Work still to be done: National Transport Regulatory Reform

Heavy vehicle road reform is still a work in progress and the commitment to reform needs to continue according to the Productivity Commission’s report into National Transport Regulatory Reform.

HVIA’s National Manager for Policy and Government Relations Greg Forbes agreed with the report’s conclusion.

“Most of the gains in heavy vehicle road safety and efficiency in recent times are likely to be the result of improvements to road infrastructure and the introduction of new safety technology to the heavy vehicle fleet rather than the regulatory reforms,” Mr Forbes said.

The report calls for a number of sensible changes to the current regulatory arrangements for heavy vehicles including:

• A greater emphasis on risk-based approaches;
• Clarification of obligations under the Chain of Responsibility Provisions of the HVNL;
• Removal of unnecessary prescriptive elements of the law and greater use of deemed to comply provisions;
• Use of a tiered model for accreditation which would provide the option for businesses to choose to use either prescriptive or outcomes-based approaches to compliance;
• Removal of state derogations to the HVNL;
• Streamlining the ADR approval processes to simplify the introduction of new technology;
• Expanding as of right access for heavy vehicles and improving access permit arrangements;
• Improved reporting on heavy vehicle safety, compliance costs and administrative costs;
• Improvements to data sharing to enhance productivity and improve policy and regulation and
• No blame investigation of safety incidents by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).