Reportedly, legislation introduced into the NSW Legislative Assembly this week will breach the O’Farrell Government’s backing for the National Heavy Vehicle Law.
NatRoad CEO, Chris Melham, has expressed alarm that the NSW Government has introduced legislation that effectively turns its back on commitments given under the COAG initiated 'Intergovernmental Agreement on Heavy Vehicle Regulatory Reform' (IGA) by seeking to enact “unauthorised amendments” to the model Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL).
“Premier O’Farrell committed NSW, when signing the IGA on 11 August 2011, to enacting the HVNL model legislation in the same form as the other States and Territories,” Melham said.
“The IGA commits parties, at Clause 17, ‘to ensure nationally agreed outcomes are achieved, the Parties agree that no Party will submit to their parliaments any legislation that will alter, amend, repeal or otherwise change the National Law,without prior agreement of the Standing Council’.
“Yet on Wednesday, the NSW Government introduced a bill, the Heavy Vehicle (Adoption of National Law) Amendment Bill 2013, into the NSW Parliament that effectively means that NSW will turn its back on the Clause 17 commitment.
“A significant aim of the IGA is ‘the removal of inefficiencies from inconsistent jurisdictional requirements’. The proposed NSW Bill will effectively entrench such inconsistencies in the case of NSW.
“So much for a seamless national economy and consistent and streamlined administration and service provision of heavy vehicles under a single national jurisdiction, to be administered by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, as committed to in the IGA”, Melham added.
According to NatRoad, the bill represents a significant departure from the model HVNL, which has been introducedunamended by the other States and Territories, in the following areas:
- Retention of previous Advanced Fatigue Management limits and separate mandation of penalty thresholds.
- Creation of a separate power of prosecution for the NSW Roads and Maritime Service (RMS).
- Preservation of NSW state-based accreditation schemes in relation to the Hire Trailer Maintenance Management Scheme and the NSW Livestock Loading Scheme, with NSW RMS to remain as the regulator.
- Preservation of a number of NSW state-based fatigue management local productivity initiatives.
Speaking at the opening of the NatRoad conference in Darwin, NatRoad President Geoff Crouch noted that, “If, as expected, NSW persists with the proposed approach. NatRoad will demand an inquiry by the NSW Upper House into the new bill. It is incumbent on the Upper House to fully exercise its vital duty as a ‘house of review’ to ensure that this departure from the HVNL is fully examined.
“Such a bill also raises the question of the NSW Government’s control over its bureaucracy and its grasp of the implications that such a bill would have for national law reform.
“NatRoad has been concerned for some time about a recalcitrant NSW bureaucracy that is determined to maintain its iron grip and not concede any real reform of the heavy vehicle laws in that state”, said Mr Crouch.
As a result, NatRoad calls on the NSW Government to introduce a reform bill that is consistent with its commitments under the IGA; and support calls for a full inquiry into how such a Bill comes to be before the NSW Parliament and the type of advice it is being supplied with by its bureaucracy.
“The O’Farrell Government should be hanging its head in shame at this disgraceful departure from the national heavy vehicle law reform agenda. An agenda that, until this point at least, has been fully supported by the other states”, Mr Crouch said in Darwin.
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