A CASE FOR CHANGE
A collective sigh of relief could be felt around the industry when the National Transport Commission (NTC) cut the ribbon on the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) review in late 2018.
With the terms of reference approved by the Transport and Infrastructure Council (TIC) of federal, state and territory ministers, a series of eight issues papers addressing key tenets of the law were to follow in 2019.
“It is now widely accepted that, while the first iteration of the HVNL in 2012 was an improvement on the previous multi-jurisdictional situation, it now needs to be comprehensively overhauled,” federal transport minister Michael McCormack said emphatically at the time.
These have been drip fed throughout the year for public commentary. At the time of writing, seven have been released to the public, with the first three now closed for consultation.
NTC says it will use the submissions to help form a regulatory impact assessment of policy reform options.
Two of the most significant areas of potential reform have been addressed in the first two issues papers: Risk-based approach to regulating heavy vehicles
