[Peetwo]

Sterlo & Bazza: The new RRAT paradigm -

...I am going to read some excerpts from correspondence I had on behalf of the Queensland government Department of Transport and Main Roads. They were fantastic. They had taken information from us. We said that we had a real problem. We found out there is an RTO in Tweed Heads—and I will give you the name of the RTO. I am not going to rush, because I am going to come back into this chamber every week and do a speech on this and keep everyone updated with what is going on. There is a twisted, bent, corrupt RTO in Tweed Heads who was bringing the Indian students from Queensland into New South Wales. They were doing their training there. He was assessing them, then he was ticking off and saying that they were fit to drive, and then they were going back to Queensland. The Queensland government—thank goodness for the Queensland government—issued 113 'show causes' to these 113 people who came through this corrupt provider of heavy vehicle transport licensing: 'Why should you have a licence?...

Two days ago, as Chair of the RRAT Reference committee, Sterlo (with the support of Deputy Chair Bazza) finally got to examine in Senate Inquiry the State & Federal bureaucrats that allowed this 'disgusting behaviour' to occur.

References: 1) Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee
(Senate-Thursday, 10 November 2016); or for viewing
2) Rural & Regional Affairs & Transport - Thursday, November 10 2016, 16:20  

Chair: ...I want to touch very quickly on what started this. This may sound like it is a joke, but it started off as a tweet. I saw a tweet on a Sunday in, I think, February this year while I was at the airport waiting to get to Canberra. It was a story by Chris Reason from Channel 7 in Sydney of a B-double configuration—and I did not know it was a B-double at the time; I thought it was just a semi—hauling for Scott's Transport in Mt Gambier that was stuck on the M5 in Sydney.


The two drivers happened to be foreign drivers who were here on a visa, and not only did they take the wrong road but they could not get under the bridge. Then, when the traffic started piling up—I do not know what day of the week the incident occurred—they could not reverse the B-double, and we all know that part of your licensing accreditation is that you have to be able to reverse the B-double for about 70 metres or something equivalent. Even worse, they could not break the configuration up to get it off the highway; an RMS inspector had to come out and do it for them.

So, just so there is a bit of background, what we did find out: the committee wrote to the minister at the time—I do not want to go on a foreign-driver hunt and kick the living daylights out of foreign drivers; I just want to get the bottom of it, and the rest of my committee members feel exactly the same way, I believe. There was an accusation that the drivers could have been on 457 visas. The police, for whatever reason, let them go, and they went. But they were not here on 457 visas; after questioning of this committee, in a public inquiry of the Ministry for Immigration and Border Protection, they were found to be here on student visas.

That is it for background...

And so started the S&B inquisition...

Now my reason and interest for reviewing this Sterle initiated inquiry is to observe whether the obvious passion & commitment Senator Sterle has for transport safety issues, translates across the other committee members and in particular Deputy Chair Senator O'Sullivan.

Fortunately, from what I observed, there is no chance of the new RRAT committee lowering its previous high standards of non-partisan inquisition. I would even suggest the Sterlo v Bazza tag team (good cop v bad cop) routine is even more effective than the Sterle, Heff alliance...

Examples: 

Senator BACK:  But what you were talking about did not result in a crash.

Mr Stapleton : No.

CHAIR: This was on the M5.

Senator BACK:  But it must have resulted in massive—

CHAIR: No, I will just help you out, Senator. In the TV interview that I watched, the drivers were both interviewed. One got out of the bunk; he said, 'It had nothing to do with me.' Once it was all uncoupled, moved and reallocated, they jumped in the truck and drove off, and everyone wished them goodbye and farewell.

Senator BACK:  Yes, I share your same concerns.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Would you agree that all of these circumstances do not reflect, for example, what might happen in the health field with medical professionals, or with engineers or any range of other professionals, and that—as to the pathway from where they are until they become licenced to, in this case, go out onto the road or to, in other cases, go up in aeroplanes—it seems that a lot of this is left to chance or to the integrity or skill of someone else who is making a decision on behalf of all of us in Australia to put a person on the road?

Mr Stapleton : I see the question you are asking, but we do have organisations that oversight engineering qualifications and medical qualifications and, at times, they do get it wrong, as you are aware.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Sure.

Mr Stapleton : The issue that is in front of us at the moment is how you manage foreign licence holders entering the system. There are processes in place. It is difficult for us to know if a person is a permanent or temporary visa holder. That information is not available to state authorities, so we can often not tell you the status of people when they come to Australia. There is no ability for us to follow up. We really require the person to surrender that information to us.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I was recently briefed by the department on a matter of immigration where they told me that, no matter how strong the processes were in immigration applications, from one point of departure for one nationality they had had over 2,000 occasions where the transcripts provided by students from universities, in this case, to underpin their application—you are loosely aware of the immigration point system—were all completely fraudulent. So can I put a ridiculous proposition to you—and I will leave it at that, because it is something we can examine with other witnesses.

Mr Stapleton : Yes.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I could be a type 1 diabetic who suffers from intermittent epilepsy with an atrocious driving history from somewhere in the world—I do not want to start picking on places, but let us say from a developed nation—where the attention to standards might not reflect the ambition that we have here. I can effectively come to this country and, through a series of events, without any serious due diligence, find myself driving a truck down the highway. Is that an unfair characterisation of what is possible within the current constraints of the system?

Mr Stapleton : The example you just gave me is not limited to foreign drivers. There is always an issue of declaring medical conditions here in Australia as well.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I appreciate you for assisting me with making my point.

Senator GALLACHER:  Your medical practitioner does it for you in Australia, though.

Mr Stapleton : Yes, they do. Depending on which jurisdiction you are in, they have the option of declaring that they have a patient who has a medical condition.

Senator GALLACHER:  Plenty of times this happens.

Mr Mahon : In Queensland, it is a legal requirement to declare your medical condition if it has an impact on driving.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  There is one thing about a declaration—that is, if you do not declare. Do we have any measures at all, any due diligence that goes to determine—I mean, if I fill the form in and I say I do not suffer from epilepsy, I do not suffer from diabetes type 1, I do not suffer from some other condition that may materially impact on my ability at some stage to perform the function of driving this heavy vehicle, once I make that declaration, that is it? I am not trying to seek something out; I am just trying to come to understand it—is that it? It is a self-declaration, and that is that?

Mr Mahon : It is, but there are legal ramifications if something occurred.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  There certainly is if they live through the accident, but what about the family of six in the vehicle on the other end? I am somewhat—

Mr Stapleton : I am aware of a case in Queensland, last week, where someone failed to declare a medical condition and they are going to jail as a result of that because of the accident that occurred.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  That is good news and that should happen, but I am trying to talk about the bit in the middle. This isn't as if they can only affect themselves. If they wanted to, they could fill the form out however they liked, I could not give a continental, right? But if they have epilepsy and they are going to swim the English Channel and they tell you they have not, go hard. But this has the potential to catastrophically affect other road users because of this. I am perplexed. I know the reasons why, Mr Stapleton; all this stuff has resource questions, and the ability to do it and the massive additional job. But it could not happen in aviation. Why doesn't it happen in aviation? Simply, because the 200 passengers in a big jumbo do not want someone up the front that has just ticked and flicked their way through to the job, but this here has the same potential. We have people with dangerous goods and all sorts of things, and it seems to me that they are—I am getting cyclical here and I do not want to keep repeating it—but this seems to me to be not a perfect world in terms of licensing these people. It is bad enough in a sedan, but in something that can have a catastrophic impact, it is of concern to me. Are there any moves afoot—are we developing standards? Are we looking at this? Will we soon get some good news that we will be able to be a bit more probative with these applications on these people in these massive vehicles?

Mr Stapleton : The Austroads guidelines for medical condition reporting are reviewed periodically, and I believe it has only just been completed recently. On the issue that you are talking about, mandatory reporting, each jurisdiction has done their own work over a period of time. In Queensland, we reviewed our reporting requirements about three or four years ago, and we provided paths for doctors to report to us if they felt that their clients were not actually reporting a medical condition to us.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  How would the good doctor know that? What would trigger that? They have a patient who is a truck driver—what is the bit in the middle?

Mr Stapleton : There is nothing stopping a Queensland doctor from advising us the moment they become aware of a medical condition. They are indemnified under Queensland legislation to make that report.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  But you are assuming that they know what their patient's occupation is and the impact of this?

Mr Stapleton : They normally would because the patient is required to get a certification from them that they are fit to drive.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Alright.

Mr Stapleton : You cannot hold a licence without the certification of fitness to drive, so that process is there.

Mr Mahon : And that applies to any licence class.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  But that assumes, then, if a contingent visits on them, that they are with the same medical practitioner who has made a declaration and the patient continues to have a relationship with the doctor.

Mr Stapleton : It is the particularly difficult with heavy vehicles because a number of the conditions require a specialist certification. One of the problems we do have is, because of the lack of specialists in regional Queensland, that some drivers find it very difficult to access a specialist, so they have to come to the city or wait until someone comes out. When it comes to doctor shopping for some of the conditions, it is pretty difficult. There are not too many people you can go to.

CHAIR: Senator O'Sullivan is a Queenslander—I thought I would just throw that in.

Mr Stapleton : I am aware of that.

CHAIR: I can feel him thinking—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  And a very proud Queenslander.

Mr Stapleton : As we are.

CHAIR: Thank you, Senator O'Sullivan. And to Mr Stapleton and Mr Mahon, thank you very much. We do have a lot of questions. We appreciate your assistance today and it will be great if New South Wales could be here because, by crikey, we are going to need a lot longer with the RMS when they get here. We will let you head back to sunny Brisbane.

We can chat amongst ourselves on the record while we wait for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Yes, I share your concern, Senator O'Sullivan. What I share even greater heartburn over is how the hell we can have B-double truck drivers stuck on the M5 and when the RMS come to break it out, back it up and move it away, they then wave them goodbye.

Senator BACK:  They got back in the truck.

CHAIR: How the hell did that happen? That never happened when I was on the road. I had to have bits of paper to go—

Senator GALLACHER:  They have to make $300, and they trapped 3,000 cars.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  It makes me want to walk home.

---

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Thank you for that contribution, but it did not respond to the burden of my question. The last thing I want to do as a senator examining Border Force is to start creating a pattern that questions the competency of processes in place when it comes to critical investigations. We have in other inquiries, unrelated to this, uncovered that some of the very simple 101 questions you would ask in the most basic of investigations have not occurred. We have, privately, put that down to the fact that we are transitioning to Border Force and everyone wants to give everyone sufficient space to establish and get patterns going. My question to Mr Gray is: if investigators went in this instance, wouldn't you think that one of the first questions would be to determine the relationships that may be with other visa holders in that organisation? You do not need to be too careful. We are not going to pursue your investigators and find out why they did not. I am just asking you: when you do come back with the answer, will it surprise you if they did not ask a basic range of questions to determine the prospect of this sort of relationship?

Mr Gray : Rather than responding to whether it would surprise me, I would prefer to come from another direction, if that is all right. When we attend a business premise in these circumstances, it is often done with the consent of the individual. So we are not necessarily going there under a warrant power or any other coercive power in that regard. We do a lot of employer awareness based work. Our officers will go out and talk to employers. I cannot answer the specific question you have about this employer, but one of the common things that we would do in those employer awareness sessions is to say, 'With your consent, we would be happy to look at the people who are on your books and assist you and advise you on whether they are lawfully in the country or have appropriate work rights to be here.' That is part of the activity that we do, but, as I said, I cannot say that happened on this particular occasion.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Let me coach this another way. Are you aware that, within Immigration, there were over 2,000 students here from a single country and fraud was detected. On broader examination, they found the educational transcripts that over 2,000 students provided were fraudulent. Are you familiar with that?

Mr Martin : Not the specifics of that investigation, but generally in visa processing we scrutinise applications and documentation quite rigorously in order to make our assessment and occasionally we are criticised for doing that. We assess applications on all the information that we have available at the time and, if there are any concerns or suspicions raised, we would generally dig deeper into the documentation.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Mr Martin, that is not the briefing I was recently given. The briefing I was given was that, if you have an application and there is some feature about which you are concerned, then it is elevated and other things happen. We will call it due diligence, investigation, critical examination. But I am told that, for the greatest bulk of the applications, there is no due diligence.

Mr Martin : No. I do not agree, Senator.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So a briefing I have received from the minister's office to that effect you are telling me is completely inaccurate?

Mr Martin : If the briefing suggested there is no scrutiny of applications then I would have to disagree.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No—I will repeat myself to assist you. Of 100 applications, how many would go through a serious due diligence examination? Let us use the 2,000 students. How many of those who have a transcript from an educational facility in another country would you go through and satisfy yourself absolutely about the bona fides of that certificate?

Mr Martin : I guess it depends on a range of factors. Depending on the level of risk and our internal risk settings, it is possible that there are applications that may be considered low risk—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Mr Martin, we have a saying here—we can go until the bells go, if you want to, but mine was a mathematical question and if you do not know the answer say so and we will take it on notice.  

Mr Martin : Okay, understood.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Of 100 applications, or make it 1,000 or whatever sample you like, I need to know on average with how many would all elements of the applicant's statements and declarations be subject to test.

Mr Martin : With student visa applications, can I clarify? I will take that on notice.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I found it astonishing that you worked in this field and were not aware of the 2,000 detected that had fabricated documents.

Mr Martin : Not the specifics of that incident, no.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  But you are generally aware that that happened?

Mr Martin : It can happen from time to time.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Mr Martin, seriously, we are having a soft afternoon—

Ms Dale : Can I jump in—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No you cannot, Ms Dale, for the moment, thank you—I do not need mean to rudely truncate you, but my questions are to Mr Martin. There have been half a dozen of them and I am no wiser. My question is a very simple one. Does every application that comes forward to you receive a high standard and critical examination of the statements made by the applicant, the bona fides of the statements, and do you do critical due diligence on any documents that are presented with the application to ensure that they are not fraudulent documents? Every application—this will not have you thinking. I am asking does every application go through an intense screening process to determine the bona fides and the validity of declarations and any supporting documentation? Every one? I know the answer.

Mr Martin : As I was trying to explain, there are some applications which we would consider low risk, based on our internal risk settings, where we would not scrutinise every aspect.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  What would determine low risk?

Mr Martin : Generally it would depend on the course, if we are talking about student visa applications, that the person is applying for, the country that they are coming from, their previous immigration history may come into it.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So the foundation answer is that there may be applications that are dealt with on the papers?

Mr Martin : That is correct.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Now help me a bit here. Of every 100 applications that come forward—I am sure there are heavy days and light days—how many do you think are dealt with on the papers?

Mr Martin : Purely based on papers I would say about 30 per cent. But I would like to take that on notice to confirm.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Let us take that on notice. I promise you I will not accept your answer prima facie either, so ask the people who provide you with the advice not to be clever and start to reduce that number if there is some little check like making one phone call to an aunty. I am interested in the intense examination of these applications. It would seem to us—I put a question before to the department of transport and I will put it to you—that in the due process, in the journey that someone might take to get behind the wheel of one of these, what do you call them; I am not a truckie—

CHAIR: Let's start with a B-double.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  B-double.

CHAIR: Or a prime mover; anything over a heavy rigid.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  There is a journey that occurs where there is great reliance made on the self declaration by the individual, supported sometimes by the issue that they have already been through a process before they arrive here. I put in a crazy statement about someone who has type 1 diabetes or suffers from epilepsy, but they have declared they did not. There is a chance that, if they are in your 30 per cent, you will be none the wiser whether they did or they did not. Some of this will underpin their ability to make the journey to where they end up behind the wheel of a semitrailer.  

Mr Martin : If I may say, even within that 100, applicants would need to meet health checks; they would need to be examined by a medical officer that is approved by the department and pass testing. So an assessment would be made on that. That is regardless of whether they are in that 30 per cent—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Where are those health checks done? Can they be done at their point of origin?  

Mr Martin : Yes, by physicians that are appointed by the department.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Have you ever stumbled across any schemes, in these hundreds of thousands of applications we process every year, where people did supply information on which you could not eventually rely, or was contradicted by facts?

Mr Martin : The panel of doctors that we appoint are generally of good standing, and we audit them on a rolling basis.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Back at the point of origin—back where the application is made?

Mr Martin : That is correct. We also share those resources with other like-minded countries.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I appreciate that answer, but it does not help me with the question. My question was, within your scope of knowledge, have there been circumstances where you have found that you could no longer rely upon the assessment by the doctor at the point of origin?

Mr Martin : Not to my knowledge.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So in hundreds of thousands of applications, multiplied over five or 10 years—a million applications, we have not had an instance—whether it be the medical advice or the transcript from the universities, or so on—that we have found that they are false and fraudulent, or that we could not rely upon them when the facts where known?

Mr Martin : Certainly, other records that may be issued by authorities other than, say, panel doctors, or doctors appointed by the department, have been found to be fraudulent. In one part, it goes to the record keeping practices of other countries. Where we are aware of concerns, we scrutinise those documents thoroughly. If we have concerns, we will verify them, often with the source country who can give us information. And there are other techniques available to us to further verify those documents.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  One final thing I want you to take on notice is the question about this very, very broad, widescale alleged fraud where thousands—if they are not thousands, you can put it in the dustbin—of students arrived here on false documentation upon which we relied to allow them to come to our country. Would you take that question on notice.

---

CHAIR: Okay, so as an ex-road train driver who was never a trainer, if I were having people trained in HC or MC I would expect that they did not just read what to do out of a book—that they actually had skills, industry knowledge and experience in that configuration of vehicle. But that is not the case in New South Wales?

Mr Garner : It is certainly a requirement, if you are to be a trainer and assessor—

CHAIR: Hang on, I am getting confused here. I took what you just said to us—you said 'industry competence'? My shorthand is not that good. But I am asking: do they have to be actual truck drivers to be able to be a trainer/assessor? In that kind of vehicle?

Mr Garner : They have to have industry experience, yes.

CHAIR: What does that mean?

Mr Garner : That means that they must be able to demonstrate that they have sufficient experience that they have that competence—

CHAIR: Industry experience?

Mr Garner : Sorry, I think I might not have given you quite all the information there. Just the licence on its own would not be sufficient—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I think the burden of his question is: can you do it without a licence? Could they have been a dispatcher, could they have been a foreman in a transport company or could they have been a logistics manager?

Mr Garner : I do not believe so. Again, it is not written down anywhere, 'You must have this licence.' The requirements are that they must have current industry skills and knowledge. I do not believe you would be able to demonstrate those without holding a licence.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  That is a pretty critical question—

CHAIR: Yes.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  would you be able to take that on notice?

CHAIR: I really need to know.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Are you the one to do it, or do we have to—

Mr Garner : I am sure we can answer it. I am just not quite sure what the question is—

CHAIR: What I want to put to you, just in my trucking vocabulary, is that I want to know if the trainer/assessor is actually a truck driver who has been a truck driver, who actually knows the industry and has the skills—that he or she has not just obtained that licence because they have read about it in the book and done the drivers licence, which makes them competent. They can do that—it makes them competent to be a truck driver. No—I will take that back, because we have found today that there are people who are not competent and yet they are truck drivers. There are 114 of them in Queensland, for example. It is all very well having that licence, but you said they must have industry competence. What does that mean? That is what I want you to take on notice.

Mr Garner : Yes—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I think we have all been surprised—

Mr Garner : I can answer that question now—

CHAIR: You can answer that now—great.

Mr Garner : The answer is yes, they are required to have industry experience, which means, in this particular instance, they would have to have worked as a truck driver recently.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  You have read that—you have just refreshed your memory from something, have you?

Mr Garner : No—perhaps I misheard the question, that is all.

CHAIR: So they have to have been a truck driver for how long? Is there a time period?

Mr Garner : There is no specific time period.

CHAIR: Hypothetically—and I am allowed to ask this here because it is Sterle rules when I am chairing—could they get the licence one week and actually pass as a trainer assessor?  

Mr Garner : No, I do not believe so.  

CHAIR: This is integral to our inquiry so I really need to know because I am being told something a bit different. I am being told that you only have to have the licence. That if you are a HR licensee and a HR trainer assessor and you want to go into MC, you just go off and get your MC licence and you only have to have held that licence for 12 months. You do not even have to be engaged in the industry. You do not have to have any experience. You have your licence and in 12 months time you can be an MC trainer and assessor. The same goes for HC.  

Mr Garner : You would need to demonstrate that you are a competent practitioner in whatever it is you are teaching. If you are training and assessing in multicombination you would need to be able to demonstrate that you were an experienced practitioner as a multi-combination truck driver.  

CHAIR: That is not what I have been told. You have said it verbally but you need to supply—if you can—where the rules are and what the actual rules are.  

Mr Garner : As I said, the rules are that they must have current industry skills and knowledge. That is what the rules say. They do not specify any specific amount of time.  

CHAIR: What I have said is that they can get their licence, hold it for one year and not do any work in that field and they have the job.  

Mr Garner : We would not accept that level of expertise—  

CHAIR: So can you guarantee me that all trainer assessors in Australia have those qualifications and that experience?  

Mr Garner : No, I cannot guarantee that.  

CHAIR: Why not?  

Mr Garner : Because we do not examine every trainer and assessor at any point in time.  

CHAIR: Would you guarantee that all who come under your jurisdiction have those qualifications and experience?  

Mr Garner : We could not guarantee that every single trainer and assessor—and we are talking somewhere in the order of 50,000 people—has exactly that level of expertise. They are certainly required to do so and, when we conduct audits or other regulatory activities, we test that industry experience. But we could not, in all honesty, say that at any point in time every single person in this sector complies with that requirement.  

CHAIR: What would you say to me, Mr Garner, if I said that I have been speaking to people who have said that it was that corruptible—my words—that there are incidences of three or four people being in the one truck with a trainer sitting in the bunk and they will all get licenced? Would you say that someone has given me a bump steer or I have made it up—that it could not happen?  

Mr Garner : I certainly would not suggest that you had made it up. To be honest, I do not know how to respond to that because I can see—  

CHAIR: I will tell you how I would love you to respond: I would love you to say that that is absolute bulldust and that you can guarantee that every single driver out there is trained by experts in their field to the highest standard. That is how I would love you to answer it.  

Mr Garner : We would love to be able to answer that, Senator.  

CHAIR: Senator O'Sullivan, do you have any questions?  

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No, I do not. You have covered it very competently, Chair.

 

MTF...P2  

Ps For possible QOTM nomination on the "CAC" lady Ms Andrew...

CHAIR:  ..I will come back to one last thing: Ms Andrew, you are in charge of kicking people out? It is not worded that way—what is it?


Ms Andrew : My particular area looks after the cancellation powers.

CHAIR: Has that been active?

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  What was the beautiful name of your branch?

Ms Andrew : Character assessment and cancellation.

CHAIR: CAC?

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  We are going to put you in our speed dial.

CHAIR: Are you kept busy?

Ms Andrew : Very busy.

CHAIR: May I ask, is there a certain trend or class of these that is keeping you more busy than others?

Ms Andrew : We have general cancellation powers, which are the powers that we used for our particular truck drivers here. Last year, we cancelled 55,000 visas across a number of streams and for varying reasons. We are quite busy.

CHAIR: What about student visas?

Ms Andrew : I cannot give you the exact breakdown, but I can take that on notice.

CHAIR: I would be interested, if you could take that on notice, if there is any trend in the trucking industry. Thanks, Ms Andrew from CAC. If there are no further questions, thank you very much to Ms Dale and the department officers.