A step forward on national laws

Australia’s national truck laws are now a step closer. The Queensland Transport Minister, Annastacia Palaszczuk, introduced the first of the two bills needed to establish the laws into the Queensland Parliament on Tuesday 15 November.

Australia’s transport ministers have agreed there will need to be a second bill to fix 849 issues identified by the trucking industry and state road agencies. Despite these issues, it was important to get the first bill into parliament to lay the foundations for the national regulator.

The ATA and its members are now working through the details of the second bill with the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator project office.

One of the ATA’s priorities is to make sure that directors, corporate officers, sole traders and partners in trucking businesses are innocent until proven guilty of road transport offences. Under the current bill, they are presumed to be guilty – which goes against everything Australians believe is fair and just.

In addition, road asset managers like local governments need to be more accountable for their decisions about the trucks that can use their roads.

The ATA is arguing the following issues also need to be addressed:

• the bills must enhance NHVR’s power of direction and oversight regarding state agencies and police
• the chain of responsibility and code of practice provisions must be corrected
• they must enhance the governance of the NHVR
• they must properly provide for the disallowance of regulations when the majority of parliaments agree
• the NHVR must be adequately resourced. Funds and resources should be transferred from government agencies, with cost savings transparently reported and passed back to industry.