FORSYTH, Mr Craig, NSW Director, National Road Freighters Association

HANNIFEY, Mr Rod, President, National Road Freighters Association

[12:29]

CHAIR: Welcome. Is there anything you would like to add about the capacity in which you're appearing today?

Mr Forsyth : I'm appearing as a board member of the National Road Freighters Association and as an owner-operator myself.

Mr Hannifey : I am the recently elected president of the National Road Freighters Association and I'm an employed driver, which is a little bit unusual for our association, and most of my comments are specifically aimed at effects on employed drivers on the road.

CHAIR: Mr Hannifey, knowing your vast experience in this industry, nothing surprises me in terms of what hat you have on each time we talk. Congratulations on your election to greater office.

Mr Hannifey : Thank you.

CHAIR: I want to pass this on to the National Road Freighters Association. I want to thank you for your support and, of course, your previous past president, Mr Gordon McKinley, who reached out very early in the piece. Thank you for the ongoing conversation that we do have. I'll give you the opportunity to make an opening statement before we go to questions. If you want to take longer on the statement that cuts out time for questions, that doesn't worry me; I want you to get everything on the record you need to get on. Mr Hannifey, fire away.

Mr Hannifey : I have sent a copy of this document to you yesterday, made it available because I knew that we had a short time frame and I didn't think I'd get through it all. I'll quickly raise the issues that are on it. I did attend the inquiry initially. I put in a written submission and attended. You did say that NRFA have been supportive. I believe that we have been the biggest single contributing group. You have had some very big companies that have contributed, and government organisations. I believe we would be the largest conglomerate of people who have contributed to this inquiry. We do believe there is a need for something to change.

I will offer five things that will make the roads safer for all and three things that will change the industry for the better. According to a 2014 WorkCover report, trucks are at fault in only six per cent of fatalities on Australian roads, yet over 700 truck drivers are involved in such crashes, and though not at fault they are it seems too often initially dealt with as criminals and then left to fend for themselves, even if acquitted of any blame.

In the media we are continually held unjustly liable as overrepresented in those crashes. Nothing has been done to change this. Then those drivers are not only treated badly; they're hung out to drive afterwards, perhaps affecting them for the rest of their lives. But if we're not at fault, why has nothing been done to rectify not only the abuse of truck drivers but to educate the people who are the problem—those at fault, the car drivers. Until there is some much-improved education about car drivers about sharing the road with trucks, preferably starting in school but at the absolute latest at the time of learning and licensing, this ongoing tragedy and loss of lives will continue. I have raised this in many forums and for many years, and I hope you can achieve this where I have been unable to alone. I've offered the following videos that we did through White Line Television and with funding from NHVR to every state road authority in Australia. One of them came back and said, 'No, thanks. We don't need them.' The others couldn't even be bothered responding. They're nine one-minute videos.

I do not believe it's too much to ask of someone getting a licence to be on the road for the next 60 years. We know that, if you're in a trucking family, you spend time with dad, you go out and learn it, and you have an understanding of trucks, but the moment someone gets their licence there are very few questions. There are now two. There wasn't even that before I complained last time about the fact that there was no education. Some kid will go out and pull straight out in front of 68-tonne of B-double and expect it to stop simply because he could pull out in front of it. We run over him. He's dead. We're stricken for the rest of our lives. We see that in our nightmares every night. That is never recognised anywhere. That education must improve. To me, that is the biggest single factor affecting my life and safety on the road.

The second one is the road. The road is our workplace, yet it's not recognised as such. If I come in here, we have to be inducted. We have to go through a process that allows me access to this building. Then you have to be trained in any hazards in this building. If I go on to a worksite I am told that there are forklifts and 'You must do this; you must walk on the pathway.' Yet we are letting young people onto the roads with no education about trucks. When they get out there they make mistakes. That leads to the second problem. The roads are owned by the authorities. If I'm normally given a safe workplace in which to operate, why aren't the roads brought up to a standard? Why is that not recognised as my workplace? The authorities are failing in not educating other road users, but they are also failing, from where I sit bouncing up and down the bloody highway trying to hang on for grim death, trying to manage my fatigue. They do not build the road to a proper standard. They don't maintain it to a standard. For example, there's a bit of road just south of Yelarbon. It is undulating. It has taken me over five years to get that bit of road fixed. I have rung, begged, emailed. I haven't abused, because that doesn’t really help. I have gone back and said, 'Will you get an engineer to have a look at this bit of road? I can get the wheels off the ground in a fully-loaded B-double.' That scares me. I've told them I simply refuse to drive on that side of the road if there is no other traffic coming. Luckily you can see around the corner and if it's safe I will travel on the wrong side of the road. I will be straight up with you about it.

They've finally gone out there and had an engineer look at it. They've said, 'Yes, it's problem.' I said, 'Look at the skid marks where someone has hit this bump because he didn't know it's there.' I know it's. I am careful of it. I said, 'Some bloke has hit this, gone off the road, may have died, don't know what happened.' I'm not there every minute of the day. Then they said, 'Oh, we haven't got any money.' We have to take that to them. We have to make them aware of those problems. I have tried to get drivers to ring up about these things but they say that no-one will listen and no-one does anything. But that's where I live. I spend 200,000 kilometres a year on those roads. There is no national standard for our roads. There is nothing where I can say—and I've had this argument with the road authority—'There's a bit of undulating road.' 'Oh, but it's not broken.' On a car, it's not that bad. You just float over it; it's a little bump. With me, that impact comes into the truck. I've had drivers say, 'Why do we have to have roadworthy trucks when the roads aren't?' That impacts me. I want to be able to walk when I'm 70. It affects my fatigue, because I'm forever stressed trying to keep the truck on the road and not running into a car coming the other way who is weaving over the bumps.

Then it goes back into the road. We as an industry are forever blamed for damaging the roads, yet for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The road is good. We drive along it like this. But now, when the roads fail, no-one is responsible for fixing them. When they do a half-arsed patch and it fails two days later and they come back and do it again, we are continually paying. We are not getting value for money for our roads. As my workplace, they're not doing their job. I would like your support for a national road standard. That means I carry my two-metre bit of pipe, I lay it on the road, if there is more than a certain amount of gap under it, it is a national highway and it has to be fixed within a certain time. We don't expect them to be there tomorrow, because we know it costs money. There must be something there to force it to happen. They have just built a new overtaking lane south of Peak Hill. They went out and finished it. Within three weeks it had failed. In the three months since that's happened they have torn it up twice. We're getting blamed, we're getting delayed with the roadworks. There are hazards in going through those roadworks. Someone has not been paid three times to do that same bit of roadwork. I have a problem with that.

Next is a national truck rest area strategy. You spoke of this to the department of infrastructure. I thank you for raising it. I have had a conversation with them on the phone. They have agreed that there is some funding perhaps available to look at the green reflector marking of informal truck bays. They've told me that they're going to the next TIC meeting and that they will raise it there. The fact that we don't have enough rest areas means that, firstly, we have tired truck drivers. There are no toilets, there is no shade and no facilities. RMS just did a section of road from Boggabilla south of there—40 kilometres of road. I rang them when they started, during the work and when they finished. I said, 'Please, will you guarantee me we don't lose any rest areas.' 'Oh, we'll have a look at that. ' They finished by tearing up 40 kilometres of highway adjacent to the new road that we could have had for free parking bays. I believe that's criminal negligence. We went from 28 spaces back to six. I rang them at the start, during the work and at the finish. Now they've just said, 'Sorry.'

CHAIR: From 28 to six. I will cut in, so I don't lose this. So, from 28 rest areas to six—

Mr Hannifey : Twenty-eight spaces, not 28 rest areas.

CHAIR: To six spaces over 40 kilometres?

Mr Hannifey : Yes.

CHAIR: That makes more sense.

Mr Hannifey : They spent millions of dollars.

CHAIR: It used to annoy the living daylights out of me every time I went up the Great Northern Highway and they put a new bit in or the north-west coastal highway. There was perfect bitumen for a rest, if you're coming in at five or 10km/h. All they had to do was plough some trees away, make a bit of a dirt entrance so you could come in off the brand-new road onto the old bit, give you a kilometre so half-a-dozen triples can get in or whatever, and then do another cutting out. They could have done that seven times. I was going to say 'bugger all', but that's not politically correct—at next-to-nothing cost while there is a dozer onsite.

Mr Hannifey : That is right. They would have saved money. Instead of tearing up that bit of road, pay contractors to cart it away and then tidy it up, we would have had rest areas at absolutely no cost. The little bit of time they spent doing that bit you speak of would have been recovered by not tearing up that bit of road.

The last one on rest areas—and I've submitted a copy of that strategy—is the Pacific Highway. When they started on the Pacific Highway 15 years ago we didn't have enough rest areas then. Every town that's been bypassed we've lost more. I said, 'You’re aware of the change in industry that we now do changeovers?' We waited 30 years to get a changeover facility at Tarcutta. At midnight now it's an absolute madhouse. It's not big enough. It doesn't do the job. It was badly designed and we weren't consulted. I said to them, 'When you do the Pacific', which is arguably now the best road in Australia—and the road itself is fantastic—'You must put in a changeover facility.' Our industry has changed so a bloke doesn't have to run around Sydney all day, then drive all night to go to Brisbane, unload, reload and go back. We put a bloke in the truck at Sydney. He drives up. We used to do changeovers at Clybucca. That was a madhouse. It was a 100km/h zone. It was a risk to life and limb of those operating. They have spent millions upon millions of dollars on that Pacific Highway. There is not a changeover facility. There is nothing. Now that we've gone away from Clybucca, they've dropped the speed limit to 80 km/h, and 15 or 20 trucks are trying to get into a single space at Kempsey of a night to do a changeover.

CHAIR: While you are talking I am making notes. When the department comes today, they might put it on the states but we'll ask them. As I said when Engineers Australia was here, what consultation is there with the men and women who hold the steering wheel?

Mr Hannifey : Not enough. That is one of my points.

CHAIR: I doubt there is any.

Mr Hannifey : Yes.

CHAIR: Keep going.

Mr Hannifey : Point No. 4—lack of flexibility in logbooks. We know about it. You have heard about the penalties that have nothing to do with road safety. There is an issue there and I am asking in a separate document we will come to about the removal of police powers to police the heavy vehicle national law. I will come back to that. We are forcing drivers out who for 30 years have driven when they were fit and slept when they were tired. I've had blokes come to me and say, 'I've never struggled in the last 30 years as I hard as I do now to be safe and compliant.' I do hope the Heavy Vehicle National Law review will improve some of that.

Lastly, training: we now teach car drivers to pass the test. That's all we do. Once they're on the road, they're out of our hair and forgotten. That is now coming into trucking industry. The day we started with autos in trucks, we are now putting car drivers into trucks. You're aware of the problem with overseas people. I have no inference about them coming here and having a job, as long as they are trained to the same standard as we are, because I want them safe and I want me safe, and I want to get home every night I go out on that road. There must be something done for this training. There must be either a level standard—are you aware of the MELT program in Canada?

CHAIR: No.

Mr Hannifey : There was a major bus crash. A truck crashed into a bus and killed 16 young people from a hockey team. They now have 127 hours mandatory training. It was a large cost. The applicant standard has lifted to meet that. At the moment, we are putting bums in seats. That means those people coming towards me may have only got their licence yesterday, as I heard the gentleman say this morning. 'You've got to give me my licence now because I'm heading to Melbourne on Sunday night.' That has to change.

One of the three things that will change the industry is removal of police powers. NHVR is saying that their on-road enforcement is aimed at education. We agree with that. If you make the same mistake three times, you will get a ticket and you deserve the ticket. But police will knock you off for leaving one date off your page. They drive away thinking they have solved road safety. That bloke can't feed his family for that week. There is a separate document in those papers I have given you. I have had many people say they support it. This is not against the police. This is saying they are not trained to the same level as NHVR officers. They are not fully aware of transport law, and whilst ever they come out and knock us off for some—excuse me—piss-arse thing that has nothing whatsoever to do with road safety, they are not solving the problem, they are increasing the problem. That bloke then can't feed his family that week. He has another bill. All he did was go to work and come home safe. That is affecting also mental health in our industry.

The second one is chain of responsibility. It's a marvellous concept. It doesn't work. We are the ones swinging at the end of the chain. No-one further up the chain has been targeted. I think there has only been one application in Queensland and two in New South Wales. The Yanks looked at that chain of responsibility, saying, 'This is good. This will spread it up.' But at the moment the driver gets it—bang, bang, bang. No-one else gets into the chain and we're still the last party.

The last one I will leave you with is the way that we are treated for our living away from home allowance. Three years ago the ATA tried to knock our allowance in half. The industry rallied and said, 'Nick off. Why are you treating us this way?' I asked you, Senator Sterle, how do you believe you get treated compared to us.

CHAIR: Far better.

Mr Hannifey : We are not allowed to claim $27 for tea-time because we worked all night and want to have a big breakfast, and now we have to produce all of these receipts and prove that I spent $27 for breakfast but I can't spend it for tea. I don't think that's fair and reasonable. I think that's just another impost on our industry. I've written this document. At the end I'll leave you with points. I thank you for the opportunity to outline these issues and sincerely hope this inquiry can bring pressure to bear to see truck drivers' lives made safer on the road. I am concerned that truckies are not recognised for the lives they save in driving for others every day. We get blamed. We don't get recognised for the fact that I look and I watch that motorist, because I know he doesn't understand trucks and I will try to anticipate and prevent that accident and save his life when doing something stupid. Sometimes they can be just too stupid and too quick and you can't do it. We are blamed for the deaths. We are blamed for the road damage. We are harassed to the point of abuse by authorities for things that have nothing whatsoever to do with road safety, and yet we are never recognised for the lives that we save.

CHAIR: That is an extraordinary point. Not only that; we get the same amount of demerit points as someone running around town doing 10,000k a day.

Mr Hannifey : We do get two more in New South Wales, and that was thanks to our a local member Dawn xx Fardel. But, again, for someone in a car to do 20,000 kilometres a year—I went to a New South Wales Centre for Road Safety meeting in Dubbo last Wednesday. One of the first things, and one of the only things, speaking about heavy vehicles, other than saying we need more technology, was that we are overrepresented in crashes. We're responsible for 17 per cent. The bloke did backtrack and say that doesn't include fault. But using those figures maligns us and doesn't recognise the fact that we do 2,000 kilometres a year.

CHAIR: That's the single operator.

Mr Hannifey : Yes, exactly right.

CHAIR: Not two-up teams. Thank you, Mr Hannifey. We'll come back to questions. Mr Forsyth, your turn.

Mr Forsyth : I would like to touch on the education of not only truck drivers but car drivers as well. I went to Melbourne over the Easter weekend and I was horrified at the road conditions, for not only our own industry but car drivers as well, and on how uneducated we are or have become. We also have an industry now where anyone can basically get a truck licence. You can go and pay your money. We know that because you've been through that before. We're now getting larger vehicles on the road, and there's no education on what to do with those vehicles. We also are running out of areas to stop. As Rod said, on the Newell they're cutting areas out to rest, yet the vehicles are longer. We're running AB triples up and down the Newell now. Parkes they'll bypass soon. They are basically running Brisbane-Melbourne and we've got no more areas.

With the education side, we don't have any tier or accreditation structures for the level of competency you need to have as an operator. I can spend six months driving a fridge van around Melbourne and then I can go and buy a truck and a widening trailer and think I know how to do oversize freight. There is no accreditation for me. I'm not licensed to do that. It takes years of experience. As Mr Mitchell said, we're not even a profession, yet when we're driving down the road we're taking on more than a pilot is with what we need to do. We don't have auto steer—

Mr Hannifey : Auto pilot. Hosties bringing you a coffee.

Mr Forsyth : We're constantly watching out for people we're going to run over and looking so far ahead of what we do and yet we're not a profession. That's wrong. I actually obtained a Cert III in driving operations many years ago. I flatly refused to do the course—flatly refused—and I still got one in the mail.

CHAIR: They gave it to you?

Mr Forsyth : They gave it to me, anyway, even though I refused to do it and I held higher qualifications. It was just a scam to give to the training operator and the company that I was being employed by at the time. When I started it was only a seasonal job. I ended up with a Cert III, which I hold no value to anyway. I didn't do anything to obtain that, but money was spent—

CHAIR: It was a tick and flick. There were a couple of names; you get some money.

Mr Forsyth : Yes, that money at the time could have been spent employing a young driver to bring him into that industry and let some people train him, not just say, 'Do you know how to tie a load on?' and just get a certificate for saying, 'I can'—not demonstrate how to do it. We have dumbed down the industry to a point now where people will go and just do whatever they're asked, and there are still those employers who prey on that: 'Oh, he's just here for a wage. He doesn't know any better', and so they can push. They do; they push hard still. We need to train people to be able, firstly, to say, 'No. I'm not doing it. I'm not breaking the law' to basically make the employer more money.

CHAIR: Can I ask you a few questions, Mr Forsyth, and I have some for you, Mr Hannifey. Have you finished?

Mr Forsyth : Yes.

CHAIR: Is it the view of the National Road Freighters Association that it should be harder to get a truck licence?

Mr Hannifey : You have to have one of two choices. Either we make it so hard to get into the industry and it costs so much we will struggle to get people in. We know that's a problem now. We don't have people who are looking to this industry. We use the young ones because they can't get into the truck. You have insurance problems. We're losing the old ones. Like the rest of the Australian demographic, they're being forced out by those fines. Where do we get the truck drivers? They're sort of heading towards, 'We're going to have all of these autonomous trucks, and we won't need you soon.'

CHAIR: Not in our lifetime, they won't.

Mr Hannifey : If they start spending money on fixing highways for autonomous trucks, I'll be standing there screaming at the top of my lungs, 'Why couldn't you fix them for us?' If it's good enough to fix it for a truck, why can't you fix it for me?'

CHAIR: Or for an electric vehicle, yes.

Mr Hannifey : That's why we need a national road standard. We're going backwards in rest areas. We believe something must be done to improve the level of training or the level of licensing, whether you do all of that before you get your licence or whether you get a licence and then go to a company that accredits you to the next level to go up and down the highway, that gives you skills for your logbook, load restraint and managing your fatigue. I don't have the answer and I know it's not a simple fix, but I know something must be done to improve the safety not only of truck drivers but all those on the road.

CHAIR: There are two parts to that, licensing and training. Firstly, on training, this committee has taken a fair bit of evidence that the training industry has had a gutful of it.

Mr Hannifey : Yes, they're being driven down.

CHAIR: Yes, being driven down. It's just the ratbags; the fly-by-nighters are having a ball, and no-one is policing. People are employing these people on the road. If I had a $500,000 unit on the road, I'd want to make sure I had the best possible driver I could have. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks like us. We know that. In terms of the NRFA, who should pay for the training? Should it be—

Mr Hannifey : Companies have been a bit short-sighted—

CHAIR: Fifty-fifty each way or something?

Mr Hannifey : They have been happy to steal them from someone else. We have a national company, Simon National Carriers. They have a training program, but their trucks run at 90km/h and they have Volvos. I spoke to David Simon. I said, 'How do you feel about training the rest of the industry. Blokes go there. They say, 'Look. You've helped me. You've taught me. I've got a licence. I've got all of these skills, but now I'm off to drive a Kenworth at 105. He said, 'I would rather train them so that when they're coming towards me they're skilled and I know that's better.' But he's bearing that cost. That's not fair on him. It either has to be a national scheme so it's levelled. Otherwise, if we have something where Craig starts his own training program and does all of these drivers but everybody steals them, why should he pay that? He'll go broke because he's doing the training.

I believe there must be a national scheme and national accreditation. With the car drivers, we probably have to lift that a bit, at least to be aware of trucks. With us it's not just getting a licence. That doesn't mean you can head to Melbourne or to Perth tomorrow. We know that people are sent out without that knowledge or skill base. Whether you drive fridges, tippers, tankers, oversize, each has its own specific requirements. Whether you have a course that covers much of that, it's going to be very expensive. Or whether you get your licence and then must be indoctrinated in a company or enshrined to them—under the MELT program in Canada you can pay for it itself, and it is very comprehensive. You can get a company to sponsor you, but then you must stay with them for two years to give that money back to the company. That spreads the cost. How else do you do that? I don't have that answer.

CHAIR: That is fair enough.

Mr Forsyth : We have training schemes for apprenticeships. If you want a carpenter and you're an employer, you can get funding to put on an apprentice. That should be open to the industry as well. But what do we employ somebody as to do that? With the sustainable rates, how do operators pay for it if they're running on such tight margins as it is? It's very difficult for anyone with three or four trucks to go and find someone, particularly interstate. How do you train someone when you've got to sleep in the truck? If I've got to put someone on with me in Brisbane and we're going to Melbourne, I've got this much bed space. I can't even sleep in that with my wife, so why would I take another bloke in there with me? If you're training someone you can't two-up drive.

Mr Hannifey : You can't go to sleep and let them do it; they haven't got the skills. That's why you're with them in the first place.

Mr Forsyth : But to carry them on that distance is hard. I'd love to take someone to learn the industry, but I've only got one truck and I do such varied work that I don't even know where I'm going to end up half the time. You can't book motels to stay in or things like that.

CHAIR: That's right. It is comforting to know there are many people out there who do have the ability to train people and who want to train people. There is a number of things that irks them. One is seeing money being thrown around this nation on training programs like confetti. Let's not forget that we are eight per cent to nine per cent of GDP, the road transport industry. We're not tiny. But also our standards, I believe, are not fit-for-purpose. We've had this conversation with many transport operators, drivers and so on. You think in this nation you can go out there and get your HC, and then you can go along a year later or whatever it is and get your MC. You can get your MC and not ever use it. Don't ever even think about putting the key in the ignition, and 12 months later you can get your Cert IV train the trainer and you can be a trainer. How the hell is some peanut like that going to teach a young kid coming through load restraint and basic things? We still have to change tyres. We still have to make sure the load is okay. We still have to do bits and pieces if we get air leaks. We can't just sit on the side of the road waiting for Bridgestone or Goodyear to change a flat. There is that frustration too.

I am mindful that we are running short on time. I had the privilege of being invited up to Rocky a couple of years ago at one of your AGMs. I don't know if you were there, Mr Forsyth

Mr Forsyth : No.

CHAIR: The NRFA has done a heck of a lot of work on licensing—I'll get this right—and when it comes to the ridiculous charges of licensing a prime mover. If you pull one trailer, it is $14,000. Road trains are up to $18,000 or $19.000, whatever it is. The National Road Freighters has done a body of work around user pay on the fuel. Are you guys able to speak about that?

Mr Forsyth : I'm not aware of that.

CHAIR: Okay.

Mr Hannifey : Very quickly, obviously, they're looking at mass distance charging. They've instituted a program I think in California. There is one state in America that is looking at mass distance charging. The concern that we have is that, in doing that, if you've got a majority of trucks running the Hume Highway every night, those trucks are using that road. You put that money into that road, and that's a really good road. What happens when he wants to go to the middle of nowhere on a dirt road that currently doesn't have funding? How do we get that to balance it out? We know the industry cross-subsidises some things. You were talking earlier about the farmers. I have certainly had concerns raised about those running on farm rego. At least in the past you could see primary producer rego. Since NHVR has taken that over, those plates have disappeared and now you don't know who is running on primary producer rego. He's running beside you paying a fifth or a sixth of your rego and competing with you for the same work. With the fuel based charge—the more weight that you carry, the more distance that you cover, then the more fuel that you use—we are quite prepared to pay what we believe we have to to contribute to the roads. We have also discussed that the roads aren't just there for us.

The rail industry operates on its own rails. That industry has its own problems, and you discussed them earlier, but it doesn't share those rails with anybody else. The roads are there for you so that you can visit your grandma or your family. We share those roads, but we are charged with the whole cost of repairing them. They are now trying to pull that forward and charge us for what they're going to do and not for what they've done. You've only got to look at the NorthConnex tunnel. We had a driver who was diagnosed as being claustrophobic; he could not drive into a tunnel, unless he could see the end of it. They rang the RTA and said, 'Can we get an exemption for this driver? He's been on the road for 20 years and he's safe and efficient, but he can't go in there; we've got a medical certificate.' Do you know what they were told?

CHAIR: No.

Mr Hannifey : They were told, 'Stiff shit.'

CHAIR: That's terrible. I did the NorthConnex a couple of weeks ago and the first thing I thought was, 'There's not a lot of height in that.'

Mr Hannifey : But look at it now. If you come into Sydney, you've got nothing from Pheasants Nest to Wyong, because now you can't divert away from that tunnel to go to a servo to get a coffee because you're buggered and you're feeling tired.

CHAIR: I did it.

Mr Hannifey : What if you've eaten something at Pheasants Nest and you need to go to the loo; where do you go now? I fought tooth and nail to keep that little rest area right at the bottom of Newcastle Road. You used to come out of the end of the major highway there and there was a little bit underneath the bridge, and they were going to take that away when they did that tunnel. I said, 'If you take that away, we've got nowhere to stop.' Say I've gone into Sydney to your place and put my load of steel on, but I've got nowhere now to check that until I get to Wyong. What if a piece of timber moves or the chain comes loose; where do we stop to fix that? This is the last thing I'll leave you with on that. In the major capital cities now, we're even being forced out of industrial areas. We used to go to Sydney and park in the street; you'd be there during the night and get up in the morning, when the business opened, and go in and unload and then go off and load again. Now there are so many restrictions. We've just lost a big parking area in Melbourne under the Bolte Bridge where there used to be 20-odd B-double spaces.

CHAIR: I heard about that last week, yes.

Mr Hannifey : That area has gone too. What has that been replaced with? Nothing. Nothing has been done about it. We believe that the fuel-based charge is a fairer system. How would they ever bring in this mass-distance charge and make it fair in its operation and fixing those roads in the community? We know that 85 per cent of roads are operated by local government, and local government doesn't have the funding stream. So we believe that a fuel-based tax is the best way to go at this stage.

CHAIR: Have you had an opportunity to stick that under the nose of some Treasury bureaucrat?

Mr Hannifey : We've certainly tried. There was meant to be a trial of that mass-distance charging; it's gone on and on for years. I believe that there's currently a trial where they've asked people to participate; I don't know how many have participated, and I haven't heard of any results from it as yet. It does depend on which side of the industry you're on. If you're a multinational that runs 57 trucks a night down the Hume, you don't mind, because you know that the Hume is done and it's a good road and you're happy. But, as soon as you start running one truck out to some farmer's property in the middle of nowhere, where is the funding for that one truck going to come from? Is he going to have to pay $57 a kilometre to get that road fixed to go and deliver the tractor to the farm or to pick up his load of grain? We're concerned that all that will do is put another impost on our industry that will make it harder for us to service the community. We are a service industry—

CHAIR: Absolutely.

Mr Hannifey :—and we carry Australia on our backs happily; that's what we want to do. Years ago, it was said that the Australian economy rode on the back of the sheep, and that's changed; now it's on the back of a prime mover. All we want is a fair go in order to perform that service for the people of Australia, and at the moment I don't think we're getting it.

CHAIR: On a lighter note, I remember having a trailer; on one side there was a sticker saying, 'Truckies carry Australia', and on the other side there was a sticker saying, 'Truckies are bloody sick of carrying Australia.' But, anyway, that was the eighties. Senator McDonald, do you have any questions for the National Road Freighters Association?

Senator McDONALD: No. I've been listening intently, but I'll leave that in your capable hands.

CHAIR: I'm sorry about the time, but thank you very much for making the effort to appear, and I will just say a little thing about that. We took evidence from Glyn Castanelli down in Melbourne, and the way in which he was treated was absolutely criminal and abysmal. A car was on the wrong side of the road and pranged into him, and he was the one who was hauled over the coals by the coppers.

Mr Hannifey : Yes. That's an example in the first part of—

CHAIR: Yes, I'm well aware of it. I remember Glyn ringing me on the night that it happened. There was also the way in which he was treated by Channel 7: it's always the trucks running into cars and trying to kill people. I'm very well aware of that one and it's not lost of me, Mr Hannifey. Mr Forsyth and Mr Hannifey, thank you very much. Guys, please travel safely. Just on the record: Rod, I'm coming, mate.

Mr Hannifey : Absolutely. I won't let you forget.

CHAIR: We're waiting for the new banger. It'll be after the Brisbane Truck Show; I think that's what you've told me.

Mr Hannifey : I hope so, yes.

CHAIR: That's if your wing is fixed up by then.

Mr Hannifey : Yes.

CHAIR: All right. I will be there.