Media Release

KAP Leader and the Federal Member for Kennedy gave a speech to the house before his vote to repeal the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and suspend the tribunal’s unfair charge rate order.

Legislation to scrap the tribunal and halt its order passed through the lower house yesterday. This morning, the bill to scrap the tribunal passed through the Senate, rendering the tribunal charge rate order currently in place, void.

During his speech, Mr Katter passionately declared the ills of the tribunal on behalf of his constituent owner-driver truckies:

“There is no doubt in my mind that this tribunal was so arrogant, one-eyed and determined not to see the point of view of the small operators that it antagonised them beyond belief.

It not only antagonised them but, because it did not listen to them, it put forward proposals which were absolutely flawed.

Let me be very specific: the advantage that a small operator has is that he fixes his own trucks. In a big corporation they have to get people in to fix the trucks for them.

A small operator fixes his own trucks and he drives his own trucks. He is an owner-operator. His family drives the trucks. And, yes, some of them work very, very hard—maybe even work longer hours than they should—but they do this to stay alive and to be competitive.

The competitive advantage they had was removed by the tribunal's decision, and the tribunal acted in an excessive and insensitive manner.”

While Mr Katter held the floor, he paid tribute to the original good intentions of the TWU and ALP in setting up the tribunal:

“I know what the original motivation was—in the sense that the TWU felt that they were a very powerful organisation and could provide protection and useful involvement by people such as the NRFA and the LTFA and all of the livestock hauliers and the small operators throughout Australia. They were well intentioned in the initiative. But somewhere the tribunal went off the rails.”

Mr Katter closed the speech with a passionate plea to the House:

“…listen to the problems that exist out there, and acknowledge that something needs to be done because this race to the bottom will result in people being killed, as it always does. Greed will drive people down to levels that will cause trouble at the end of the day.

Let’s go forward with another body that will listen to all sides of the argument and move forward intelligently.”