McCormacks appointment as Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister gets ATAs approval

The Australian Trucking Association has given its nod of approval to Nationals’ party member Michael McCormack’s late-February appointment as the country’s new deputy prime minister and as the new minister of infrastructure and transport. ATA CEO Geoff Crouch said McCormack will “bring great drive and determination to the infrastructure and transport portfolio” and noted the ATA looks forward to working with McCormack, including on safety and productivity issues.

Drive & Determination

Noting that he has known McCormack for 20-plus years, Crouch described McCormack as a proven advocate for small business and for regional and remote Australia. “I’m confident he’ll bring this drive and determination to supporting the road transport industry,” Crouch said.

Crouch pointed to comments McCormack made in Parliament in 2012 as evidence of his understanding of the importance of the road transport industry. Those comments included McCormack proclaiming “if it needs to be carried, carted, dumped, hauled, moved, shifted, or transported, there is every likelihood a truck or trailer will be the most economical, fastest, and most reliable way of getting it from point A to point B.”

Safety & Productivity

Moving forward, Crouch says McCormack’s appointment will offer an opportunity to focus the country’s transport agenda on enhancing safety and improving productivity, adding that “trucking is critical to connecting Australians with goods and exports,” which is something “Michael McCormack knows well.” That said, Crouch said that “road transport must be safe and must keep Australian businesses competitive in global markets.”

Specifically, Crouch says the ATA seeks to engage McCormack about the need for independent and expert safety investigations led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau into accidents involving heavy vehicles. The ATA also seeks to work with McCormack “on implementing the new laws on chain of responsibility and ensuring our fatigue laws and rest areas are focused on saving lives,” Crouch said. “We also need to enable economic opportunity by boosting productivity, improving road access, building better and safer roads, and eliminating over-regulation.”