Goodaye all. Well for the first time in a while, I got home to Dubbo Friday, unloaded and will load Monday for Brisbane. Got a new logbook and audiobooks on the way home and now I will have time to finish my submission for the senate inquiry, write a piece about my request for both a National Road Standard and a National Rest Area Strategy, do my audiobook reviews, write this blog and catch up with all the other industry news and issues. The road standard and rest area strategy have been mentioned in HVNL review submissions, but there will not be a number 8 HVNL paper and I had planned to do a conclusion and include more details there. So I now have to send it to the NTC direct.
Both will be in the senate submission and have been mentioned in HVNL, but not to completion. I am disappointed at the number of submissions to both, but did hassle a mate when he rang last week to get something in and he has done so, along with a couple of others I have asked. I continue to believe the HVNL review did not get the exposure it needed to get more input.
The NTC and I understand also the senate inquiry, will be holding meetings where you can attend and that is well and good for those in associations who will be paid to attend. No one will pay a driver to attend as far as I know and it is just not the time. Even a company CEO who feels strongly enough to get up and support the industry and hopefully his drivers, will be paid to attend. He will not lose income and his company will pay for accommodation and airfares etc.
I cannot do all I would like, unless I completely ignore my bills and my family and neither of them will forgive or respect me for it, nor should they. It just highlights the near hypocrisy of reviews and inquiries that not all are treated the same. This is why I wanted more action to include drivers and their views. We are the only ones directly affected by much of the laws involved, both in how it controls our life on the road, but also in the actions we must then take to comply.
We must do as the law says to comply, if we don’t, we can be punished and our families too by the fines that often have nothing to do with road safety. Many drivers have commented for years, we are the only ones punished, we are the only ones held to account, we are forced to drive when tired and sleep when we are not, to comply with laws designed and policed by those who sit in boardrooms with hot and cold running secretaries, loos on every floor, five star food within reach and similar accommodation when they leave home.
Come and live on the road for a week and see what you think then. I have before had many members of the NTC do a trip with me. All have said they gained from the experience. One fellow came back to me after a discussion about a trip and said, “I will do a trip with you to Albury” (from Melbourne where he was based). I said, “Sorry no. Unless you agree to do a trip from Melbourne to Dubbo, I will not take you. If you only go to Albury, all you will see is the Hume Highway and you will go away thinking you know about transport and our problems. Yes, I will explain them all during the trip, but you must see more than the Hume, or I am not doing my part and you will miss all the issues.”
He came back to me and agreed to do the full trip and was to do so in his own time, but the NTC agreed to pay him for it and I agree they should have. He later attended a meeting, where someone said, “He took a 180 degree turn from where he was at the meeting before the trip.” How many in any state jurisdiction, transport ministry, or any industry group or union work fulltime on the road? Yes we can write submissions and put in comments, but as two of the first submissions to the senate inquiry commented (and there were only 15 at the first cut-off date) “I have written to these things before and nothing has changed so why should I bother now. Nothing will change now.” I do understand this frustration and feel it deeply.
What more can I do? I have spent well over 50 hours on HVNL and now senate inquiry submissions. I have done radio interviews asking for drivers to put in submissions. I have had industry press push hard for more access and submissions and asked individual drivers to contribute. Will anything change? I bloody hope so. Have to complete the other writings now, so back to the direct stuff. Safe Travelling, Rod Hannifey.
TRUCKRIGHT 