Tuesday, 7 June 2022
To enable industry and other stakeholders to prepare, Austroads is providing early advice that a Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement relating to the National Heavy Vehicle Driver Competency Framework (NHVDCF) will be released in August 2022.
The NHVDCF was endorsed in 2011 by the Standing Committee on Transport as part of a set of national road safety laws and guidelines.
The NHVDCF provided:
- The set of training and competency assessment requirements that an applicant must satisfy for a licensing authority to deem the applicant competent to be issued with a heavy vehicle driver licence; and
- The regulatory, policy and administrative arrangements to support the training and competency assessment process.
While the NHVDCF was intended to apply in all states and territories the framework has only been implemented in four jurisdictions: New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and the Northern Territory.
At the request of Transport Ministers in 2017, Austroads has been undertaking an extensive program of work to review and improve the NHVDCF. The work has also been informed by the findings of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee – Aspects of Road Safety Final Report published in 2017.
This work has been undertaken in three stages:
- Stage 1 provided a comprehensive review of heavy vehicle licensing in Australia
- Stage 2 investigated best practice overseas experience and available research
- Stage 3, which is nearing completion, has used evidence from research and industry to develop strengthened licence training and assessment standards based in a more comprehensive heavy vehicle driver preparation framework. This has included a review of licensing arrangements more broadly including consideration of licence class eligibility and progression.
Heavy vehicle operators, driver training industry, and licensing authorities have been engaged throughout all stages of the review.
Based on this program of work a Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) is being developed by Frontier Economics.
The Consultation RIS outlines some policy options being considered to address these problems and identifies the likely costs and benefits of each of these options. The Consultation RIS also seeks evidence to assist with further developing the options and their assessment.
The feedback received on the Consultation RIS will inform a Decision RIS. The Decision RIS provides an evidence base and recommendations for consideration in decision making around the NHVDCF.
The Consultation RIS will be open for comments for two months from release. Detailed information will be available on the Austroads website and submissions will be made via the National Transport Commission (NTC) website.
Sign up now to receive project updates, including advice when the Consultation RIS is released and an invitation to a webinar about the proposed changes to heavy vehicle licensing.