Member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, said family-operated transport businesses are under threat from failed policy set to be reinstated by the Labor Party.

Just three years after the Liberal Nationals’ Government repealed the union-dictated, Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT), Labor is threatening to reinstate this failed policy to the detriment of hard-working small business owners in the New England.

“This is yet another catastrophe of the Labor-Green-Independent government that came forward with this policy which if implemented again, will once more drive mum and dad operators out of the industry,” Mr Joyce said.

Inverell truck driver Greg Jakins, an owner operator of more than 35 years, said any move to reintroduce the RSRT would be the death knell for his single-truck operation.

“It would mean the end of us, we’d have to cease business,” Mr Jakins said.

A 2016 review into the RSRT by the Small Business Ombudsman found there was no link between pay rates and road safety, which is why the Liberal Nationals’ Government backed small business and repealed the law.

“The potential reinstatement of the RSRT would heap further misery on local truckies who are only doing their best by their families and trying to get ahead,” Mr Joyce said.

“This move has absolutely zero to do with road safety, and everything to do with keeping Labor’s pockets lined by the unions.

“I fought for rural and regional families before who were faced with this union-orchestrated   debacle run by the Labor Party, and I’m prepared to do it again.”

Jobs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer said the RSRT’s Payment Order was found to be discriminatory, financially devastating and economically disastrous to those covered by it. The Tribunal was also found to have demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the day-to-day operational reality of the industry that it sought to interfere with.

(ENDS)