Now, give us a ‘Can Do’ Regulator

The tip’s hot off the wire. Sometime very soon, Queensland’s Minister for Transport and Main Roads, the Hon Scott Emerson MP, is going to step forward in the Parliament of Queensland and table the legislation that will establish the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.

It will be an historic moment.

When the new government was elected in Queensland, under the leadership of Premier Campbell Newman, there were a few people in industry – and many more inside the bureaucracy – who speculated that ‘Can Do’ would kill off the Regulator.

Our Queensland Association swung into action.

Liz Schmidt, a member of our National Executive, wasted no time in setting up meetings with Minister Emerson and with Premier Newman. State President Gary Willoughby led a delegation of our members to meet the Premier.

The message was pretty simple.

We want the Regulator to go ahead. We don’t want it to be just ‘an extra layer on top’. We want it to make a positive difference. And we want it to have real teeth.

In short, we want a ‘Can Do’ regulator.

If our industry is going to get the Regulator we deserve, we’ll need to keep pushing that message at all the officials, all the Ministers and all the politicians whose support and help we are going to need over the months ahead.

In this week’s News, we’re publishing some of the detailed views that our delegation took to Premier Newman and his team – because an informed Membership is a stronger Association.

Congratulations to Gary, Liz and our Queensland Association for your decisive, effective action.

And there’s more good news on A-Trailers. If you have A-Trailers that aren’t due for renewal just yet, both Queensland and NSW will let you cancel-and-renew your trailer rego in order to get a quick refund. See below for details.

John Beer

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