The drawn out and problematic six-year long review of the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) is reaching a critical and troubling point.
South Australian Road Transport Association (SARTA) and others in industry including the Australian Trucking Association, are preparing submissions to the National Transport Commission in response to the Exposure Draft of the HVNL Amendment Bill.
It’s the actual draft legislation to amend the HVNL. It will implement the dismal remnants of the reform proposals that were left after the appalling and often self-interested turf wars between the various states’ agencies, including police and between them and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR).
Industry did have a say throughout the six years of the review but we were never allowed in the same room as the state agencies, including police.
No, they refused to meet with industry, despite very persistent requests and pushing by SARTA and others. Why? Well there can only be one answer to that, as there is no other credible reason: they did not want industry to hear what the agencies and considering or saying about the industry and our views/proposals.
Refusing, repeatedly, to meet jointly with industry has resulted in watered-down and essentially ineffective proposed changes to the HVNL. It would be wrong to label the proposed changes a REFORM of the HVNL. A TINKERING perhaps but not a reform .
The NTC has had the unenviable task of securing agreement of ALL the jurisdictions and this has meant that we have repeatedly been told when we have challenged the NTC on various proposals, “Well this is what we can get the jurisdictions to agree to!”
So guess what, any opposition from one or more jurisdictions has been the death knell for any particular proposal. To make matters worse many of the sensible, effective and significant proposals for improved safety were effectively vetoed by police agencies, all of which seem stuck in the Mesozoic Era, when the dinosaurs were the dominant form of life 245 million years ago.
If this seems to be a strong statement, that’s because the out-dated and counter-productive typical police mentality, the adversarial cops-and-robbers philosophy, is itself that outdated and needs to be called out for what it is.
Police want what makes their life easy; the opportunity to continue to enforce simplistic black-and-white letter law that provides zero flexibility because tolerances and flexibility are just too hard to enforce, or so they think.
Perhaps more accurately the police agencies think it’s too hard to train their officers on anything that’s not black and white. As stats-driven agencies they believe that racking up countless infringements and fines is proof they’re doing a good job in keeping the industry safe.
The reality of course is that well over 90 per cent of those infringements issued by police are at best tick-and-flick technical matters that are utterly inconsequential for safety and risk. It’s mindless counter-productive rule enforcement.
That is precisely what the proposed REFORM of the HVNL was supposed to eradicate, by shifting the law to a risk-based and safety-focussed law that facilitated safe and productive road freight movement, for the benefit of the economy which our industry underpins.
Transport agencies and the NTC have allowed the police to scuttle that at virtually every step and the almost laughable proposed reforms to the fatigue management rules is a classic example.
Police have more than adequately proven in recent matters in court that they do not know what they are talking about. They are on record as being against the use of fatigue and distraction detection technology (FDDT).
They argue, incredibly, that FDDT is ineffective because it kicks in when people are fatigued, instead of preventing it. That extraordinary statement to us was made by a very senior police officer who obviously misses the point entirely:
- FDDT technology is not designed nor intended to prevent fatigue;
- Its designed and very effective at preventing fatigue-related crashes and incidents by detecting the early signs of impending fatigue and alerting the driver and the truck operator; and
- There is no better way of achieving those massive life-saving safety gains. The work diary, whether paper or electronic, do not and can’t do that that because they don’t manage fatigue. They just managed compliance with a poor ineffective substitute set of work/rest rules.
At a critical meeting on June 26 between SARTA, the CEO of the NHVR and an Assistant Commissioner of SAPOL, we started the meeting with a simple but fundamentally important question:
“What do you two want to achieve out of enforcing the HVNL?”
The silence ran for far longer than it should have before the police office made a basic comment about compliance. We then said:
“Well what we want and what the country needs, is an efficient and productive road freight industry that underpins the economy whilst operating safely and responsibly under a risk-based and safety-focussed HVNL that is applied consistently and sensibly.”
That is not what we are getting as a country and police and ill-informed state agency officials are in no small way to blame.
It’s time the NTC and ministers stood up and pushed back against their agencies who are choking the reform process and they need to tell the police that their job is to enforce the law that governments enact, not to get in the way of needed progressive genuine reform that would actually improve safety and productivity.
We shudder to think about how many infrastructure projects and new rest areas could have been funded by the enormous amount of federal and state taxpayers’ funds that have been wasted over the past six years on this sad excuse for a reform of the HVNL.
It will not deliver:
- The promised and necessary risk-based and safety-focussed HVNL; which is what’s needed to underpin a competitive national economy;
- An NHVR better placed for effective regulation of a safe and productive road freight industry;
- Real improvements to actual fatigue management, as distinct from tweaks to counting rules;
- A more dynamic legislative regime that is truly responsive to progress and technology change;
- Eradication of the state and local govt bureaucratic barriers to appropriate HV access; and
- An operating environment that supports a viable and sustainable road freight industry.
- Steve Shearer is the executive officer of the South Australian Road Transport Association.