As we get closer to the end of the year, there’s a lot happening around road transport.
The first: an update on our applications – using new laws won by the industry – to lift standards in road transport.
It’s been a robust process. A system that was designed by the industry to ensure broad industry consultation has achieved just that. Everyone has had the chance to have their say – whether that’s drivers, operators, transport associations, employers or the clients at the top of the food chain.
It’s been an uphill battle against a status quo that’s been deeply embedded for too long in road transport. A status quo of the Aldis and Amazons of the world getting to do whatever they like, getting through gaping loopholes in our laws.
And now the consultation phase is ending. What happens next is that these applications for decent standards in last mile and food and beverage delivery and maximum 30-day payment terms will go to an Expert Panel of the Fair Work Commission.
Soon we could see the first sets of decent minimum standards put in place using these world-first laws – standards that every corner of the industry has had a say on.
Decades of judicial, coronial, academic and government evidence has shown that there is an ultimate cause to the tragic, unnecessary transport-related deaths and huge company bankruptcy rates – it’s the economic squeeze placed on operators and owner drivers by the clients, the customers of our services, the retailers, miners, the banks.
Until now, those clients have been able to wipe the blood from their hands and say “nothing to do with us” as they bank huge profits. The power of these new laws means we can put an end to profiteering at our industry’s expense. Through these laws, we can together ensure the clients in our industry pay their fair share.
Our fourth application is a prime example of this opportunity to turn our industry around – for banks and retailers to pay up for cash-in-transit. Through this application, even entities as powerful as the banks have been pulled into the room with drivers and made to understand just what it is like to be a cash-in-transit worker.
Banks are making billions while cash-in-transit drivers are dealing with declining safety standards and falling pay and conditions but now, through the new system, they are being forced to get down to tin tacks about properly funding sustainable, viable and safe transport operations.
And it’s the same in the rest of road transport: greedy clients dragging down standards for everyone else in the industry.
Which brings me to my second update on TWU members around the country gearing up for a huge year in 2026.
I’ve had the privilege of attending conferences in different parts of the country made up of hundreds of delegates. Workplace leaders who are fighting for safer, fairer, more sustainable industries. Soon many of these delegates will return to their workplaces and begin a huge negotiation rounds in their sectors.
But it’s not clever negotiators that will fuel change. Change will come from the power of tens of thousands of transport workers coming together to call those wealthy clients to heel – and, for the first time ever, not just in road transport, but across aviation as well.
For too long, we’ve seen drivers pitted against each other, transport operators pitted against each other, responsible employers wanting to provide decent pay and conditions but finding it harder and harder to do so under the downward pressure of the “Amazon Effect” – the rampant undercutting and the onslaught of the gig economy.
So those applications I mentioned, and the standards that we will soon see in place? That’s a huge step forward to begin reforming the industry.
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But the only way to truly take back power is in our numbers. In 2026, transport workers have aligned over 200 Enterprise Agreements to expire at the same time, so they can take action together if necessary and set better standards across sectors.
This is not an accident. Over the better part of 20 years, transport workers at the TWU have methodically and strategically aligned these agreements. The focus of this fight is the top of the supply chain, where clients have spent years rushing to the lowest bidder, decimating standards in the industry and pitting the industry against itself. We have to make the clients pay.
It’s a similar story in aviation, where airlines like Qantas have engaged in illegal outsourcing and ruthless cost-cutting to increase their profits. CEOs and executives in Australian aviation are still calling the shots. Instead of aviation being an industry of lifetime careers, it’s now a revolving door because the work is casualised, insecure and low-paid.
What’s clear is that we need decent standards funded across road transport and aviation, and the money must come from the top. Transport workers at the TWU are fighting back, and we have the momentum to achieve huge improvements.
We have to stick together to ensure success. Only through industry unity can we reclaim our fair slice of the top-of-supply chain mega-profit that for too long has been unfairly and unsafely stolen from the pockets of transport workers and decent transport operators.
What is it that we’re calling for?
Decent pay, job security, safety at work, the ability to retire with dignity – these are not controversial demands. But these things have never been given freely. These laws to make our industry better were not handed to us on a silver platter. We had to campaign for years as a collective, united, to win these laws.
Now we need to bring these laws to life and we have a huge opportunity over the next year to do just that. For the first time ever, we have the legal weapons, the strategy and the industry unity to fight for our roads. Our skies. Our future.
And it starts right now.
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