Levelling the playing field
A common concern raised by our members is the uneven playing field across the industry due to the number of what I’ll describe as rogue or dodgy operators.
Given our sector is relatively heavily regulated and there is a transport licensing regime in place, arguably NZTA shouldn’t be allowing those rogue operators to continue operating. However, NZTA’s view is that it hasn’t had the appropriate powers to act, and therefore we’ve been advocating for years for that to change.
It’s not a silver bullet, but the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Act which came into effect this week introduces four changes to how the NZTA regulates commercial transport operators.
In summary, the changes are:
- The Director of Land Transport must approve new persons in control of a transport service
- The Director of Land Transport can immediately suspend a Transport Service Licence (TSL) for significant health and safety concerns
- Transferring, leasing, or assigning a TSL now carries a maximum fine of $30,000 for an individual and $100,000 for a company
- NZTA can audit operators they believe are running a transport service without a TSL
Our advisory to members provides more detail, but we are hopeful these changes make a significant difference in levelling the playing field.
NCEA replacement a huge opportunity for transport
I believe Minister Stanford’s announcement of details around the replacement of NCEA in 2028 is great news. In my view it is the most significant strategic opportunity for transport and workforce development over the last decade, if not two decades.
Our young people are a key part, and I would argue the most important part of our industry’s workforce pipeline. We have long advocated for specifically introducing car driving education into schools.
Our most recent advocacy on this was in February, when we led a paper that was co-signed by multiple cross-sector industry representative groups and sent to Ministers Stanford, Upston, Simmonds and Bishop. We showed how coordinated investment across the transport, education and social development portfolios can improve access to driver training and testing.
There’s still a lot of water to go under the bridge, but we must ensure that the Transport Industry Skills Board delivers at least one of the industry-led subjects that Minister Stanford will agree to later this year. And more importantly, that the subject includes a key element of driver training and licensing.
Related to this, I congratulate Murray Young who, as well as being a Transporting New Zealand board member, was last week appointed to the Transport Industry Skills Board. I can’t think of anyone better to push the case and make sure we take this opportunity to get driving into colleges.
The not-so-good news
This week Ministers Bishop and Seymour jointly announced the removal of regulatory barriers that make it harder for businesses and communities to cope with global fuel shocks.
The permanent changes to be implemented as soon as practical include allowing Class 1 licence holders to drive heavier zero-emissions vehicles, Class 2 licence holders to drive heavier electric buses; and removing permit requirements for 50MAX vehicles and for relocating unladen rental High Productivity Motor Vehicles.
It was good that the government made a decision, and we support these changes. However, the decision to hold off until Phase 4 of the Fuel Response Plan before allowing heavy vehicles to carry a little more per weight per trip was disappointing.
The justification for holding off on those changes because of tougher trade-offs is contrary to international evidence. It is ironic that the Minister’s announcement came just days after Dr Kim Hassall, a respected international freight consultant, wrote about the perception that “big trucks are bad.” Hassall’s analysis of high productivity vehicles in Australia approved under the Performance Based Standards scheme found that the savings in freight kilometres travelled clearly translated to greater efficiency and fewer crashes.
Those findings are consistent with those of Australia’s NHVR (National Heavy Vehicle Regulator). Despite this, and similar findings from a multitude of other countries that are improving freight productivity, for reasons I cannot fathom, our government wants to wait for things to get worse before enabling improvements.
It also sends worrying signals about whether the Government has an appetite to unlock freight productivity improvements at all in the longer term.
