes to being involved in an industry and keeping abreast of what is happening in the industry. It is a very simple thing. It is available, as is stated on the front of it, from the Australian Trucking Association. More interestingly, it is available from the Transport Workers Union, which had it available on Monday, as they should have. They have done a tremendous job. I congratulate John Allen, from the Transport Workers Union, who is working with us to make a better deal and a better life for owner drivers.