Transport Legislation Review

Outputs from Review often proceeded as new State regulatory schemes and laws, commonly in the form of Bills considered by the Victorian Parliament.

[2] The Review was notable for pursuing principle-based initiatives,[3] introducing performance-based concepts into transport law often in the form of safety duties owed by industry participants to persons using transport services and to other industry participants[4] and suites of new administrative and court sanctions targeted at non compliance.

The Victorian Government Ministers who oversaw the work of the project at times were Peter Batchelor, Lynne Kosky, Tim Pallas and Martin Pakula.

[7] The Victorian Government was also troubled that areas of the laws did not reflect regulatory advances in other industries and were not sufficiently informed by overseas reforms.

This typically involved the public release of documents outlining issues in the relevant transport sector and later circulation of draft proposals which signalled the intended direction of change.

[15] The work of the Transport Legislation Review led to the development and enactment of seven major principal statutes between early 2006 and late 2010.

While generally smaller than most principal statutes, the amending Acts often dealt with significant "big picture" changes and were routinely used to pursue discrete, urgent and priority regulatory reforms.

In the majority of cases, the regulations were advertised publicly in draft form accompanied by regulatory impact statements, and made available for comment by individuals, the community and affected industries.

The Inquiry ultimately recommended major changes to policy and legislation to reform the taxi and small commercial passenger vehicles sector.

In the six years of the project, no Act or regulation failed to be passed by the Victorian Parliament even when the Government of the day did not control Parliamentary numbers.

The Bill for the Transport Integration Act was criticised by Liberal and National party members during its passage through Parliament[35] but was not opposed.

Finally, a proposal to add port authorities to the Transport Integration Act organisational framework was opposed and eventually defeated in the Legislative Council by the Liberal, National and Green parties.