Page 3275 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 18 August 2009
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reply: This bill, the Road Transport (Mass, Dimensions and Loading) Bill, seeks to implement the national model heavy vehicle road transport compliance and enforcement scheme in the ACT. The ACT will follow New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland in implementing the national scheme. Before I get into the detail of the bill, I wish to provide members with a little background to provide the context of why all jurisdictions have endorsed this scheme.
Prior to the development of the legislation, jurisdictions relied on their existing compliance and enforcement processes to enforce the national standards in relation to heavy vehicle loading practices. There was a lack of consistency between states when it came to compliance management and enforcement, leading to significant variations between the jurisdictions on such basic matters as who is held liable for a breach of the standard and the penalty to be imposed for the breach.
In 2000, transport ministers got together and tasked the then National Road Transport Commission with the development of a national approach to address this inconsistency between jurisdictions and also other areas of concern which were evident at the time. These other concerns included public acceptance of heavy vehicle traffic levels. At that time there was evidence to suggest that the freight task would double by 2020. It was considered important that heavy vehicles and other road users interacted positively, especially given that congestion was likely to worsen as the number of heavy freight vehicles on the roads grew to meet the increasing freight demand.
Pressure from the public to restrict heavy vehicle access to parts of the road network due to road safety and congestion concerns would be detrimental to efforts to increase the productivity of the road transport industry and broader economy. It was considered that the way to avoid that scenario was to have a nationally consistent and effective regulation of the heavy vehicle transport industry. Having sound enforcement deterrent measures will ensure high levels of compliance and enhance road safety and general good industry practice, which are essential if the public is to recognise and accept the need to share the road with heavy vehicle transport.
The road transport industry, of course, is highly competitive and is characterised by minimum entry requirements. There are many small operators and low profit margins are common. A significant feature in the supply and demand side of the industry is the power imbalance that exists, with large numbers of small operators dealing with large corporations with substantial market power. An effective enforcement regime with appropriate sanctions for any party that encourages or induces non-compliant behaviour is seen as essential to ensure that a high level of compliance is achieved and maintained.
Given the substantial competitive pressures at play in the industry, maintaining equity between industry players is an important consideration. Inadequate or uneven enforcement of regulatory requirements can create a situation where compliant companies and individuals suffer competitively in comparison with those who habitually contravene the regulations. The compliant operators recognise that if future government concessions to improve productivity are to be gained the sector needs to be seen as law-abiding. To this end the compliant transport operators support a greater level of enforcement and harsher sanctions to deter the cowboy element that gains an unfair commercial advantage by overloading vehicles.
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