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What we have here...is a failure in communication.

Government bodies believe they have the power to make changes without consultation.

These changes occur and become law...wtf...without even having any talks with bodies like SAU.

Roy...yes Nazi Germany..not thin..just telling you how it is.

Oh...those laws your trying to pass....are to logical...

What we also have here is as system that is backwards and needs to be overhauled...not made messy.

Its sad but true that in the world of engineering the not so great minds end up in the public service. So little wonder our roads and infrastructure lack vision :D

Its true for any discipline, unfortunately.

Lets put it this way, what calibre of employees do you think you can attract if you pay below-market salaries but have laws an policies in place that make it practically impossible for you to fire them, and all kinds of free "training" and "flexi" days where the staff don't need even pretend to do any real work?

I've got mates who work in the public service, and the stories I hear of some of the slope-brows they have to work with........

I have a few suggestions...

I like some of them.

Personally, I think that heavy vehicles (4WDs, I'm looking at you) and sports cars should have individual licenses to regular passenger cars. Just because you can drive to the shops in a Charade doesn't mean you can pilot a Land Cruiser down a motorway, or drive a Clubman. And I think that Provisional licenses should only be available for passenger cars (but reduce the P plate duration to 1-2 years), so novice drivers have to develop their skills in more benign vehicles before "stepping up" to a more challenging vehicle.

If you get busted driving a car you're unlicensed for, then one of two possibilities occur. Either the owner of the vehicle permitted an unlicenced driver to operate their vehicle, in which case the car will be impounded and the owner will have to come get it back after paying a fine for knowingly permitting an unlicensed driver to use their vehicle and the impounding fees. If the owner denies evern lending the car, then they must provide a statement / sign a statutory declaration stating that the driver took the vehicle without permission.....and who then gets charged with car theft. When the car is pulled over, the cops should be able to obtain the owners' contact details from looking up the plates. If they can't contact the owner or confirm it was OK then they arrest the driver and clear it up.

I wonder how many unlicensed people will drive a car if it means a night in the lock-up and a potential criminal offense on record, rather than just the current slap on the wrist?

I'll save how to determine what a sports car or heavy vehicle is for another debate, but needless to say a bit more thought should be put into it than the current knee-jerk reaction. I do like power/weight as a determining factor, as well as how the OEM advertises the car (since you can't always measure sports cars just on power/weight). Classification for a "heavy vehicle" could start off at cars that qualify for the lower import duties for such vehicles, and then come up with tweaks to include locally made cars like the Territory or 2WD SUVs like the upcoming Kluger, while permitting people to drive reasonable "offroaders" like the Audi AllRoad, Volvo V70XC, and Subaru Forester.

I don't understand why they keep banning cars. They seem to know that it's not gonna improve anything, but they still do it to make it look like they're doing something about the problem.

That pretty much says it all - the government wants to be SEEN to be doing something, it's the way they win votes!

Bureaucrats don't really care much about a situation or scenario until it affects them directly. Until one of them is personally affected by a car crash, or sees the impact of the gains to be made from doing a proper driving course, then they'll never push for changes to occur.

Word has it that one former MP, John Anderson, who used to be the Minister for Transport, was a bit of a car nut, and supported some of the initiatives that would get us a better deal with roads, licensing, etc. Maybe his views were too logical, as I think he was in due course "re-assigned" to another area.

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