TRANSPORT
changeover to provide a one stop training and licensing
approach across the country would not be introduced in
the short term.
“The whole national process for harmonisation
of safety and training in the industry needs to be
undertaken with a unified approach to ensure
consistency and awareness of safety on roadwork and
construction sites,” he said, adding that the Traffic
Management Industry has grown quickly and initially
without regulation, and that this was an inherent
essential to keep our employees from harm, raise the
standards and benchmark the industry.
From left: Treasurer Andrew White, Secretary Brendan
Woods, Board Member Stephen Hynes, President
Stephen O’Dwyer, Vice President Cam Scott.
and additional costs to abide by the PPE, signage, and
training requirements,” he said.
“Traffic Controllers need to apply for five different
licenses (and in some cases repeat training) to work in
Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New
South Wales and Victoria.” He noted that the Northern
Territory and Tasmania also had their own licensing and
training structures.
“If we think there are delays now, this inconsistency will
cause further future delays as Traffic Controllers leave
the industry due to high costs of licensing and retraining
in each state,” he said.
O’Dwyer said the current recruitment requirements
across states already prohibited a wide proportion of
the community from applying, and that the stakes were
high to become a Traffic Controller, in particular in the
cost of training pre-employment. He noted however,
that it was important to have some measure of barrier
to entry, as the standard had been raised, but needed
to now be consistently applied across the country.
O’Dwyer noted Austroads had formally embarked on a
committee review of the training and licensing standards
for the Traffic Control industry, which, over time would
alleviate some of the issues. He said, however, the
O’Dwyer said the fatality toll in Queensland, Victoria
and the injury count played heed to governments to
provide control for Traffic Control companies and their
compliance programs, but screamed the need for more
public awareness campaigns to slow motorists down.
“Traffic Controllers are viewed as interrupting the
journey to work or on holiday etc. not as performing a
task to protect both the travelling public and the road
and construction workers tasked with building the
superhighways and structures that in the long term,
will make the journey easier,” he said.
the Traffic Management state and
national associations to bring a
compliant, consistent safe set of
products to the market.
“The goal is to eventually have a
Traffic Controller stand out from
the crowd and be recognised as a
safety implementation to be taken
seriously,” he said.
“Federal, state and local
governments need to ensure a
uniformed regulatory system to
keep Traffic Control companies,
contractors, and the public endorsing
and practising safety behaviour.”
TMAA can be contacted on 1300
798 772 or at [email protected].
O’Dwyer added that Traffic Controllers often are
verbally abused, driven at, have items thrown at them
and/or are assaulted. He noted that this was as an
aside to the injuries and near misses suffered on a
daily basis on sites all over the country.
“I am constantly astounded by the lack of respect
from one human being to another in this industry.
Traffic Controllers are not robots. Interestingly, trials
with robots have proven to have the robots treated in
the same manner over time as suffered by the human
Traffic Controllers,” he said.
“In our rush to get from A to B, we have taken safety
off the table.”
O’Dwyer noted that across the country supplier
companies working to produce vehicles, signage and
PPE for the industry were scrambling to work with
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