“Indeed, the RSRT is a useful case study illustrating that governments hastily take action to instigate damaging regulations and bureaucracies, but are painfully slow to unwind them even in the face of mounting problems.”

The TWU pushed for the RSRT to be set up as it envisaged that the safety issue could be used as a clever decoy for formulating regulations to force owner drivers out of the industry. Julia Gillard ignored that the resulting lessening in transport competition would be contrary to the national interest, and instead decided that RSRT implementation would be a good way of thanking a key electoral benefactor.

It is surprising that, after the Coalition Government initially identified the urgency of the need to rescind the RSRT, effectively little was done about it. After knifing Tony Abbott in the back, did not Malcolm Turnbull promise much more action on the economic front? Yet Malcolm, great ditherer that he is, as recently as a few weeks ago favoured moving RSRT rescission to the next parliament.

Given that Malcolm has effectively achieved nothing in the seven months of playing Prime Minister, he certainly cannot be regarded as a man of action. With the benefit of hindsight, the Coalition would have done much better had they encouraged Malcolm to go into retirement when he lost the Opposition leadership in 2009.

Those Coalition MPs who feared they would lose their seat in the 2016 election if they stuck with Abbott, now would be justified in thinking that they will not be returning to Canberra after the coming election, if the current polls are an indication.

Cobber,

Given the somewhat feeble link between pay rates and road deaths, it is mind blowing that even die hard unionists could argue that owner truck drivers would be better off unemployed.

It's clear that neither Labor nor the unions give a crap about truck drivers, only the $220 000 handout to the unions from the RSRT and protecting union jobs.

Well what a surprise another underdone member of apparatchik class from the IPA the bunch who want small Govt but jump on the gravy train as soon as the Right wing Liberals ask them which to me means Abbott will return if the Libs win the spurious DD.
Now about the front organisation in the Trucking industry called the ICA which is a front group of the IPA along with the Owner drivers association are all tied to the IPA and by extension the Liberal party of Australia.
The sight if Truffles and that screeching harridan Cash lecturing there own front organisation about how dreadful it is to have something that may destroy the last refuge of piece work in the trucking Ind.
its a joke one bunch of Liberals telling their owners in the IPA its ok to go an cause road accidents that kill people because the employers are screwing them into the ground on Prices.
Mind you the Owners Drivers cut each others throats to undercut each other and this place gets a wet behind the ears boy to to give the IPA who run the people described excuses please

John Ryan,

While it's sensible to be suspicious of anything that has IPA backing, it is stupid to dismiss it out of hand.

Paying drivers more won't fix the safety problems.
Regulating prices (and effectively forcing some of them to drive for nothing when the market can't support the imposed minimum rate) definitely won't fix the safety problems.
But tracking all trucks would fix a lot of the safety problems.

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Armchair,

What sort of work would it be, and would it be available for more than a month?

What jobs would you offer the foreign aid recipients instead? What about foreign medical aid? What about disaster relief?

Why should those unlucky enough not to reach the HECS repayment threshold have to work extra? Would pensioners still be liable?

I don't understand what you're proposing about bridging the gap between Aussies and foreigners.

Those infrastructure projects are not actually too expensive to do on our own, but governments regard maintaining the illusion of fiscal responsibility as more important than doing what actually needs to be done.

@ Aidan (Monday, 18 April 2016 4:10:53 PM):

"Those infrastructure projects are not actually too expensive to do on our own, but governments regard maintaining the illusion of fiscal responsibility as more important than doing what actually needs to be done."

+1

Aidan:

Agreed.

Simple solutions to complex problems are only attractive to simpletons who don't understand the question.