Calls are growing for a crackdown on inexperienced foreign truck drivers after flooding cut a vital rail line across the outback and caused a surge of road train traffic.
Western Australia’s transport industry is asking for reforms similar to those passed in South Australia in response to a triple-fatality head-on collision on the Eyre Highway that killed trucking veteran Neville “Slim” Mugridge, 77, and NSW-based Yadwindeer Singh Bhatti, 45, in 2024.
The South Australian laws require drivers to undertake a Multi-Combination (MC) Licence Program to drive heavy vehicles, with overseas driving experience no longer recognised, except for drivers from New Zealand.
The Western Road Federation and Transport Workers Union said there were growing road safety concerns about an increase in inexperienced foreign drivers and large traffic volumes on the Eyre Highway, the only sealed road linking the two states, since the Trans-Australian Railway Line was closed due to floodwaters.
WA Road Safety Minister Reece Whitby said the government wanted to make sure immigrant truck drivers had the right qualifications.
“There has been incidents where truck drivers have been involved in very tragic situations,” he told ABC News.
“Now, whether that is due to fatigue or a lack of training, we need to be careful to ensure if we have people coming into this country, because we’re short of drivers, we need to make sure they’re able to do the job.”
Western Roads Federation chief executive Cam Dumesny said every time there was a rail outage there was a “flood of inexperienced drivers”, mainly from Melbourne or Sydney.
“Their long-distance driving experience is pretty much driving from Sydney to Parramatta, and suddenly they’re out on the open road,” he said.
“Yes, they’re licensed to drive road trains, but they don’t have experience and it has led to a number of significant incidents, in some cases fatalities but also blockages of the highway when we need it kept open.
“We’ve actually had inexperienced drivers run out of fuel on the Eyre Highway because they didn’t know where the road houses were.”
Mr Dumesny has also been leading calls for a crackdown on “sham contracting”, a now-common but illegal practice where transport companies avoid paying employee entitlements by hiring drivers – often immigrants on students visas – on individual business numbers even though they don’t own and operate their own vehicles.
Transport Workers Union WA secretary Tim Dawson said the South Australian reforms should be adopted nationwide, but said it didn’t matter if the drivers were local or foreign, they needed to have the “proper skills”.
Indian driver and National Road Freighters Association board member Jaswinder Singh said no state recognised Indian licences, but Queensland allowed Indians with three years of heavy vehicle experience to go straight into a heavy combination licence, and in Victoria they could go straight onto a heavy rigid course.
He said those avenues should be closed but also argued it was unfair to blame foreign drivers for crashes.
“The moment an accident happens, fingers immediately point at an Indian-born driver,” he said.
“Anyone who holds an Australian truck licence has gone through the same licensing system and the same driving schools.”
Australian Trucking Association CEO Mathew Munro also said following a roundtable of “multicultural drivers” in October that all states should adopt the South Australian system.
Mr Mugridge’s widow Delphine has been campaigning to have the laws adopted in other states, but said late last year she was growing frustrated with a lack of progress.
Earlier in the year industry insiders highlighted growing concerns about overseas drivers, mainly from India, causing chaos on Australian roads, while hundreds of Indian drivers had their licences revoked in New Zealand amid a crackdown on false or altered documentation used during overseas permit conversions.
Header image: Left, the Eyre Highway crash (Hume truck). Right, Neville Mugridge (supplied).
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