Veteran truckie unveils 28-point plan to save trucking

Time is of the essence. You can accept the status quo, or take a stand for your rights, your choice.

Below are the demands of independent contractors and long-distance drivers to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and government for safety and for the industry to survive and reduce unnecessary truck fatalities.

The industry needs people to stand up, start an alliance and lead this action. Make Australian transport great again in 2026.

Injustice only survives while good people do nothing.

Heavy Vehicle National Law

1. The federal government must remove Queensland’s parliament from assenting to the HVNL, on the grounds that it acts as a rubber stamp for the NTC/NHVR while ignoring human rights law. The process operates like a one-sided grand jury, hearing evidence from only one party. Responsibility should be transferred to a state with two levels of government and proper checks and balances on submissions.

2. All 105,000 long-distance drivers and those required to use work diaries must be treated equally before the law, without discrimination, and afforded the same legal protections as the other 14.5 million workers and 27 million Australians, as provided under the ICCPR, the Australian Constitution, common law, and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

3. Human rights removed from long-distance drivers with the advent of the NHVR must be restored, including protections ensuring equality before the law.

4. This includes removing provisions relating to strict liability, denial of the mistake-of-fact defence, error of judgment, loss of the privilege against self-incrimination, removal of mens rea, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, penalties for academic errors, and unprovable rules around individual rest periods and fitness to drive. Arbitrary deeming of fatigue and involuntary detention without evidence violates common law human rights protections.

5. Remove the arbitrary counting of work and rest times under Standard Hours (STD), BFM and AFM. Restore STD hours as the sole method of counting hours worked. Remove arbitrary deeming of breach penalties under BFM and STD, as only courts can lawfully determine enforceable wrongdoing.

6. Remove prescriptive hour-counting from the Act. Adopt maximum work hours per 24-hour period, with fatigue protections tailored to individual driver needs on the day.

7. Insert an “impossibility to perform or comply” defence into the HVNL (consistent with legal precedent), recognising governments’ failure to provide adequate rest facilities across all jurisdictions. The Act currently conflicts with ARR s200 and local parking restrictions that make lawful compliance impossible.

8. Remove any provision preventing drivers from exercising their legal rights to have alleged offences adjudicated in the territorial jurisdiction where they are said to have occurred, consistent with separation of powers under the Australian Constitution. Restore rights held prior to the NHVR and HVNL.

8a. Remove provisions that use criminal-law wording to downgrade indictable offences into summary offences without the corresponding rights of defence under state Crimes Acts, Evidence Acts and the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

9. Discontinue the requirement for transport entities to prepare trip-based rest and performance guides, as they are often impossible to comply with and create undue risk for drivers.

10. Clarify, as a question of law, whether the HVNL Adoption Act is enforceable in Victoria, having regard to Victorian human rights law and Supreme Court jurisdiction.

11. Compelling drivers to stop at roadside enforcement points without reasonable grounds, and subjecting them to intimidation or harassment that adds up to three hours or more to trip times, constitutes an unfair deprivation of liberty and increases safety risk. Drivers must retain the right to take action against NHVR or police where this occurs.

Primary Duty – Chain of Responsibility

12. Amend the primary duty under CoR to allow independent contractors to bring their own civil action, in any jurisdiction, against any person or entity that offers, compels or induces a freight rate that creates inherent or foreseeable risk to drivers or the public.

13. Any person or entity that offers or accepts a freight rate that places a contractor or driver at inherent or foreseeable risk must be charged by the NHVR under the primary duty of CoR.

Accreditation amendments

14. The HVNL Amendment Bill 2025 accreditation requirements must not apply to any operator required to maintain accreditation due to the prohibitive cost of implementation and ongoing compliance.

Load restraint

15. Re-adopt the original Load Restraint Guide provisions that allowed experienced drivers discretion in load restraint based on skill and knowledge, without diminishing safety requirements.

Driver licensing

16. Immediately end automatic-only heavy vehicle licences. All licences above HR must be obtained using a manual gearbox, noting that a manual licence permits operation of automatic vehicles.

17. Every heavy vehicle driving school must prove it can train drivers to statutory and practical competency standards for each licence class, including manual operation. If a driver is proven incompetent within 18 months, the relevant assessor must lose accreditation.

18. Establish a national industry panel of professional drivers with 30–40 years’ experience to determine competency standards for each licence class. Adopt nationally the South Australian system for overseas licences, including mandatory English literacy.

19. Reintroduce minimum time requirements between licence upgrades, particularly for overseas drivers, consistent with South Australia’s ‘Slim’s Law’.

20. Immediately create a new licence class for multi-trailer combinations. Allowing road trains under the MC B-double class is unsafe and has contributed to serious injury and death.

Wages and wage theft

21. Long-distance wages must be set by long-distance drivers themselves, not through the current Fair Work system, which creates conflicts of interest.

22. Remove all non-transport entities and employer-representative bodies from Fair Work wage negotiations for long-distance drivers.

23. Immediately adopt a transparent, enforceable wage methodology that compensates drivers for knowledge and responsibility per tonne and per trailer. Using Grade 6 LD wages ($54.70 at 42.5 tonnes) as a base equates to 12.8 cents per tonne per kilometre. Current systems deny drivers up to 50–80 per cent of lawful entitlements.

24. Convert kilometre-based rates to hourly rates where required, using average speed conversion.

25. Immediately enforce ATO action against companies knowingly using ABNs to disguise employment, avoid wages, or impose unlawful deductions. Such practices constitute wage theft and render contracts void.

26. Mandate immediate payment for all waiting time, loading and unloading.

27. RDOs and annual leave must be paid at the driver’s normal aggregated wage over the preceding month.

28. Drivers must have the final say on work–life balance and the hours-counting system under which they operate, overriding employer demands.

• Veteran truckie Jerry Brown-Sarre was inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2005 and has more than 60 years’ experience in the road freight transport industry.