MP's come out punching over safe rates laws

• General News
• 27th June 2012

New national safe trucking rates laws will come into being on July 1 and it will be very interesting to see how they will impact upon our transport industry.

In the meantime I'd like to pay tribute to several MP's who made people look up and take notice when the laws were being debated in federal parliament.

Just in case you didn't know the Tony Abbot led Liberals and their National Party coalition partners opposed the laws.

WA senator Glenn Sterle, a former truckie and TWU organiser was involved in some fiery exchanges with opposition transport and right-wing Liberal MP Eric Abetz.

In fact we thought fisticuffs might be on when Sterle ordered Abetz to step outside the parliamentary chamber.

"Let us take the fight out there, Senator Abetz. Come on out mate. You pick the states, you pick the trucking yards," Sterle thundered. "I will blue you, I will debate you."

"I'm sick of listening to your crap - You are an absolute disgrace".

"While Senator Abetz was playing kiddie politics in the Liberal Party in the Tasmanian University, or wherever he went, I was playing with road trains. Bring it on, Senator Abetz."

Sterle, whose dad was also a veteran truckie, says truck drivers need to be paid enough to make a decent living and support their family. He criticised those who dismiss a link between pay and safety.

"Do you think we truckies got home feeling like trash every week because we loved to feel like trash? We felt like that because our rates of pay did not adequately provide us with the ability to have a minimum eight hours sleep," Sterle said.

Abetz claims the tribunal will impose more regulation on the trucking industry without leading to any improvements in safety. He says heavy vehicle fatalities have fallen in recent years despite a rise in the number of trucks on the road.

The tribunal will be free to investigate individual sectors, practices and issues in the industry, such as waiting times and payment terms.

It will have the power to determine minimum rates and conditions for drivers, with decisions binding on all parties in the road freight supply chain.

And it should give the industry the shake-up it needs.

Coles & Woolworths

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon threw his support behind the Bill, saying it represents an opportunity to "protect truckies from the insidious pressures that come down the supply chain."

His statements were quoted in popular transport publications ATN and Owner Driver:

"Our nation's truck drivers face unrealistic and often impossible deadlines and schedules. This results in truckies driving too far, too fast and for too long. In these circumstances our truck drivers are set up to crash, with deadly consequences," he says.

Xenophon targeted Coles and Woolworths, saying their market dominance allows them to dictate delivery schedules and rates.

"There is a real issue of drivers being forced to queue, unpaid, for hours to load and unload at the depots of Woolworths and Coles, forcing drivers to then work long hours to make a buck," he says.

Xenophon says the reform is about creating safer roads by protecting drivers from those in the supply chain imposing unrealistic schedules.

"I find it remarkable that we are here debating to give truckies a fair go, to remunerate them properly and also to remove those pressures on supply lines," he says.

Another former TWU organiser, Senator Mark Furner, said the government needs to protect truck drivers.

"Let's face it. Just about everything we use, everything we wear, everything we consume comes on a truck. This is why we need to look after drivers and ensure that they have the right to work in a safer workplace environment - the same basic rights that many of us already enjoy," he says.

More power to these advocates of Australia's hard work truckies.