The Bill that’s being debated in Parliament will set up a ‘Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal’, made up of between 5 and 9 people.
One member of the Tribunal must be from government. The rest are required to be people with ‘knowledge and experience’ in driving heavy vehicles, working in the transport and logistics industry, managing business or commerce, or health and safety or workplace laws.
The Bill gives the Tribunal very broad powers to make ‘Orders’ to deal with safety issues that it has resolved are major problems that must be addressed.
Those powers come with a lot of discretion. The Tribunal is going to have the flexibility to pick and choose which safety problems to work on, and it will also have great flexibility to pick and choose what to do about them.
Interestingly, if the Tribunal doesn’t think that ‘setting a rate’ is practical, or that it isn’t the best answer to a safety problem facing a particular part of the industry, then it doesn’t have to set one.
And it’s pretty clear that the Tribunal can have a big impact, even without getting anywhere close to setting any rates.
