Day one of the VTA State Conference was headlined by calls from the association to improve Victorian and Australian roads to make freight routes safer.
With the theme of ‘Future Freight Landscapes’, VTA CEO Peter Anderson says that the industry must be forward-thinking to keep the roads safe.
“There will never be enough money to fully maintain our roads to the standard that we all want them to be, but the real issue is how do we get the best bang for our buck to keep the roads maintained so it’s not costing operators time and money in repairs and maintenance to heavy vehicles to service our customers using the roads that are available,” he says.
“What we’re proposing is that we change the process and forward look towards our road infrastructure being efficient and meeting the standard that we all expect. Those roads need to work, they need to work well, and people need to have confidence to drive and not fear having to slow down from 100 to 60.
“The real issue for us is the fact that we could do it better. If we followed a plan, if we had dedicated road crews that eventually would be able to remediate kilometres of roads.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t look forward to the next 5,10, 15 and 20 years to change the construction, boundaries parameters, and make the road stronger going forward.”
Derek Bopping from the Australian Signals Directorate spoke on issues caused across the industry by data breaches.
While the transport industry hasn’t been as heavily affected as other sectors across Australia, he detailed the federal government’s plans for identifying and mitigating cyber threats.
“And you might draw some comfort to know that the transport logistics industry is not in the top 10 sectors or industries that report to us. But I would offer to you that that there is no reason whatsoever for complacency,” Bopping says.
“There are several reasons why the transport industry is an attractive target. The first is that just like any other industry, data underpins this industry.
“The top types of data that are exposed in branches from office all the way through and we’ve had many not just the ones you read about paper or contact data, identity data, financial data and commercially sensitive data.
“You don’t need me to tell you that that’s the underpinning of your business as well. If the cyber criminal’s data is just money in a different form, it’s monetised asset.
“The second, and it’s been mentioned before this morning, is that this sector contains many small and medium businesses that we would say operate below, quote the cycle of poverty line and buy them on.”