KAINE, Mr Michael, National Secretary, Transport Workers Union of Australia

MACKINLAY, Mr Gordon, Member, National Road Freighters Association

RYAN, Mr Paul, National Industrial Adviser, Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation

[09:37]

CHAIR: I now welcome representatives from the Transport Workers Union national office, the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation and the National Road Freighters Association. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear today?

Mr Mackinlay : I am an ex-owner driver but I am currently still involved in the business, in the transport industry, and I am certainly an interested party in trying to fix the industry.

CHAIR: You know how this works. I'm going to offer you the opportunity to make opening statements before we go to questions. Who would like to kick off?

Mr Kaine : I can start, if you like. Thanks, Senator Sterle. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to speak to the committee and give evidence that goes to the heart of your inquiry, and that is: how we make this industry safe, how we make it sustainable. I'll provide some context for this aim because the committee has already heard and read testimony from our members about what life is like working in the industry. Some of that evidence, you'll remember, was absolutely shocking and I'm sure left you in no doubt that the industry has to undergo some reform.

You'll recall hearing from Dave Cullen from Queensland, who rolled his B-double. He spoke about the terrible mental health toll that took on him. You'll remember Darren McColley from Melbourne. He gave testimony about how many colleagues he'd lost, dead doing the job. You'll also recall Noel Blue, a cash-in-transit driver from Sydney. He spoke about the hold-ups that he and his workmates have had to endure—the most recent one, two years ago, at Clemton Park—simply because banks and retailers are squeezing, literally, the life out of that deadly sector. The testimony, of course, from those drivers is powerful, but it represents only a sliver of what goes on in our industry. As part of the TWU and our collective, those drivers have the courage and the backing of our entire membership to tell you their stories. But, of course, there are many drivers who can't take that brave stance, because they literally fear losing their jobs and their livelihoods.

And there are many others who are simply no longer with us to tell the stories. Again, it brings me no joy and it's with a heavy heart that I report that we are seeing on the news feeds as we speak that a truck driver has lost their life at Casula on the M7 only an hour so ago. A double truck crash on the Casula bypass, there at the M7. One hundred and eighty-three people is the official Safe Work number of transport workers who have died in the last five years just doing their jobs. That's the number of people who should be here telling their stories today. They should be with their families. They should be with their children. They should be with their grandchildren. But they're not. We mark their deaths, especially today of all days, because its Workers' Memorial Day. One hundred and eighty-three lives; that's the human cost of collecting and delivering our food; our clothes; our oil, fuel and gas; our waste; our building materials; and our manufacturing goods. That's the human cost in Australia. Where's the federal government? Are we to assume that that human cost touches them not at all? Where is the Prime Minister? Where is the Minister for Industrial Relations? What are they doing in response to this carnage? Surely this must touch them just as it touches every other Australian.

And now we have a new horror and a new human cost to contend with, in the form of the gig economy. In the space of just a few months last year five food delivery riders lost their lives while working. We know from Safe Work investigations that some of them weren't wearing approved safety helmets and weren't given proper training, and none had the right to workers compensation. We know they are paid a pittance, Dr Belzer. The human and actual cost of this new batch of dead transport workers was summed up in the most stark way possible by the sister of one of those deceased—the deceased being Chow Khai Shien—when she said, 'My brother's life is gone, and all for the price of a cup of coffee.' The others who died in that short period were Ik Wong, Dede Fredy, Bijoy Paul and Xiaojun Chen. We will keep saying their names. We do not believe that Australians are willing to bear this human cost just so that their goods can be delivered, and we don't believe it's right for the federal government to sit on its hands, to wash its hands and to fail to regulate.

Amid the testimony and submissions you've received, Senators, it's important to remember that this is an area which also carries much scientific and academic weight. We just had an incredibly detailed and compelling submission from Dr Belzer, which I've just sat through. Crucially, that research makes the link between safety and pay, proving that, when there's financial pressure imposed on transport operators and drivers, safety gets compromised and people die. This research goes back as far as the 1980s and 1990s: research in 1990 by Hensher and Battellino; and 10 years later in Beyond the midnight oil. That was a commissioned report of the House of Reps standing committee on communications and transport. That was a coalition dominated report. It concluded:

These risks are compounded by the commercial imperative on transport operators to maximise the return on their investment, the demands of customers and the pressure this places on transport workers to undertake longer hours with fewer rest breaks.

This was from a coalition government.

I want to put this on the record: there are coalition members, and have been, of this house who have strongly supported the need to regulate. There are senators and members who have stood up and said their piece against the party political line. We won't forget them and we're asking them to stand up again now—just as there has been an absolute commitment across the political divide in New South Wales to put in place and maintain provisions protecting owner-drivers in that state across 40 years. Bipartisanship is what we need. To be bipartisan, those members—the Prime Minister, the industrial relations minister and the transport minister—have to get off their backsides and stop this carnage.

In 2008, we had the National Transport Commission report, which brought together all of the evidence up to that point. In 2016, this federal government itself, in the very reports it used to tear down the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—those reports were filled with this evidence linking pay and economic pressures to safety too. The PricewaterhouseCoopers report said that the road transport order and payments order—which was controversial or made controversial for political reasons—back in 2016 resulted in a 10 per cent and 18 per cent reduction in the number of crashes. This is the government's own report. That report, though, called for the abolition because of costs. It said the tribunal was a significant cost to the economy, and that outweighed any potential safety benefits. Try telling that to the family of the person who has just died on the M7, the 58 that died in 2019, the 183 that have died in the last five years and the hundreds of Australians that die with them in those crashes each and every year. Try telling that to them. The tribunal had an annual budget of $4 million. The cost of truck crashes to the national economy is $4.64 billion. Those two figures speak for themselves. The PricewaterhouseCoopers report wasn't looked at on the face value of what it said. It was cherrypicked to support a political moment in time, one of the most reprehensible actions ever taken by a government. It has led to people dying on our roads.

This research, this body that we've heard about, what we've just heard from Dr Belzer, proves that the underlying reasons for truck crashes and the devastating effect of contracts are what we really need to be addressing here. Anyone who says that there is no link, espousing that view, really is a friends of the flat earth society or the harmful antivaxxers. They're deniers. They are denying in the face of empirical evidence.

The TWU believes the way to reform this industry, the way to make it safe and sustainable, is to make sure that those at the top of supply chains are accountable: the wealthy retailers, manufacturers, oil companies and banks. They can help determine what this industry looks like in a positive way if they are held to account. Failing to hold them to account means that they continue to reap profit, unjustly taking money out of this industry, and it's literally killing people.

The current push by clients to lower standards isn't going to continue at the current pace; it's going to ramp up. It's going to attract a galloping speed because of the gig economy. It's aggressively entering our markets, operating at a loss for years if necessary to undercut competition and wipe it out. Amazon is already doing this with Amazon Flex, getting people to use their own vehicles. We've observed family cars in this operation loaded up with boxes so that drivers can't even see out the window. They're paid about 10 bucks an hour after costs. Their safety induction is a two-minute video on the app. Is it any wonder that this Senate committee is hearing such meaningful evidence about the need for change? Amazon and Uber Freight are coming in like a tsunami and we have to act.

I'm so heartened to be joined here today by two of the industry bodies the TWU's working closely with on pushing for change in our industry. Five years ago, Gordon Mackinlay—Gordo—of the National Road Freighters Association and I thought we were on opposing sides of the trucking debate—

Mr Mackinlay : We were!

Mr Kaine : but we realised what we have in common. We both recognise the deep unfairness in the system, the squeeze on transport operators by the big clients, whose profits continue to grow. Our two organisations have signed an MOU committed to fighting for change. An RTO whose members are fighting fiercely to keep good standards in trucking despite intense pressures from the economic climate.

We're very different organisations, but we all know that unless the dynamics at the top of the industry are addressed then trucking operators and drivers will forever be playing catch-up. The TWU works with other industry bodies that are serious about reform. But to those who stand in our way, to those who are proposing meaningless voluntary codes and pursuing cosy political deals with the federal government, allowing them to pretend that they have our industry on side but doing nothing, we say this: get out of our way, because there are lives and livelihoods at risk, and this reform agenda that we're talking about today is too serious for jokers and charlatans.

The TWU has been vocal in calling for the re-establishment of an independent tribunal capable of investigating and addressing the underlying causes of risk—in short, capable of holding to account the companies at the top, who are reaping profits and economic benefit. It's a big, brave, bold thing to do, but it's something we have to do. And if we don't do it now, before the gig economy tsunami hits road freight, we may never be able to achieve our common aim of a safe and sustainable industry. Senators, the lives of transport workers and the lives of people who use our roads depend on action right now.

CHAIR: Paul or Gordo, do you want to make an opening statement?

Mr Ryan : Thank you—and hello Professor Belzer; we haven't been able to see each other for awhile. I'm the national industrial adviser for the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation. We're the registered organisation of employers that represent everyone who employs in the transport industry, from the larger companies down to the smaller mum-and-dad operators. I've been in this industry coming up now for 35 years. Over half my life I've spent in the transport industry. It's an industry that runs this country. And if we look back over the past 12 months, when the pandemic hit—and in Victoria we were locked down—the transport industry kept going. It kept the country running. And the politicians, from both the House and the Senate, came out and thanked the transport industry, many, many times.

But now that we're moving out of the pandemic, we're back to arguing the same old things we've been arguing since 1988, after I'd spent a couple of years in the industry. Where are the politicians now, when we need them to provide protection and support for the transport industry? We supported the country; give us a little bit back. Where is the minister for transport? Oh, sorry: there is no minister for transport. Where is the minister for training? Oh, there's no minister for training, at the federal level. As Professor Belzer pointed out and as Mr Kaine pointed out, there are many instances where the transport industry needs training and needs assistance in that area, but we are unable to work that through at the federal level, because there are no responsible authorities to help us. If nothing else, if nothing more comes out of this inquiry, we could at least get some basis of an apprenticeship system to move into the transport industry.

In Professor Belzer's presentation he talked about the collection of data for transport statistics and injuries. In Australia that's all done at state level. We don't have a consistent method of measuring those issues. Mr Kaine's talked about the number of deaths on the roads from truck drivers, and that's one measure, but all the other accidents and incidents that cause problems and cost money—I think we need to look at establishing something at the federal level that can collect data and collect that information.

I urge all of you senators to read the submission we put in that was written back in 2019, but I just want to reiterate a couple of points that were made in that. There's currently a review of the Heavy Vehicle National Law. When the Heavy Vehicle National Law was first passed in this country, there were four pages of it. There are now 738 pages of it, and we have a review that's been going on for two years and will probably deliver nothing. We suggest the establishment of a transport standards inspectorate to provide appropriate and necessary enforcement mechanisms around the employment and engagement of workers in the road transport industry. This body needs to be able to investigate commercial contracts to ensure proper and fair standards are in place and followed by all participants in the supply chain so that, when something's contracted down two, three or four times and everyone takes their clip, the person down the bottom of that chain, whether it be a transport company or an owner operator, is paid a fair rate for the job that they're doing.

The transport industry has always been an adopter of new technologies. In the late 1980s, when B-doubles were introduced, the increased productivity, which was around about 50 per cent, was passed straight back to the customers—not to the transport companies, back to the customers—in terms of lower prices. Did those lower prices flow through to what Australian citizens paid for their goods and other products in supermarkets and hardware stores? No, not really. RTO supports a review of the adequacy and efficacy of the legislative and institutional framework, especially around employment law, particularly as it relates to the gig economy.

I've already covered off on apprenticeship and, where appropriate, retraining into the road transport industry. The final point I want to make is that we need a formal consultative mechanism between the road transport industry and all levels of government to ensure that required infrastructure is identified, planned and built to benefit the Australian economy. We suggest the establishment of a national road transport consultative council comprising government at all levels and registered organisations which represent the industrial interests of prime contractors, employers and workers in the industry. There are other national consultative bodies. This body needs to be established. There are the national consultative bodies in other industries. For instance, there is still a national labour consultative council. But we need to be able to plan. If we're going to have intermodal transport and we're going to build an inland rail line, it must connect with the road transport side of things and enable efficient movement of freight from one mode to another mode. I've been around long enough that the last major railway line built in this country was between Alice Springs and Darwin, and it mostly carries people on a train called the Ghan, not a lot of freight. So, if we're going to do it, let's do it with proper planning through a national road transport consultative council comprised of government at all levels.

CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Mackinlay.

Mr Mackinlay : Most people who know me probably scratch their head and wonder why I'm sitting here today next to Michael. Five years ago almost to the day—a little bit over—I led a fight that came to Canberra here, to Parliament House, and had the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal annulled. The reason we did that was not that we're idiots and we didn't want to be paid properly; it was, unfortunately, not very well managed. The act was not managed properly by the tribunal, and we had a fight-or-flight situation. Most of us were in debt and couldn't fly, so we had to fight. That is what we did, and I'm still very proud of what we did.

Five years later I'm sitting next to Michael here. I think we've got a fairly good relationship now. Michael reached out to me about 18 months ago on another visit to Parliament House, and Senator Sterle rang me the day before and asked if I would meet with Michael. I did and I realised that we've actually got a lot in common. We both love the transport industry and we both want to see people who work very hard in an absolutely essential service—I always say that this should be recognised as an essential service, which is not to take anything away from firefighters or people who work in ambulance services. They are dependent on us at the end of the day: the fire hose reels, the petrol that goes in those fire tankers and ambulances, the defibrillators, everything the police need to do their job—everything is put on a truck. There is the old saying, 'The only thing not delivered by a truck is a baby,' and it's so true.

As an industry, we don't get the respect we deserve. As was mentioned, in the pandemic, it was great. We were treated with a lot more respect because people could see how much we were needed. I'd like to congratulate the transport industry for, as far as I know, having no COVID transmission due to transport industry movements. We move all over the country. We took it very seriously and we did a bloody good job of controlling that, and we're still looked at as an industry that is in the way. We're trying to negotiate traffic through inner Sydney in a 26-metre long, 65-tonne truck to bring your bottle of water that just came 600 bloody miles to your supermarket because you couldn't get it out of the tap. But, because you need to get little Johnny to soccer practice, we're in your road. We're in the road until all of a sudden there's a pandemic and you've got nothing on the shelf to, pardon the expression, wipe your butt—literally. All of a sudden we were very needed. I think that, as an industry, all we want is to be recognised for that and paid what we deserve.

Since 2016 I've sold my trucks. My business still works in transport—very much so; I still work very long hours, still work very hard and still love it. I'm involved with trucks every day, just in a different role. People say, 'Why did you do that?' I made a business decision because I saw every month what was coming in and what was going out. There was less coming in than going out, and it was getting worse and worse. In my time of owning trucks, doing pretty much the same work, fuel varied 50c a litre. Fifty cents a litre on a single truck doing Sydney-Melbourne—with the average Australian truck doing Sydney-Melbourne, 220-odd thousand kilometres a year, at 2.2 kilometres per litre average, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that every cent fuel varies is a variance of $1,000 in your bottom line the end of the year. Fuel varies 50c a litre, and that puts a difference of $50,000 in your bottom line. Have a guess, Senator Sterle, how much the income for that same truck varied that year. It was zero—nothing.

Hang on. We've got big companies—I won't mention them now, but anyone who does work for them will know—that at the moment are still running a negative fuel charge. Fuel is so darn cheap in their mind they can take money away from our rate to put back in their pocket. That's just rubbish. It's not right.

When listening to the learned doctor before, I came up with a brain wave. A lot of times, we've started this discussion within our association about how you would set up a charging regime to do it. The answer is very hard. I work in a segment of the industry—in log trucks—where your maintenance costs are just through the roof and your fuel consumption is abhorrent. That compares very differently to someone running down the Hume Highway in a single truck. You obviously can't do that.

Something the professor said clicked in my mind. You could have a segmented—I think it the term he used was a 'freight unit'. Immediately a thing went off in my head, and I thought, 'a freight unit'. So a single transport running the Hume Highway or the Pacific Highway, per kilometre, is one transport unit. We work out what that's worth, and that's the legal rate that has to be paid. It's pretty simple. If you've got b-double, that's 1½ transport units, so you have to be paid that. If you're pulling a b-double load of logs from the bottom of Lankeys Creek to Tumbarumba, that's five units if that's what it has to be, and you're paid accordingly, taking into account that, with some of the logs or tippers, for example, a lot of this work has the vehicles running one way empty. That can be factored into the transport unit.

That's a light bulb that's gone off this morning for me. How do we do it? I've been trying to figure that out with so many of my colleagues for the last five years. I think there's something in that. We need people a lot smarter than me to work it out, but we also need people that have sat at the bowser and put their fuel in trucks, that have paid the $7,000 a year registration out of their own pocket just for a single prime mover. Our association has put forward to government so many things that they simply don't want to answer.

I live on the Victorian border. I've travelled to Rockhampton to meet with ministers from the government, and it was a total waste of time. I should have just stayed at work. We get nothing out of it. I can ring these ministers up now, and they wouldn't know who I am, and I've met them several times. I ring Michael or Glenn and I'm very cheerfully met with, 'G'day, Gordo; how you going, mate?' People ask, 'What are you doing working with the TWU or talking to a Labor senator?' I'll tell you what I'm doing talking to them: I'm trying to get something done for this country. They're the only people who are listening, and I thank them for listening.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist for this. We're not making money out of transport. The best operators are not making money out of transport. Whilst the wage thing is important, you can't get blood out of a stone. The person who owns the vehicle has to be remunerated properly. That can filter down to the drivers, and so it should filter down to the drivers, but it should also filter down so the person who owns that company can give that driver a very safe, modern workplace to work in. I think its' very important that we try to get to that point.

There is just one other thing I would like to say. I go back to 2016. I've had a lot of knockers at what we did. None of those knockers have continued the fight and tried to make anything right. It doesn't affect me one bit. It has actually cost me money today to come here and do this. I could just be at work, running my business, but I'm not, because it's the right thing to do to come here now. I think that, at the very least, the government needs to respect the fact that people like me are trying at our own cost to make things better. Listen to us. When you go to make these decisions on how these things are done, consult us, the real people who actually know what we're talking about, not—I won't even go there. We need proper consultation from people within the industry and, most importantly, anything that we can get through legislation to give a minimum rate or to regulate the industry, which I think is what is needed, has to be for every single freight movement. If it's not your product that you're putting on the truck and it's a commercial movement of freight, it has to be paid for, whether you're a company of 500 trucks or you're a mum-and-dad operation with one truck. That's what needs to happen.

Let's look into the freight unit thing. I think that's got some real merit. That's just a light bulb moment. I'm happy to give my time and experience to consult on that to help work that out if it should go that far. Once again, thanks for asking the questions, Senator. At least someone is.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. Let's roll our sleeves up. We have here a number of things. We've got the representatives of the majority of industry—and I will stand corrected here if anyone wants to carve me up on this—in this nation saying it can't go on the way it is. So how lifting it is to see the majority of both sides of the industrial fence sitting together saying something has to be done. I'm buoyed by the support of the state organisations. What a magnificent job the state organisations have done to keep this issue front and centre. We have the union. We have the National Road Freighters Association. There will be the ATA and NatRoad, and the livestockies will talk for themselves and see where that goes. And the state organisations are saying: 'Stop. We've got to fix this.'

I can tell you now, Gordo, to answer your question: anything can be done in this nation in if the political will is there. The political will is not here in this nation at this stage. So I'd be very keen to see who talks to the minister and what they actually get out of the minister. I sit there thinking: 'This is just a circle. It's just an absolute joke.' No-one listens to the voices of the men and women who are representing the men and women holding the steering wheels or paying the exorbitant fuel rates, registrations and truck payments, from the one who's got 7,000 trucks to the one who's got one truck.

So I've had my little rant. I come to you, Mr Kaine, and then I'm going to come to you, Mr Ryan, to talk about the minister for transport, because this piques my interest. Gordo, we'll come back to you. In terms of having no link between remuneration and safety, this committee has had a couple of submissions. One fella in Western Australia said it's all 'bulldust'—these are my words, not his—and there is no link, because, if we pay our drivers more, they won't spend it on their trucks. I thought, 'Why don't I give the bloke the chance to come and defend himself.' He scattered like a frightened rabbit. There you go.

Let's talk a little bit more about the link between remuneration and safety. We've heard from Dr Belzer. We know the fine work from Professor Quinlan. Mr Kaine, you represent many drivers and owner-drivers. How far off are we, and where are the voices to come to argue against me?

Mr Kaine : I think the weight of evidence is before this committee. It's evidence that stacks up over around 35 years. Most importantly, going to the political question, it's evidence that has been supported on a bipartisan basis as well. So we're at a point in time, Senator, I agree where there doesn't—under this current government at this point anyway—seem to be the political will to act. Of course, we're hopeful that this committee will put before the government a report that sets out the urgency and the need to act. But it's not as if this hasn't been thought through before. When it has been thought through, and when there have been genuine discussions, you are able to attract bipartisan support—as we've done in New South Wales for 50 years, as we did in the lead up to the establishment of the road safety remuneration tribunal.

The link between pay and safety is proven. It's proven by academic evidence, coronial inquiries, judicial determinations, government inquiries. Importantly, on that later point, it was proved in the government inquiry, the government papers that were used to justify the abolition of the road safety remuneration tribunal. So this is not something that you can skirt around. This is a fact. But what does that actually mean? We had Dr Belzer take us through it today. There is report after report which sets out pages and pages of this evidence but what does that actually mean? What it means is that, as Dr Belzer said, if you pay drivers appropriately and deal with slabs of unpaid working time there will be less pressure on workers to stay on the road long longer, for them to drive faster, for them to resort to the use of artificial stimulants to stay awake, for them to try and dodge around systems—we heard about the log books, limiters and what not—because there will be a level of earnings that sustains livelihoods. That is the fact. But the most important thing about what is before this Senate is what Gordo has said, and what Paul has said as well, in different ways from their own constituencies, and that is you've got to support the companies that are engaging the workers. You don't get better pay, payment for working time, better conditions unless the companies that are paying those workers have the economic wherewithal to pay them. Of course that means that you have to hold those who are reaping the economic benefit in the industry to account, that is those at the very top of our supply chains.

At the moment in our country we notionally have a concept of chain of responsibility. I say notionally because chain of responsibility was originally intended to include the economics—what transport operators are paid and, therefore, what they can flow through to workers. But it mutated over time. It mutated to deal only with the consequences. Speeding, fatigue, log books are consequences of that pressure. It's like saying, 'Let's put a bandaid wherever we see a problem. Let's take a bit of cough mixture to fix the sore throat instead of figuring out what is it that gives us the sore throat in the first place'. That's what the evidence before this committee has done. You have the recipe for putting in place attacking the causes here. We are absolutely mystified as to why there would be voices opposing it. If there are employer voices opposing this proposal to deal with these economic pressures then they have been corrupted in one way or another. I use that word in both its pure term and its extended term, because there's no justification for it.

If you really support employers you support staving off the tsunami of the gig economy. The gig economy wipes out employers. So if you're an employer association sitting before this Senate inquiry later in the day you want to think very carefully about what you're saying, because if what you're saying is that we don't need support then you're essentially writing the death warrant for the members that you purportedly represent. We've got to support good employers. The employment relationship is completely bypassed by the gig economy and that means employers are gone. And we need employers because they are a potential moderating factor. They are the glue that keeps the whole show on the road, literally, and we've got to support them. That's what we need to do, senators.

And we've got to make sure that we don't get confused between enforcement and standard setting. Yes, we need good enforcement—of course we do—and there are a whole range of reasons why it's not good at the moment. But you've got to have a body that sets the standards that are to be enforced, and that's what's missing. We need a standard-setting body, one that has the power to hold those with the economic grunt to account so they can pay employers properly, so we can stave off the gig-economy tsunami and so that that flows down to drivers so they're paid properly and they stop dying.

CHAIR: Yes. I will come back to that, Mr Kaine, because it infuriates me; I've been saying this at every hearing we've had. And, Mr Ryan, you would be all over this too. We have a number of standards in this nation in terms of enterprise agreement rates and everything in between, and then we have the basic award rates, and the award rates, in my words, are just absolutely disgraceful. But we've also got those who aren't paying to the award and we've got sham contracting out there, which is rife. You only have to go to SEEK and see all the grubs on there, asking for drivers to bring ABNs. I always say this to all my colleagues in the state associations: these people are stealing bread off the table of your family and your employees. I don't know why anyone would want to run a protection racket for anyone who's doing the wrong thing, but in this nation there's pretty good reward if you break the laws and get away with it.

Mr Ryan, you talked about a minister for transport. I know that was mentioned in Melbourne the other day. Why a minister for transport? What's wrong with the set-up we've got now?

Mr Ryan : Transport constitutes—there are different figures—somewhere around 12 to 14 per cent of the Australian economy. Imagine if we'd had a minister for transport during the pandemic. We might have been able to cross borders without having to go through—I think Queensland issued 24 different border notices. At one stage, you could not cross the South Australian border unless you could prove that you'd had a COVID test within the last seven days. If you were a Victorian driver, you could not get a COVID test unless you displayed the symptoms. So you're going to be illegal in South Australia because you can't ask for a test in Victoria. Maybe if we'd had somebody who was dealing with transport as a whole we could have dealt with those border problems.

Unfortunately, it's easier to drive a truck across Europe than it is across Australia at times. Even time is counted differently. You can be legally driving in Queensland, go into New South Wales and be illegal and then come back into Victoria and be legal again because of the way the state bureaucracies determine how they need to amend the Heavy Vehicle National Law to suit their particular needs. And, as you know, the Heavy Vehicle National Law doesn't flow through to Western Australia and the Northern Territory. When our forefathers built a railway line between Sydney and Albury, they didn't match it up with the one that was built between Albury and Melbourne. We are still dealing with that problem. Imagine, senators, if the aviation industry was treated like the road transport industry. Imagine, Senator Sterle, you're coming from Western Australia, from Perth, to Melbourne and the plane stops at the South Australian border and gets dragged across because that's what the pilot's got to; he's got to have his COVID test. That's what happens to us. That's what happens in the road transport industry. It is ridiculous. So we need somebody at the federal level, a minister for transport, that can deal with these issues from a transport related perspective.

CHAIR: Mr Ryan, thanks for that. This question is to all of you. You mentioned it too, Mr Ryan, when you said we need a road transport council—on that, when you're talking about a minister for transport, I do wonder what happens at TIC meetings, but that's another question—like a national consultative body. What have we got now?

Mr Ryan : To my knowledge, we have state ministers who get together with whoever their federal counterpart might be, and they talk about issues and refer matters to the National Transport Commission and sometimes the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator. I'm not sure that the current model works.

CHAIR: Do the state ministers come and consult you, because they're probably not from the trucking industry?

Mr Ryan : At state level, yes, you have discussions, consultations with state ministers. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn't.

CHAIR: Do they ring you up? Do they ring the state associations and say, 'We've got a National Transport Commission or TIC meeting going on; we need to consult. What are the problems here in our state?'

Mr Mackinlay : We had some consultation through COVID with—

CHAIR: [inaudible] COVID one?

Mr Mackinlay : Yes. But aside from that, no, not really.

Mr Kaine : From the perspective of a registered organisation of employees, the TWU and the transport industry, unfortunately politics seems to intervene as well. We know of forums that others have been invited to that we simply haven't been. That excludes not only experience but also an incredibly important and experienced voice in the workers that we represent, to come before them and make a difference. So it's clearly not working. There is great confusion in our federation about the difference between enforcement in transport and standard setting. I'll keep making this point: enforcement is about dealing with a breach after it's occurred. It's a post-breach. We're in a post-breach culture. We'll always need that, because people have to be accountable when they've done the wrong thing; no-one is arguing about that. But increased enforcement is not an answer; it just begs the question. We need a standard setting body. There needs to be broad consultation about it. There need to be voices that represent the entirety of the industry and regional Australia, and there needs to be a standard setting body that has the power to make a difference.

CHAIR: Let's talk about the standard setting body—this is to the three of you. What would it look like? Who would be on it? What would its job be?

Mr Mackinlay : It needs to have real people from within the industry. There's the academic side of the industry as well. I attend a lot of things like this—industry type meetings and whatnot—and it's certainly not uncommon for me to be the only person in that room who knows how to drive a heavy vehicle, and these people are deciding the future of people who drive heavy vehicles. I'm not knocking anyone who doesn't know how to drive a heavy vehicle; I'm sure there are people who don't drive heavy vehicles who try their very best. But, at the end of the day, if you wanted to ask someone about how to perform heart surgery I wouldn't be the person to come to, because I've never done it; why would you come and ask me?

CHAIR: That's a fair question. It reflects this parliament, too. There are a lot of experts in transport in this building, I can tell you!

Mr Mackinlay : You know what an expert is, don't you!

Mr Kaine : What needs to happen is there needs to be a conclusion reached as to what such a standard setting body would do. Once you've articulated what it needs to do to make a difference—that is, to address the underlying causes that are leading to all these symptoms—then you can better shape how it should look. We have the learnings from the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—Mr Mackinlay has already spoken about that—and we should learn from some of the failings in the implementation of that. But the key driver of how this should look and who should be on it should be: what is it that it needs to do? What it needs to do is have the power to make sure that those with the commercial clout at the top of transport supply chains are using that commercial clout to induce an upward spiral, not a downward spiral, of standards in safety. For so long as they are scot-free, that will happen. This is not something that can be on the backburner. We have Amazon and Uber literally crossing into our territory now and not just pushing down rates but abolishing employers altogether, bypassing them and giving out work via apps and the internet to the lowest common denominator. There needs to be something put in place to stop them doing it, otherwise ARTIO won't exist, employees won't exist and we'll have the symptoms increase and worsen.

CHAIR: Mr Ryan, with your 35 years experience I'm sure you could add a bit more to that too.

Mr Ryan : Firstly, any such body should be independent and must be independently established under its own piece of legislation or regulation. I go back to the old days when the Industrial Relations Commission had various tribunals set up within it—the flight crew officers tribunal and the coalmining tribunal. That model seemed to work pretty well. The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was set up within the Fair Work Commission, which is the successor of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. It should be set up, be independent and have some statutory support behind it. As Gordon said, it must have industry people providing input and expertise. It needs to be headed by someone with probably judicial protection who can work in a manner that is without favour to those people who might make submissions, because that's how society operates—people put forward ideas and submissions and then decisions are made.

I think it needs be able to cross state borders, so it has to be done at a federal level. Look at some of the issues that arose at the state level during the pandemic. They had national implications. We saw Western Australia shut down for three days last weekend. That had national implications. So it has to be able to deal with issues on a national basis.

CHAIR: Is it agreed across the table here that there be representation from employers, owner-drivers and drivers? Are we missing anything? If it gets too cumbersome then there is every reason you can't do everything. Are there any other thoughts around that?

Mr Ryan : I understand that Professor Belzer is an American, but there are Australians who work in that space who understand the labour econometrics around the transport industry. I didn't quite understand some of Professor Belzer's equations.

CHAIR: I have to confess that you weren't alone.

Mr Ryan : Thank you. But we need that degree of expertise as well. Picking up on Gordon's point, we need the transport unit or the freight unit that Professor Belzer talked about.

CHAIR: Gordo, did you want to add anything—I am watching the clock—in terms of what the make-up should be?

Mr Mackinlay : I think we've probably got most of that pretty well nailed. Where is the NHVR in all of this? This thing came out several years ago, which we've all heard about—the chain of responsibility. It just keeps stopping at the driver. That was meant to stop that. The National Road Freighters Association has a very good working relationship with the NHVR. That's something that I hope continues, but at the same time when I don't believe they're on song I'll let them know. I'd like to let them know, which I have done in the past, that I don't think they're on song because I believe they must have some ability as the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator—and they keep telling me that they don't make the laws; they regulate them—to do something when someone steps outside of the chain of responsibility. How about they regulate and do something when someone is paid $1,100 to carry a load of freight from Sydney to Melbourne in their truck, has to tip $600 of fuel into it, has to pay the bloke who sat in the seat $500 and has no money left for anything else? They're just dodging. It is just all too hard. You know what? Have a go at it.

CHAIR: Alright. They'll be here tomorrow. I am sure they will be listening in. Let me just say something about the chain of responsibility. I remember talking about that in the early nineties and, sadly, that's just been an absolute, complete and utter letdown. We thought it was a silver bullet. It's not the silver bullet; it's the truckies getting pinged all the time. Anyway, that failed and here we go again. I have been doing this for 40-odd years and it is starting to hurt banging my head against this wall.

Gentlemen, I thank you very much for your time. I know there are many people listening into this. If anyone wants to argue about no link between safety and remuneration, I actually speak from experience as an owner-driver working between Perth and Darwin. I was with one of the big trucking companies. I got paid by the kilometre. We didn't have fatigue management and—crikey!—there weren't enough hours in a day. Did I make a good living? My bloody oath! That's because we would go out on strike every couple of years to get our pay up. Was I safe on the road? Be damned if I was.

Senator HANSON: Can I make a point?

CHAIR: Yes, please.

Senator HANSON: Thank you for your evidence today, gentlemen. Senator Sterle will tell you that I haven't really been involved in the trucking industry very much at all. It is just over the period of time since I have come back into parliament that I've actually taken a bit of an interest in it. You keep reiterating what I have been hearing about your safety records, about the drivers that are dying, that nothing is being done about it, that we don't have a national road transport authority to deal with it and about crossing borders and the changes from state to state. In your opinion, who's standing in the way of this? You must have some idea. Is it big business? Is it the multinationals? Is it free trade agreements? You must have some idea why this has not proceeded and why it's falling on deaf ears.

CHAIR: That is a good question. Who would like to kick off there?

Mr Mackinlay : I would like to say that probably a big part of it is big business and their dealings with the governments of the day. That's possibly on both sides of the fence, as we change political leadership in this country from time to time. It's certainly not something that's just popped up. But I believe that big business do contribute to the larger parties, let's say, and are known to hedge a bet each way leading up to an election. No doubt you've seen that yourself. That's certainly a big one, I think.

Mr Kaine : Senator Hanson, I just wanted to say that it is a really important question that you've asked. I don't want to dodge the question. I could give you a politically charged answer, but that would not be helpful. What we're really focused on now is that there does need to be urgent change. Your question's important because it goes to: who do we need to move to make that change? As our submission on the table today says, we have come to the very urgent conclusion that it's not just the state of the industry as it has been now over the last 20 years that's the problem; it's the gig economy that's coming to wipe out even good employers. That makes this even more urgent and makes answering your question more urgent. I'm mystified as to why this federal government is turning a blind eye to this, and any suggestions that anyone has about what we can say to make a difference and to turn that around would be most welcome.

Senator HANSON: I want to ask you a question about the ABNs. You raised the issue of drivers just turning up with their ABN. I know that the government hand out ABNs to people—not just trucking drivers but anyone—who come from overseas and apply for an ABN. They hand them out like confetti. Therefore, we don't know their ability or their experience. Correct me if I'm wrong. Are they tested for their ability to drive these trucks? I've heard too often of people who are foreign workers in this country driving trucks and actually driving into tunnels and ending up getting stuck. They don't have the ability or the knowledge to drive on our roads. Is that a big problem?

Mr Ryan : Your observations are mostly correct. With respect to ABNs, an employer cannot hire someone with an ABN to drive a truck unless they are bringing some capital equipment, such as a truck, to the business relationship. So, if I'm simply an employee with an ABN, the employer is breaching tax law, the employer is breaching industrial law, the employer is breaching workers' compensation laws and the person who turns up with an ABN is breaching tax law as well. That happens. Sham contracting is rife. 'Rife' might be too strong a word, but we are well aware that there are many companies out there that engage subcontinental drivers who may have transferred a driving licence and then told the relevant state authority that they'd driven a truck on the subcontinent and then there licence is immediately upgraded. That is, in simple terms, stupid—but it happens.

Mr Mackinlay : Most certainly your observations are correct. It's pretty straightforward. If you're going to drive a large vehicle down the road, you should be tested and it be certified that you know how to do that. Driving to where I carry out my work the other day I had an incident with a driver of the description we've used. The bloke was able to pull up and, when I approached him about the problem, which was the fact that he was blinding me with his lights continuously, I found he did not know how to dip the headlights on the vehicle he was driving down the Hume Highway. Four thousand trucks a day use the Hume Highway. It is Australia's main street. It's the busiest road in Australia. This bloke was driving a B-double on that road and was unable to dip the headlights to low beam—and he had been licensed. That is the problem.

Senator HANSON: That is a big problem. What has been done about having national road compliance for states? I know it's a huge problem. What has been done over the years to actually push that we have a national legislation or regulation on trucking going over the borders?

Mr Ryan : We have national heavy vehicle law which was an attempt about 10 years ago to harmonise laws so that they were identical in each state. The heavy vehicle law was passed by the Queensland parliament and then it was adopted in the other state parliaments. Western Australia and Northern Territory aren't part of the heavy vehicle national law scheme. The law passed in Queensland has been 98 per cent passed in New South Wales, about 97 per cent passed in Victoria and about 96 per cent passed in Tasmania. People say, 'We have a heavy vehicle national law,' but it's the two or three per cent outside that create the problems. If we're going to have national heavy vehicle law, let's have national heavy vehicle law. Let's not have five or six different versions of national heavy vehicle law. Let's make it—

Senator HANSON: So you're telling me it's up to the states, then, to decide whether they want to take up that national heavy vehicle law?

Mr Ryan : Yes.

Senator HANSON: It is up to the states?

Mr Ryan : Yes.

Senator HANSON: It hasn't been pushed by the federal government to bring it all under one law?

Mr Ryan : They've maybe attempted to push it, but if they had a minister for transport maybe it would get further.

Senator HANSON: Okay. Thank you for your evidence, gentlemen.

CHAIR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. I'm sorry I have gone over time, but I didn't want you to go! We could sit here and go for hours on this. Safe travels. We know where to find you should we need to follow up.