What COR (Chain of Responsibility) Changes Mean

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AMENDMENTS to the Heavy Vehicle National Law will bring a new era of Chain of Responsibility to the road transport industry, with drastically increased fines for breaches across the transport chain, including for drivers, and a shift in responsibility for all in the chain.

As this issue of Big Rigs hits the streets, the amendments are in bill form grinding through the parliamentary process of the Queensland Government.

The first reading of the Heavy Vehicle National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018 was presented to the state parliament on February 20 and the proposed bill was passed to the Transport and Public Works Committee for scrutiny.

The committee will report back to parliament on April 20 and the government then has three months to consider the report.

When approved to proceed, the bill will get a second reading, there will be parliamentary debate and consideration, and the bill will go to the third and final reading to be passed and receive assent from the governor.

The changes to the CoR law in Australia will be law.

As Queensland is the primary legislator in the process, once passed all other states who are signatories to the HVNL are expected to pass similar legislation, with the exception of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The changes to the HVNL will likely be implemented across the eastern states by the end of the year.

As the name of the bill infers, there are other pieces of legislation being amended in parallel to the HVN – the Transport Operations (Road Use Management – Road Rules Regulation 2009/2010 and the Transport Planning and Co-ordination Act 1994.

The goal of these legislative changes will increase the level of fines in these acts and regulations to match the increases in the HVNL.

Changes affect us all

What difference is it going to make on the road?

The changes will affect all participants in the chain of legal liability, from an industrial manufacturer about to load products for transport, farmers loading livestock, grain or produce through the long transport chain of driver, fleet owner and destination personnel unloading the freight.

More importantly, the amendments cover peripheral workers and decision makers who may have any interaction with the process of that freight from loading to eventual delivery or warehousing.

This will involve loaders, service technicians, service and maintenance providers, freight forwarders, operation managers and senior management and board management of companies involved in any part of the chain.

If the CoR amendments work as their authors would wish them, everyone involved in the journey of a piece of freight – which could include a cattle station owner in outback Australia through to the management of a live export wharf thousands of kilometres away and everyone in between – will bear some responsibility for the safe carriage of that freight.

And, of course, integral to the whole process is the truck driver.

Will life on the road change for a driver and his or her work under the new amendments?

Probably not a great deal other than some increased awareness of responsibilities and additional paperwork required by the truck or fleet owner.

Owner-drivers may see an increased requirement for recording movements and actions.

The amendments bring the elements of CoR closer in line with national Work Health and Safety legislation.

Once the changes wrought by the amendments are tested through prosecutions in court and ensuing appeals, judicial precedence and reference to the WHS legislation could make the CoR legislation enforceable in all states and territories, including those that have not signed up for the HVNL.

The biggest change with the revised CoR legislation is not the beefed-up fines but a shift in the ethos of the NHVL from what was previously proscriptive clauses of the legislation to one of risk assessment and an approach based on shared responsibility, due diligence with what the legislators call a “primary duty” placed on executive officers, making it illegal for any individual or company in the supply chain to make requests or contracts that would cause a driver or other party in the chain to break speed or fatigue regulations.

This is a shift away from the legislation’s attempt to codify every movement in the chain but rather place the onus on every individual to assess and reduce risk “so far as is reasonably practical”.

Identify, fix, record

With the amendments, the burden of proof in enforcement of the legislation and regulations is shifted to the prosecution (section 26F(2)).

This shift means the prosecuting agency must prove that actions to reduce risk were not carried out so far as reasonably practical.

Any person in the chain, driver or owner, must be responsible for what he or she sees in their particular area. As National Heavy Vehicle Regulator chief executive Sal Petroccitto puts it, every individual must (1) observe and identify possible risk in their area of responsibility, (2) do everything that is reasonably practical to reduce that risk and (3) record what action has been taken.

“It’s reasonably simple,” Mr Petroccitto told the writer in 2017, “all the people who’d make up the chain must assess the risk in their area of responsibility, take all practical action to reduce any risk and record that action.”

In February this year, Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads Mark Bailey introduced the bill of proposed amendments to the state parliament.

Some of the points raised in his introductory speech, which carry some legal weight in future prosecutions, will:

  • Create a due diligence obligation on corporate executive officers in the industry
  • Require the NHVR to maintain a database of heavy vehicles
  • Develop a national operator fleet data set of registered heavy vehicles
  • Allow Queensland (states) to continue performing registration functions for heavy vehicles beyond July 1, 2018
  • Provide a one-off exemption from vehicle registration duty for heavy vehicles changing from the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme to state registration schemes
  • Amend the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1995 (TORUM Act) and the Transport Planning and Co-ordination Act 1994 (TPC Act) to increase penalties for driving offences involving death or grievous bodily harm
  • Allow a police officer who conducts a roadside test for drug-driving to conduct subsequent saliva analysis
  • Make changes to the duties of drivers involved in crashes.

Find out more at https://www.bigrigs.com.au/news/cor-is-coming-ready-or-not/3403965/

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