Chain of Responsibility (CoR) Overview

The National Transport Commission (NTC) has pioneered the development of a national compliance and enforcement reform package which aims to further the achievement of nationally agreed road transport safety, productivity, asset protection and environmental reforms.
The centrepiece of the package is the model Road Transport Reform (Compliance and Enforcement) Bill (the "C&E Bill"), which was approved unanimously by Australian transport ministers in November 2003. Later elements of the package include the Intelligent Access Porgram and Heavy Vehicle Speeding.


The Compliance and Enforcement Bill

The Bill sets up model provisions for the establishment of nationally consistent laws whose purpose is to both encourage compliance with the requirements of the road transport law and to enforce those requirements. The Bill also introduces chain of responsibility requirements (see below).
When fully implemented, the provisions of the Bill will lead to improved compliance with road transport laws through the fairer application of responsibility along the road transport chain, better enforcement tools that enable targeting of higher risk offences and systematic offenders, and the minimisation of opportunities for those who are not complying with the law to gain an unfair competitive edge over those who are prepared to operate within the law.
The Bill is being progressively introduced in each State and Territory. In several jurisdictions the Bill has been adopted and implemented. These include Victoria and New South Wales (September 2005), South Australia (early 2007) and Queensland (April 2008). The remaining jurisdictions are in the process of implementing the Bill.


Chain of Responsibility

The C&E Bill introduces the Chain of Responsibility concept – that is, that all those with responsibility for activities that affect compliance with the road transport laws should be held legally accountable if they don’t meet their responsibility.
Chain of Responsibility provisions in the Bill impose obligations on all parties in the transport chain and all individuals in the corporate chain of command. Those parties are required to either take reasonable steps to prevent a contravention of the road transport laws, or to not encourage or coerce others to contravene those laws.

Special Chain of Responsibility provisions in Part 4 of the Bill provide that consignors, packers, loaders and receivers may be held legally liable for breaches of heavy vehicle mass, dimension and load restraint requirements, in addition to drivers and vehicle operators. In this way, off-road parties are as legally liable as their on-road counterparts if a breach of those requirements occurs. This enables authorities to better target the party or parties actually at fault in each case. It also reduces pressures on on-road parties and ultimately leads to improved compliance, and safer roads.

The Chain of Responsibility approach has now been extended to model laws dealing with fatigue, the transportation of dangerous goods and heavy vehicle speeding. (Source: NTC website).

Download the NTC Guide - Protecting yourself under the Chain of Responsibility