HVIA to outline solutions for HVNL rewrite for State Committees

Attendees of HVIA’s State Committee meetings will have the opportunity to inform HVIA’s submission to the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) Review with the meetings kicking off in Brisbane tomorrow.

HVIA generally agrees with the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) which has highlighted several short comings in the way current legislation is implemented according to National Policy and Government Relations Manager Greg Forbes.

“The current legislation is hampered by the prescriptive and inflexible structure of the current law, insufficient use of risk-based approaches, inconsistencies between jurisdictions and cumbersome administrative and approval processes,” Mr Forbes said.

“HVIA is also concerned that the current structure of the HVNL is primarily focussed on using on-road enforcement and prosecutions as the mechanism for enforcing the provisions of the law.

“In HVIA’s view the Law needs to place more emphasis on providing incentives for good behaviour rather than punishing bad behaviour after the event.”

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HVIA also agrees with the broad conclusions of the RIS which is that the solution is to develop a risk-based and outcomes-focused legislative framework that will:

• improve safety for all road users
• support increased economic productivity and innovation
• simplify administration and enforcement of the law
• support the use of new technologies and methods of operation, and
• provide flexible, outcome-focused compliance options.

HVIA has identified several key strategies that it believes are necessary for making these changes including:

• Strengthening the Chain of Responsibility provisions of the Law to recognise that the responsibility of directors explicitly includes the selection and maintenance of the fleet and the implementation of systems to monitor and manage vehicle and driver behaviour.
• Providing incentives for participants in the chain of responsibility to adopt a safe systems methodology approach to managing their transport operations.
• Streamlining the administration of the law to reduce barriers to the uptake of safer and more productive vehicles. (particularly PBS vehicles)
• Improving access arrangements to remove barriers to the take up of innovative vehicles.
• Revise concessional schemes to encourage the use of newer safer and more productive vehicles as a condition of participation in these schemes.

Mr Forbes said the current approach is also very focused on prescriptive approaches which do not provide much scope for innovation.

“HVIA supports the suggested move to a more risk-based framework which provides incentives for decision makers to promote safer and more productive vehicles and practices,” he said.

“HVIA is also in favour of an approach more focused on Performance Based Standards rather than prescriptive standards.

“However, HVIA also recognises the large variety in sophistication of consumers and operators of transport services and the need for a variety of options which recognise the different levels of risks and expertise for different parties.

“This could be supported by “deemed to comply” provisions which allow smaller operators a simplified approach to ensuring compliance.”