What are the amendments to the HVNL and how they could affect you

Operating heavy vehicles across Australia's eastern seaboard is changing. The transport sector has transformed dramatically over the past two decades, and operators must maintain constant vigilance to ensure safe, compliant operations amid evolving business models, shifting government requirements, a greater focus on safety and sustainability (ESG), and rapid technological innovation.

As technology reshapes the industry, regulations must evolve too, becoming clearer, more streamlined, and fit for the future. The Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) Amendment Bill 2025, introduced in the Queensland Parliament and set to be adopted by relevant states and territories, aims to modernise safety and compliance requirements, reducing regulatory burden without compromising robust standards.

Why is the HVNL changing?

The objectives are straightforward: improve safety outcomes, streamline compliance, and reduce red tape. The bill implements key recommendations to keep the national law responsive to industry and community needs, while giving operators more flexibility in how they demonstrate compliance.

At the centre of the reforms is an enhanced accreditation framework that strengthens the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS) and makes Safety Management Systems (SMS) a core, auditable requirement. These SMS’s are required to demonstrate compliance with prescribed requirements such as fatigue work and rest hours or general mass limits.

What do you need to know? The Amendments to the HVNL bill bring four major changes that you should know about.

1. From Schemes to Accreditations

Under the current HVNL, there are four schemes that cover areas of compliance including fatigue, mass and maintenance, under what’s known as the NHVAS. With these amendments, it simplifies the framework that is the NHVAS into two main accreditations instead of four.

• General Safety Accreditation requires operators to implement a comprehensive SMS that outlines risks (internal and to the public) and controls to mitigate them. This must comply with standards that are aimed at improving the ability to meet primary obligations, the SMS framework, train staff, perform regular audits and more.
• Alternative Compliance Accreditation allows operators to deviate from standard requirements by providing flexibility to manage custom fatigue work/rest hours or mass limits if they meet prescribed safety standards. Operators must also have General Safety Accreditation to apply.

The SMS is intended to cover risk your operation faces, that can be identified through the code of practice and your experience, that then identifies controls to mitigate those risks to prevent hazards from occurring to staff and the public. While the code of practice is designed to help identify the potential risks out there, you’re expected to put together an SMS that reduces risk in areas your business has to approved standards. Your next step is to conduct an audit.

2. Audits Audits Audits

With the increased focus on SMS, audits will be required to ensure corroboration. This change will allow audits conducted by approved auditors to be used as evidence in prosecutions for breaches of primary safety duties, previously not automatically admissible in court.

This presents an opportunity for operators who have a well-documented SMS and complete audits as part of their defence to support proceedings as it helps to demonstrate proactive risk identification and safety management. If your SMS is comprehensive, has been audited, and put into practice, you will benefit from a safer and more responsible workforce.

It’s important to note that audits must be conducted by approved auditors and must be thorough in their documentation to ensure their value. During prosecution, this means you can formulate a defence with these audits as evidence for the particular risk or issue being investigated.

3. Driving while ‘unfit to drive’

Ensuring drivers manage their fatigue is key to the amendments. As part of the changes, there will be a new reference that expands on existing obligations for drivers not to drive while impaired by fatigue. This is referred to as ‘unfit to drive’ and applies to all drivers of heavy vehicles over 4.5 tonnes (not just those operating fatigue-related vehicles over 12 tonnes), to place a proactive responsibility to manage health and fitness.

While the onus is on the driver, the ‘unfit to drive’ reference is a shared responsibility that covers a broader range of situations such a as physical illness and injuries, general and mental health issues, substance use and other factors that may compromise safety. It’s important for employers to invest in updating policies and practices to improve wellbeing, including taking appropriate action to reduce impairment to driving safely for their drivers.

Beyond that, it’s even more important for employers to just get a better understanding of their drivers and their fitness for duty. Be aware that penalties will increase based on the seriousness of the offense, and officers (such as NHVR officials or police officers) have authorisation to stop a vehicle if it perceives that the driver is ‘unfit to drive’.

4. Codes of Practice

The NHVR issue timely guidance on risk and risk management practices with regard to the meeting and complying with HVNL and SMS duties, known as the Codes of Practice. It will significantly simplify the process by shifting the responsibility for initiative the development of codes from the industry to the regulator that is consistent with other safety regulators.

In the recently release codes, the NHVR provide a source of information concerning safety in transport and logistics by providing guidance on managing hazards and risks, assessments, and controls. For more information on the Codes of Practice, check out the NHVR website.

 

The changes to the HVNL give the industry more flexibility to achieve better safety and compliance, while also removing duplicates, simplify regulations, and modernise how the regulator operates. Although ministerial directions are stronger, operators will have more freedom to choose how they meet requirements, which can make compliance and safety practices simpler.

While the shift to more prescriptive details will be managed by each operator, it’ll allow for a more agile approach to reducing risk by matching regulations. Every business is different meaning that compliance to vehicle standards, maintenance, and fatigue hours requirements differs, and the SMS needs to reflect your operation. The code of practice gives you the guidelines, you just need to adapt them to fit.

Overall, the changes aim to help the industry use safety systems and technology to build and apply effective safety management systems, clarify driver and operator duties, and keep the public safer while making regulation more flexible. This evolution in the HVNL brings in a way to push the industry forward by ensuring safety and technology can be used to build an SMS and then put it into practice effectively. This clarification to the responsibilities

 

 

How can Teletrac Navman’s technology help?

The Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) is prescribed to protect the safety of the industry and community through safety and compliance measures. Teletrac Navman’s solutions is specifically designed to help you meet your obligations to mitigating risk via a range of applications created to digitally transform your SMS policies into workflows your team can easily manage.

​

Get in touch with our team today on how you can benefit from technology to manage your SMS requirements.