Mr. Ger Hyland:

I thank the Senator for his pertinent questions. He certainly seems to have a fairly in-depth knowledge of our sector. We would like to see an ombudsman for our sector and for issues raised with the RSA that we feel need to be investigated, or maybe have oversight on. As it stands, the RSA is judge and jury on side-of-the-road issues. We can challenge some of its findings but it takes maybe a month or more and the vehicle is lying up for that period. It is the same thing, even down to minute things. The RSA might say a tyre needs to be changed on the side of the road, if a chip has gone out of it, which could have happened ten minutes previously on the road. I am not talking about bald tyres but perfectly good tyres. A driver could have done his walk-around check in the morning when that tyre might be towards the ground, but he may not have seen the issue or it may just have happened on the road. We certainly need an ombudsman for that.

In saying that, the RSA, and we are talking about checkpoints on the side of the road, is a necessary piece in regards to the haulage sector, but we also need to have oversight of it. We talked about driver licensing. The RSA sets the test and picks the testers. It is responsible for the whole thing from start to finish, but there is no oversight on it. If a truck driver comes through his testing regime and comes out with a licence to work for any of us, we still have to train that truck driver. He does not even know how to uncouple a trailer from an articulated lorry. The first thing we have to do is take him in hand and train him. We just could not consider letting him out on the road. If he does an articulated test, he is trained in a vehicle that is somewhere between 14 and 16 or 17 tonnes. He cannot be let out on the road with a vehicle grossing 46 tonnes. It is a completely different field. I will ask Mr. Jackman to elaborate.