Page 3273 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 18 August 2009

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investigative powers, the right for someone to be protected against self-incrimination is compromised by the provisions in this bill where they can be directed to provide information, records and comments that can be used in evidence against them. This is a question of proportionality.

Most of the bill deals with a regulated industry that involves voluntary participants who, presumably, know what they are committing to. Secondly, the directions to industry participants in the bill must be related to the compliance purposes set out in clause 307 and cannot be used to get at other actions of the participants. And finally, the directions are restricted to documents pre-produced by the industry participant. In other words, they already exist and are a record of business operations.

In the end, it is reasonable to give such powers to investigate and force to authorities so as to ensure that the responsibilities of industry participants are clear. The notions of rights and freedoms are inevitably compromised in ensuring industry participants accept the responsibilities this legislation gives them.

There are numerous other instances in this legislation, which is of course by necessity a lengthy bill, where requirements and responsibilities of people working in the industry are specified in great detail. It ensures that everyone in the chain of responsibility of mass road transport can be held accountable, should that be necessary, for what they are responsible for.

I will address the amendments proposed by Mr Coe in the detail stage.

MS BURCH (Brindabella) (5.35): Over the years a lot of effort has been expended by key stakeholders with an interest in heavy vehicle transport in developing the National Road Transport (Compliance and Enforcement) Bill, which has provided the model for the bill before the Assembly. The National Transport Commission, the road transport agencies of all jurisdictions, transport industry peak bodies, the police, the TWU and off-road parties with an involvement in the transport of goods and individual heavy vehicle transport operators all deserve congratulations for the time and effort they have put in to develop a legislative model which all states have endorsed in the strong expectation that road safety and the broader economy will benefit from its introduction nationally.

Just to give you an idea of the effort that went into crafting this legislation, I would like to set out a chronology of the development of the model legislation. It begins in 1995 when the then National Road Transport Commission, now known as the National Transport Commission, released a discussion paper entitled Principles, objectives and strategies, which set out a detailed legislative framework and approach to enforcing the national road transport laws. A series of workshops across Australia followed to promote an understanding and discussion.

In 1997 the NRTC released two further documents for comment and discussion. The first document was the Road Transport (Compliance and Enforcement) (General) Bill, which was in draft form. The second document was entitled Increased mass limits: compliance and enforcement issues, which set out various approaches to combating the overloading of vehicles operating at higher mass limits.


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