Why am I not surprised that someone from the Institute of Public Affairs would put costs above lives.
The fact is when revenue is tight people stretch the rules and themselves and that leads to deaths.

I think ultimately we should be reducing the number of trucks on our roads and increasing the use of rail.

I was bored over the weekend and created the
“KILL TEN BIRDS WITH ONE STONE PLAN”:
How To Fix Our Infrastructure Issues, Welfare, Foreign Labour, Foreign Aid, Inmate Costs, Unpaid Student Debts, Refugees, Immigration, Nationalism, and Multicultural Issues All with the Single Stroke Of A Pen.

But I don't know if its dumb or if it would work or not, sometime my mind goes off on weird tangents..
Its all about my massively non-viable big ideas from the HSR discussion.

Welfare "Earn Your Entitlements" policy, where its not an entitlement that is freely given but one that is earned.
You do a months work to earn entitlement to a further 3months unemployment benefits.
End Foreign Aid and offer them jobs instead.
But we don't pay them our award wages based on our economy, we pay based on their country and we feed and house them.
(Could this idea fix the world)
Inmates and Community Service
Sentences will be halved for non violent offenders who are prepared to work for the greater good.
Unpaid HECS Debts - the person will have to work off their debt if they aren't already working and aren't paying off their debt.
Appease the Nationalists - stop giving foreigners handouts and bridge the gap between Australians and foreigners.

It all surrounds building infrastructure projects that are too expensive to do on our own, and therefore these workers do not take anyones jobs away, but building the infrastructure creates jobs and job opportunities and makes our country more competitive.

This is just another non-issue for gormless politicians to windbag about while the whole country goes down the gurgler. Self-interest, greed and power by the few is the main game in Australia. All heavy road transport is a threat to the safety of all motorists. Long distance haulage by road should stop altogether.

I generally agree with this article. For the self employed, work being unavailable is worse than work being insufficiently lucrative. The way to improve heavy vehicle safety isn't to regulate prices, it's to ensure the drivers can't get away with breaking the rules. GPS based tracking should be compulsory on all trucks (ASAP for most vehicles, but those that already have tachographs should be able to use those instead for a few years).

Could the author please inform us who funded this work? I'm personally of the view that the the RSRT is a poorly-conceived and unnecessary interference in the free market. However, I just wanted to know whether anyone connected to either side of the argument has funded this work.

This whole discussion is about very little. Owner-drivers, when I was Operatione Engineer of a large trucking fleet, were called "the hungries". We had both company and OD trucks in a happily mixed workforce.

I personally don't much go for single issue "tribunals" of any kind and certainly don't expect any good to come from the trucking industry's version, so I won't miss it when it is gone. I don't care.

The real game here is the Coalition's lack of any positive policies at all - not a single one. Internal divisions have frozen the policy-making function of government. They simply cannot govern in the absense of policy.

The result is that the Coalition is proceeding hell-for-leather with the three policies that they can agree on:
Policy 1. Ditch the trucking tribunal.
Policy 2. Reinstate a building industry anti-corruption watchdog which only previously existed for 3 or 4 years of the 116 since Federation. How essential is that, especially when the same government is not willing to consider appointing a federal ICAC?
Policy 3. Use these two insignificant issues to force a fresh election, in the hope that the results of the last election will somehow not be repeated.

Good luck with that!

What is Plan B, Mr Prime Minister? What will you do if the Senate doesn't award you an absolute majority of seats? Will you put up another couple of minor bills, have them knocked back, and head into another double dissolution next year? Or will you discover the meaning of the words "negotiation" and "compromise"?