[Peetwo]

RSRT repeal Bill - Lesson's to be learnt

Last night in the Senate at 21:41 the RSRT repeal bill was voted in the affirmative (see HERE ), could this be the defining moment for Barnaby Joyce & Malcolm Turnbull to re-discover their mojo, just in time for the now inevitable July 02 DD election?

Senator Williams contribution to the debate last night, just prior to the vote, shows how divisive this repeal legislation was:

&..

Also read the passionate adjournment speech from Senator Back: Transport Industry

..We have a circumstance with log books: this morning when I jumped in the truck at half past five, quarter to six, the fellow spent the first five minutes filling in bits of paper on a spreadsheet. I said, 'What are you doing'? He said, 'That is my log book.' He tried to tell me what he was doing; he was trying to explain. I said, 'And why isn't all this being done electronically?' We know when we go to a restaurant now the attendant takes our order on a small laptop or an iPad. Why in heaven's name are we using something as antiquated as an old pen and paper system with logbooks?

We do not want drivers driving when they are too tired. I speak as a fleet owner when I had a fuel industry business in Tasmania. I brought the first fuel industry B-double—a 60,000 litre B-double, rigid and quad dog combination—into that state. How interested do you think I was in safety? How interested do you think I was to make sure that my trucks, my drivers, my maintenance, my tyres were at the absolute highest level? That is what the industry wants and that is the direction in which we need to be going...

And Robert Gottliebsen in the Oz today provides a media timeline of the RSRT abolishment & highlights how this could (& should) be a turning point in the election: Truckies saved after Turnbull remembers how business works  

Such is the power of digital journalism that sometimes a headline can change a nation. And so it was that on Monday, April 11 Paul Pennay attached the heading Malcolm Turnbull has forgotten how business works on to my Business Spectator commentary about the government’s (then) disastrous approach to the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and now it appears that it has helped save the livelihood of some 35,000 owner truck drivers.

I would not have known of the impact on the government of that headline, and the commentary that supported it, had not a senior member of the cabinet come up to me at a large corporate function. He told me that the commentary had alerted the cabinet, which then changed its stance on abolishing the tribunal.

In less than two short months the Owner/Driver Truckies have been able to breakdown the transport safety mystique and subsequently save their industry sector from oblivion. Yet after many years of struggling against the bureaucratic impost of ridiculous, unworkable, overregulation, the GA industry is still unable to get the message across how dire their situation is.

Moral of the story: Industry needs to be unified; industry needs to keep the message simple; and industry needs to have a solution that is easily legislated; i.e. amend the Civil Aviation Act to have CASA 'foster & promote' industry and for God's sake get rid of the "S" -  


MTF...P2