Personality

ACCESS ALL AREAS

Bec Coleman is from an agricultural family and grew up on a sheep property near Grenfell in NSW. For the past four years she has been the Chief Operating Officer of the Livestock, Bulk and Rural Carriers Association (LBRCA).

PM: You’ve had an interesting career path including seven years at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). Are there any parallels between rural trucking and the air industry?

BC: At CASA I worked in many facets of the business including regulatory reform projects and leading a team of business analysts. I also had a seven-year stint in the vocational education sector running a Registered Training Organisation across indigenous communities and work places based in Cairns. I expect that’s where my passion for education and learning in our industry comes from. Working in both the aviation regulation industry and the vocational education sector let me see the positive results that can come

from platforms that have learning and education as their foundations. I’d like to see these foundations firmly set in place for the road transport industry.

PM: How did you become involved in association management?

BC: I returned to Canberra from Cairns and accepted the role of office manager at ALRTA (Australian Livestock and Rural Transport Association – the industry’s national peak body) which is how I became involved in the heavy vehicle industry and its wonderful people. There are so many doors that are still shut in our industry that I can see need to be opened. As someone, who is not adverse to invoking change when warranted and fighting for what’s right, the LBRCA is a good fit for me. Associations are important to the growth of our industry.

PM: Aside from drought, flood and pandemics, what other big challenges are currently facing the livestock and bulk transport industry?

BC: There are many and our industry continues to fall behind in the areas of infrastructure, driver facilities and road access. With road access, there has been a lot of concentration on the main highways, but there has been limited focus on those local routes where many of our members operate. We’ve been talking about access to the farmgate for decades, and despite starting to talk less and walk more, we’re not walking fast enough. Efficient farmgate property access has a direct positive effect on safety productivity improvements.

PM: So you’re seeing an imbalance?

BC: Our industry has kept up with regulation changes by improving our vehicles, our technologies, and our operations. We’ve adapted to new laws such as Chain of Responsibility. All the while, operators are trying to get productivity and business savings, employ more people and pick up the industry’s image. But, unfortunately, the infrastructure, including roads and bridges, is still years behind where we should be. In the next couple of years there needs to be renewed focus on balancing the conditions for using roads and enforcing regulations to better support rural-related transport.

PM: Do you see any progress in gaining improved access?

BC: Local access or farmgate access is an issue across the nation and NSW is one of several states which has come up with a solution to try to address it. The NSW Farmgate Access Project is a collaboration project between Roads and Maritime Service and LBRCA that aims to initiate access to the farmgate for B-double vehicles in NSW. Despite having a national regulator, until we have a truly national system, we’ll still have states making their own decisions on how they manage road access, just as we see with various access models across states and territories now. Maybe a couple of years down the track we might have that universal national framework, but until that happens we can only do things piece-meal to make sure that our industry can get from point A to point B safely, with limited red tape.

PM: Will the review of the HVNL (Heavy Vehicle National Law) provide some benefits?

BC: The review should open doors to the right regulation for our industry and should result in refining regulation so it is fit-for-purpose. We need national regulation that is less prescriptive and not set to locations. For an operator it should be about the task they are doing and the environment they are in.

PM: Two highlights of the LBRCA annual conferences are the dinners at which attendees, led by yourself, enthusiastically embrace the annual dress-up themes as well as the announcement of the LBRCA Young Truck Driver of the Year. What is the significance of the award?

BC: What I like about the award is it recognises young individuals from a workplace perspective and it’s also encouraging younger people to consider a role in the transport industry. Reggie

Coleman at an industry event in 2016.

Sutton was the inaugural winner in 2015 and now has his own transport business and is the current LBRCA Vice President (Livestock). An important factor in the award process is improving the image of our industry to young people and encouraging them to seek a successful and rewarding career in our versatile industry. It’s quite aspirational when other people see them buying $500,000 rigs, running their own transport companies successfully and gaining a lot of respect. Often, we don’t seem to promote a succession plan for our industry and the LBRCA is very passionate about having more young drivers becoming involved. By winning the 2020 award Sophie Reid, a truck driver at Divall’s Bulk Haulage in Goulburn, has shown the industry has opened its doors to diversity. It’s no longer just seen as a job for men, it’s for everybody and Sophie represents this perfectly. She’s spruiking her award and she’s proud of what she has done. Her win has generated significant interest in the award for next year.

HONOUR SCOTT’S

One of a number of standout presenters at the 2020 Livestock, Bulk and Rural Carriers Association conference in Tamworth, Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport, the Honourable Scott Buchholz MP has 25 years of experience in the transport industry.

Possibly the only Federal parliamentarian to hold a current MC licence, Scott Buchholz should be wellqualified for his Ministerial roles following a transport industry career in Queensland where until recently, he was a director of transport companies CQX and Toowoomba Express Couriers which operated from 14 depots across the state. With his business background, Buchholz naturally, is a staunch advocate for small business in general, and transport in particular. He founded the Parliamentary Friends of Small Business to give issues that impact family and small businesses a higher priority and a strong voice in Federal Parliament. During his maiden speech to Parliament in 2010 following his election as Member for the seat of Wright in southeast Queensland, Mr Buchholz mentioned the challenges facing some of the people he represented. “My farmers are struggling to get a better price for the product at the farm gate. My businesses, small and large, are struggling with an increasing level of compliance and red tape,” he said. In Tamworth, a decade later, he acknowledges some of that red tape was still binding up road transport reform, and expects the NHVR to play a bigger role. “With the NHVR I totally agree there is more to do. When we set them up unfortunately the terms of reference were written by bureaucrats. Effectively, what we did was tie one arm behind his (CEO Sal Petroccitto’s) back and one leg up behind his shoulders and said ‘go and create efficiencies’. The recent reviews we’ve had will hopefully unshackle that. Sal does an amazing job managing not

Scott Buchholz.

only the relationship at a Federal level but the many different dichotomies that exist in dealing with the different personalities across the states.” Buchholz is enthusiastic about the integration of technology in modern trucks. He believes the local manufacturing sector is undersold. “Some of the safety stuff coming out on new transport equipment is saving lives on the road. Our Australian truck manufacturers continue to drive innovation, to achieve efficiency and productivity gains which helps all

operators in the transport sector to move freight safely and efficiently,” he says. “I’ve been visiting manufacturers of trucks and trailers around Australia and I am thoroughly impressed with their commitment to improving road safety with modern technology.” A combination of targeted infrastructure investment and road freight policy work will benefit the industry according to Buchholz. “Transporting products through regional and rural areas is critical to the Australian economy, to grow small business and get product to families and individuals,” he says. “Opportunities are going to present to the industry in the next two decades as the freight task is set to double. As we roll out our capital investments in the inland rail infrastructure from Melbourne to Brisbane it’s expected that by the time we get to ‘full noise’ and construction is completed, the freight task will have increased to the point whereby we won’t have taken a single truck off the road.” In the climate of accelerated government spending Mr Buchholz foresees opportunities to utilise local government to address first and last mile road upgrades. “I think this industry as a whole will be a beneficiary because if we’re looking for ‘shovel-ready’ projects from the federal government perspective, it’s always our intention to give the money to local government for road infrastructure. The reason we like local government is because they already have a readily available workforce. The further west you go often they are the largest employer in town. Our enthusiasm with local government in that space is around their dexterity and their nimbleness.” Australian capital cities, according to Buchholz, are among the safest in the world. On a scale of road deaths per 100,000 of population, Australia is showing improvement in road safety but there is more to be done. “Our capital cities Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide are safer than

“Some of the safety stuff coming out on new transport equipment is saving lives on the road. Our Australian truck manufacturers continue to drive innovation, to achieve efficiency and productivity gains which helps all operators in the transport sector to move freight safely and efficiently.” Scott Buchholz Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport

most countries in the world. Countries doing better than us are mostly small geographical landmasses. Where we blow it is in the regional and remote areas. As government we’re committed to working together, with industry and community to not only improve efficiency and productivity, but also reduce fatalities and serious injuries on our roads.” Acknowledging that more than 80 per cent of car-truck collisions are the fault of the car, Buchholz says the recording of such accidents as ‘truck crashes’ could have a flow-on effect on truck insurance costs and the Office of Road Safety will be looking to separate out that data and how it is reported. “That’s the jurisdiction of the states. The problem for us when we are trying to correlate and collect data through the Office of Road Safety is that not every state enforcement body collects the data in the same way.” From his own industry experience, Buchholz sympathises with the shortage of skilled drivers and suggests low unemployment is a factor. “It’s not just here in Australia that unemployment is low, it’s right across the global economy which has got some headwinds with the coronavirus at the moment. Once we get through this I see very bullish IMF figures with reference to growth and I think we are going to have even greater problems trying to attract youth,” he says. “The other issue I have is it can’t be a race to the bottom in our industry in what we pay our drivers. It is the technology that is going to drive what our labour market looks like because trucks are more user-friendly – for women in particular.”