Question Time

Road Safety Remuneration Order

The SPEAKER: The Treasurer, I trust, was making a point of order.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: No, sir. I have withdrawn it.

The SPEAKER: The point of order stands withdrawn. The member for Reynell.

Ms HILDYARD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Education—

The SPEAKER: Point of order.

Mr PISONI: I don't believe the Minister for Transport had finished his answer. It's an important issue, sir, and—

The SPEAKER: Yes, I get that. Has the minister finished his answer?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No, I will keep going.

The SPEAKER: You will keep going, splendid.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thanks very much, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: I thank the member for Unley for his assistance.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (14:37): As I was saying, in recent times, particularly in the middle of 2014, we saw some horrendous accidents involving heavy vehicles on the South Eastern Freeway. There has been an enormous amount of effort locally to address heavy vehicle safety not just on that route but more generally in South Australia. There have also been similar efforts at a national level to try to enshrine greater levels of safety throughout the industry, and that was the key reason, I am advised, for the establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

The purpose of the tribunal is to, amongst other things, make determinations about minimum rates which drivers need to be paid when they are operating within the industry, and that's important for a few reasons. One is because, in some areas of the industry around the country, there has been a practice where very large companies with very large economies of scale can afford to win contracts based on very sharp pricing because they have inherent efficiencies within their business.

At the other end, there are enormous numbers of owner-operators within the heavy vehicle industry who find it incredibly difficult to compete with those larger operators and who find that they need to cut their cloth accordingly so that, when they tender for work on behalf of people who are looking to move goods from one place to another, they can compete with these larger companies. In cutting their cloth, quite often, there have been practices, particularly amongst some of these smaller operators or owner-operators—not all of them, but just some of them—where they have been cutting back on the maintenance of their vehicles. An unroadworthy vehicle on the road poses a danger not just to that operator or their operation but to all of the other road users around them.

The purpose of issuing a determination by the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is to provide a floor at or above which people must be remunerated when they are carrying goods around the country. I can understand that there are large business interests and employer groups—perhaps like the AIG, and, as I said, I haven't seen their particular comments, but I suspect they are similar to some other comments that have been made by those sorts of people around the country—that don't support this lifting of minimum remuneration levels for operators within the heavy vehicle industry.

On this side of politics, it wouldn't be the first time that we have had employers complaining about having to pay people a reasonable and fair rate of pay to make sure that they can achieve a standard of living or to make sure that, when they're operating within the industry, they are doing so safely. Do I support the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal? In principle, absolutely, yes, I do and if their determination is going to lead to safer outcomes out on the roads, then I think that is something the whole community can support as well.

Mr PISONI: Supplementary, sir.