A letter to members ahead of the Christmas break

This is the last edition of Talk the Torque for 2021, so I wanted to preface it by wishing you all the very best for Christmas and the year ahead.

As I said to guests at the HVIA National Awards Breakfast recently, including those who joined us online from around the country, I wake up every morning proud to go to work.

You, the talented and passionate individuals that collectively make up Australia’s heavy vehicle industry, are an amazing part of the Australian economy and Australian life.

You do great things every day and you should be very proud of the role that you play in people‘s lives. You have certainly stood tall through some very challenging times.

From an HVIA perspective, I look back on this year with a sense of accomplishment that reflects the tremendous inputs from so many of you, and a lot of hard slog from our team. I would like to pay tribute to both.

The Brisbane Truck Show is an obvious highlight and wasn’t it good to get together!? There is no doubt we were a little lucky with the timing, but the courage of so many of our members deserved to be rewarded, as did the immense amount of detailed preparation by our team. That the show went on to be acknowledged at the Australian Event Awards, is a well-earned pat on the back for every one of you.  

Our agenda for 2022 is shaping to be very full.

We have some big-ticket items on the agenda including PBS reform, the HVIA LITE electromobility project and delivering two new online courses covering load restraint and best practice tyre management with the support of the Government’s HVSI program.

We still have bugs to fix with the RVSA, vehicle width will continue to be a hot topic along with the greater adoption of safety technologies.

The skills shortage remains high on the agenda, with a lot of work to be done on many fronts.

Rest assured we have also been talking to Santa about some help with the AdBlue situation and the supply chain more broadly.

Australia’s resilience is going to continue to be a hot topic and we all have an important role to play in that conversation.

I hope that all of you, your teams and your families are able to enjoy some rest over the next couple of weeks, and come back fresh as we set some ambitious goals for the year ahead.

Take care
Todd Hacking

---