Page 4479 - Week 14 - Thursday, 28 November 2013
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In a similar vein I note that any proposed future changes to the model laws will still come through the ACT Assembly via disallowable instruments. We will not be subject to the decisions and changes of a distant regulator. The model law contains several absolute liability offences. These, of course, enliven the issue of the right to a fair trial under section 21 and the right to presumed innocence under section 22 of the territory’s Human Rights Act. It is an issue the scrutiny of bills committee has drawn attention to. Absolute liability offences should only be approved in the most exceptional cases. There needs to be a very clear and legitimate reason for penalising someone in the absence of fault.
In this case I am satisfied with their use. They are in a highly regulated environment and concern issues such as vehicle safety. The highest maximum from most of the absolute liability offences in this legislation is $10,000. Penalties relating to overloaded vehicles can go higher than this depending on just how overloaded the vehicle is. It could go up to a possible $30,000. There are no imprisonment sentences available for these absolute liability offences and, in these circumstances, I think they are justified.
One of the main impacts of the new national heavy vehicle laws will, of course, be the reduction in red tape and other burdens for the heavy vehicle transport industry. I agree this is a good achievement. As I have said, no-one wants duplication, inefficiencies or unnecessary burdens on any industry. However, it raises an interesting question about the direction in which Australia’s transport industry is headed. One of the most obvious effects of the laws is that they will help large road vehicles move around Australia between states and it will have significant advantages for the use of road freight. The downside, as anyone interested in environmental sustainability will recognise, is that heavy vehicle road freight is not really a sustainable transport solution. We need to be putting efforts into alternative transport. That does not mean the changes in this harmonised law are bad; they are good and they improve efficiency. It is more a question of where our national transport priorities lie.
Unfortunately, the proportion of rail freight in both the ACT and Australia has been declining and road freight has been taking over. Rail is much more sustainable as a freight option. A report by ARRB consultants found that rail freight produces up to 90 per cent fewer emissions per tonne of freight carried than road freight. Any government committed to emission reduction should be looking at how to facilitate a switch to rail freight. Road freight, is of course, more vulnerable to peak oil, an issue discussed in this place before, as well as being more dangerous. Is long-term reliance on road freight really sustainable in a low carbon, post-peak oil world? We are not really addressing that question at that moment.
Creating the national heavy vehicle scheme has been a very large exercise. I would love to see the same kind of national effort that has gone into improving road freight go into enabling and supporting more sustainable transport like rail freight. On that note, I also point out that this national heavy vehicle scheme does not contain anything to manage or improve vehicle technology or fuel economy. An outright modal shift away from road transport is a complicated affair, so fuel efficiency
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