Great Southern roads labelled an ‘unsafe workplace’ by trucking company director

A second trucking company director in as many weeks has claimed Great Southern roads are dangerous and inadequately funded by the State Government. Freight Lines Group director Michael Harding has labelled the roads on which his drivers frequently travel in the region as an “unsafe workplace”. When asked if there were any particularly bad spots within the region, he said there were “far more bad than good”. “Sadly, we can’t avoid them,” he said. “Some of the channels on the road that are there through wear and tear can just about drag you off the road if you aren’t concentrating or you’re not completely aware of them.” Drivers for Freight Lines Group, formerly Esperance Freight Lines, travel throughout the region carrying grain from of CBH sites to the Albany and Esperance ports. Mr Harding has been driving trucks in the region for more than 35 years and has continued to do so since taking over the business from his father in the early 2000s. He said South Coast Highway was “not up to scratch and actually dangerous”. “Our Government and higher ups love to put more and more rules on us with work safe fatigue management and overloading, all these tiers of red tape,” he said. “Then at the end of the day they can’t even supply my guys with a safe workplace.” Mr Harding’s calls to improve the region’s dangerous roads come a week after Southern Haulage director Chris Pavlovich called on the WA Government to “build for the future” by setting in place a long-term plan to upgrade Albany Highway. Speaking to the Advertiser, Mr Pavlovich said if an extra 15km of the highway was built to the standard of a dual carriageway annually, it would be ready for the time it is needed. “In general, the State road network is failing due to increased demand and the asset renewal program, or lack thereof, has fallen into deep decline over successive governments,” he said. “If the serviceable life of a highway is 30 years on average, then the State Government should be funding 15km per annum of new construction on the Albany Highway to Perth every year.” Mr Harding said more overtaking lanes would be needed in the future, but upgrades were needed now in the short term. He said he was critical of roads being built by inexperienced personnel who “get allocated x amount of dollars to spend on a section of road, and the quicker they get in and out the more they make”. He said crews were regularly seen working on the roads, but all they were doing was “patching upon top of patches from previous years”. “I will say the patching this year does seem a bit better, but at the end of the day it’s still only patching,” he said. “There are areas where there might be 3km of absolutely crap road, and they’ll patch 1km then another 500m at the end of it then leave a real bad bit in the middle. “It just makes no sense.” Main Roads figures show it has spent $395 million on projects in the region over the past three financial years, including the amount budgeted for 2022-23. That total includes all of its projects including maintenance, direct grants, black spot programs and major projects such as the Albany Ring Road and ongoing Albany Highway improvements. Earlier in January, leaders at the Shire of Denmark and Plantagenet as well as the City of Albany all highlighted securing more funding for the region’s road among their goals for the year. Denmark Shire deputy president Kingsley Gibson said the state of key regional transport networks including South Coast and Albany highways were among the top three regional concerns he hoped would be addressed this year. Albany Mayor Dennis Wellington said the City council would continue to work with State and Federal government authorities to advance funding requests for road investment, “particularly for the South Coast Highway”. “Roads are incredibly important to regional communities, connecting us to family, friends and essential services, and for operation of our primary industries,” he said. Both Mr Harding and Mr Pavlovich told the Advertiser their drivers reported incidents and near misses on a daily basis while driving in the region. “There are some OK pieces of road, but sadly there are a whole lot more that is dangerous and not well maintained pieces of road then well maintained good pieces of road,” Mr Harding said. “The amount of taxes we pay we should be driving on hot mix. “That’s a big one that really gets up my nose — with all the red tape it costs different businesses to employ people to make sure everything is done properly and safely and whatever else. “It adds all these tiers of management, all these extra tiers of cost to our businesses and our government can’t even supply us the roads to drive on that are safe.”