IS THIS THE NEW NORMAL?

As life begins to return to normal, the Livestock and Rural Transporter Association of Queensland held its annual conference on the Sunshine Coast recently.

The issues which have bothered the rural trucking industry in the past have not gone away, and as pandemic concerns become less front of mind, the LRTAQ conference, in Marcoola, Queensland, was an opportunity to start readdressing those perennial problems.

“We’ve had a difficult time from 2019 through until now, with the fires and everything else you and your industry have had to deal with,” said Sal Petroccitto, National Heavy Vehicle Regulator CEO, speaking to the conference. “I continue to be amazed at the level of resilience that you continue to display and I think, without that level of resilience, this country would have been in a much worse state. What has also eventuated in our mind is the importance that your sector broadly plays.

“We are unique, as a regulator, because we don’t only regulate, we also facilitate a productivity agenda, and that’s probably the hardest thing to achieve in a country that’s federated and everyone has different interests. I do believe we have achieved some wins, but I also believe there’s a lot more to do.

“We do listen, you might not see the results straight away, but we do take your feedback on board. In September 2020, we did remove the requirement in the livestock permits to include registration numbers. It was an extra administrative burden placed on transport and farmers. To date I don’t think the world has stopped, as a result of us making the change.

“We also kicked off the national road train prime mover notice, giving operators a lot more flexibility in the way you use your equipment and the way those vehicles move across the country. We will try and continue to push envelopes like that. Sometimes we do butt heads with road agencies and with others, but what I can assure you is that we will continue to listen.”

At the end of his speech Sal re-emphasised the need for the trucking industry, as a whole, to participate in the discussion around the review of the Heavy Vehicle National Law process. He implored the industry very strongly to ensure that the policymakers really do understand what needs to change in the law.

The Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association Executive Director, Mathew Munro also stressed the importance of feedback to the HVNL review.

“We came up with a submission which had 108 recommendations for changes in the law,” said Mat. “This law is broken, there’s a lot that needs fixing. Here we are in 2022, the law is still unbalanced, the proposals are unbalanced and not even costed. We are nowhere near the end of this.

“They released one set of recommendations, on the Fatigue General Schedule and it was terrible, it was just horrendous. Chief problem was recommendations which represent somewhere between a 17 and 21 per cent productivity reduction and it doesn’t deliver increased flexibility. It was rubbish.

“That proposal should never have seen the light of day. We need to engage in this process. It would be nice to throw it in the bin and start again, but the fact is, it is continuing. We are working with this process, but I think this does illustrate a more fundamental problem with the structure of the National Transport Commission. They should be independent and speak without fear or favour, yet five of the six commissioners are long time public servants and just one is an industry representative.”

Mathew Munro , Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association Executive Director. Scott Bucholz, Federal Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight.Transport.

SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY “We’ve seen a disastrous start to 2022, with the road toll in Queensland, on the Warrego Highway, and everywhere

we have travelled this years,” said Athol Carter, Central Queensland Manager and Compliance Manager Fleet Operations, Frasers Livestock Transport, speaking from the floor. “As operators, all of us in this room, we invest a lot of money and we have the latest and greatest technology, and we have all of the telematics, Seeing Machines and cameras.

“We are preaching all of the time about road safety in the transport industry. How are we going get that out to the general public for the disgraceful behaviour that they display and jeopardise all of our drivers and our trucks? I can pull out some footage from the last ten days of tragedies, which have only just been missed. All captured on in-cab cameras, what do we do with it?”

On the same topic Sal Petroccitto, National Heavy Vehicle CEO expressed his frustration and the difficulty of getting the message out to the broader public.

“We have invested over $800,000 over the next 12 months on a young driver campaign,” said Sal. “The slogan is , ‘Don’t Muck with a Truck’ and you can work out what the muck stands for. There is no driver eduction happening in any curriculum in school. In any driving test, there is only one question, which educates young drivers how to drive around trucks. The education system has failed, the training system has failed. The trucking industry bears the brunt of it.”

Sal Petroccitto, National Heavy Vehicle Regulator CEO.

One of the other topics which was raised was the Inland Freight Route, which should see major infrastructure work to improve a designated route from Northern NSW up through inland Queensland from Mungindi in NSW, to St George, Roma, Emerald and on up to Charters Towers.

The plan is for this to be a safe and efficient highway for large combinations to haul all freight up through the spine of Queensland in a safe and productive manner. This will take the strain off of the dangerous Bruce Highway and enable transporters throughout rural and north Queensland to benefit from a fast high productivity route for trucks.

THE BULL CARTERS BALL At the traditional final act of the LRTAQ Conference, the Bull Carters Ball, the latest Young Person in Transport Award was presented to Luke Cannon.

Luke is now a Fleet Operations Saleyards Logistics officer at Frasers Livestock Transport, after starting with Frasers in 2014 in the welding/ maintenance section of the Warwick workshop. His personal character and integrity were immediately evident from the way in which he conducted himself, carrying out duties to direction as well as displaying early an ability to self-start.

Luke is a second-generation employee of Frasers (Luke’s Father Kevin also currently works at Frasers and has done so for the past 22 years) and displays immense pride and professionalism

The latest Young Person in Transport Award was presented to Luke Cannon.

in every task that he tackles and is committed to following the career highway of his profession.

Young people in the industry was one of the topics highlighted by Scott Bucholz, Federal Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport, in his speech to the conference he talked about the issue of proper apprenticeships for drivers entering the industry.

“What we have done is taken a traineeship, Logistics Certificate 3, from one place on the spreadsheet to a fully fledged apprenticeship position on that sheet,” said Scott. “We give that spreadsheet back to the states and it goes to the Skills Ministers, in each state who will put a framework around what the apprenticeship looks like.

“To use an example like an electrician, they will be trained slightly differently in New South Wales, than an electrician in Victoria, and those standards are set by the Skills Minister. We are using industry peak bodies, like the Queensland Trucking Association (QTA) to get some kind of continuity across the states.

“We should get those up and running by the end of the year. We hope that the states are like Queensland, who are more than ready to adopt the transport apprenticeship for drivers in the logistics sector.”