The Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association is an organisation which works with politicians of all stripes, and continues to work to improve their understanding of rural transport’s specific issues. Most recently, the ALRTA has lobbied for changes to the industrial reform to take rural trucking into account.

“We actually got concessions through working with David Pocock, and he’s a Teal, because we went and had very sensible conversations with him about the potential impacts of the legislation and the flow-through effects to Australian consumers, who are his constituents,” said Rachel Smith, Executive Director of the ALRTA.

“There’s opportunities to work with the government on issues such as rural road funding, ALRTA has been talking to the Australian Local Government Association about revamping the Rural Road Alliance.

ALRTA Executive Director Rachel Smith. (Image: Prime Creative Media)

“It’s highlighting that Australia is one national economy, we don’t necessarily have state borders or council borders on the issues. How do we help the government solve some of those problems? Transport, fuel and others, we all have a role to play, because everyone’s hurting in the pocket right now. Whether it’s a business or a consumer.”

The ongoing shortage of resources to local government to achieve the result needed to maintain, let alone develop, our current rural road infrastructure, continues to be a major issue. The problem has been exacerbated by a number of weather events which put those resources under even more pressure.

Another issue which is exercising the dynamics of the relationship between the rural livestock operators, the local councils and the state authorities is effluent.

All of the cattle in the feedlots and elsewhere in the vast area to the West of Toowoomba have to be brought towards the coast and get processed in abattoirs, creating environmental issues around the topic of effluent from the animals flowing from trucks onto the roads and roadsides.

Livestock industry lobbying for initiatives to enable the dumping of effluent from the trailers hauling cattle into facilities able to handle the effluent, have had little success. Local government and state government have made positive noises about addressing the issue, but very little of note has come of it.

The responsibility for developing a solution to the issue is being passed back and forth between different levels of government. As a result very little progress has been made towards a practical solution.

“Local government can’t afford to do anything, except to advocate and we’ve done that quite strongly,” said Carol Taylor, a Councillor on the Toowoomba Regional Council.

“Our group sent a letter to the federal minister and we got a strange reply saying the responsibility lay with the State Authorities for truck wash-down and also for effluent disposal facilities, and that’s where the responsibility lies.

“We need to advocate to the State Governments to find sites and we need to work together, both the livestock transport industry and local government.”