Page 3271 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
who do take reasonable steps make an effort in good faith and strive toward industry best practice.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (5.26): This bill is the ACT government’s implementation of a national project, conducted by the National Road Transport Commission, to regulate the management of loads for heavy vehicles on Australian roads. In essence, this bill needs to put in place regulations and enforcement provisions consistent with the regime now in place across Australia. There are some differences in the ACT regime, particularly in the definition of a number of offences, some limitation on powers of inspection and some increase in the range of defences available to people subject to prosecution.
We are the last jurisdiction to come into place with this regime. When it comes to managing business and trade across jurisdictions, Australia has a history of inconsistency. At least we all drive on the left-hand side of the road, and most road rules are more or less consistent these days. Railway gauges, famously, are not consistent across Australia but, in this case, consistency is not an issue.
Transport is more and more a national endeavour; so it is important that we take a national approach to its regulation. It is both impractical and unsafe to allow different regulatory regimes and different practices to be followed by businesses based in different states. Most importantly, we need a national regime which can hold all industry participants to account for matters of safety and good practice over which they have control and responsibility.
There is a chain of responsibility in the road transport industry, and the different players all make a contribution to that. This bill is the ACT component in a national system which seeks to ensure that all the parts work seamlessly together. The recent decision by the Shell petrol company to abandon storage in the ACT and to shift its fuel transport from rail to road, making us dependent on a just-in-time fuel delivery system, which is more perilous, more uncertain and more climate-change damaging, emphasises the importance of this regime.
The road transport reform project is consistent with the approach that has been put in place over the past few years in other safety-related areas, including work safety and the control of dangerous substances. Employers, managers, contractors and professionals increasingly have a legal responsibility to follow safe procedures, to meet statutory requirements of responsible action and behaviour and may need to demonstrate to authorities or the courts that they have done so. This is an approach that the Greens have broadly supported.
Speaking generally, it is about extending our duty to accept legal responsibility for the wellbeing of others where our work, or decisions we take in our work, can impact on them. But to give some legal weight to these everyday responsibilities, it has been necessary to give a range of people some authority in scrutinising, testing and assessing whether we are fulfilling that responsibility.
The way in which those authorities are exercised need to be carefully established, which is why, in legislation such as this, issues of the nature of offences, how they are established, what people are obliged to do, are important. Some of the debate on what
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .