Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister may be right but, in the end, I will not be deciding that, nor will the federal government be deciding that. Members of both sides would support that happening but whether or not it does will not be up to this government or this opposition; it will be up to the proponents and whether they come up with the money. So I certainly will not be blaming the federal government if it does fail.

Heavy transport, in particular, is an industry which has successfully reversed many of the negative perceptions the public had about it. It is certainly a much better and safer industry than it was perhaps 10 years ago. People often associated the industry with road deaths, long hours and drugs, but fortunately that image has changed. There has been over the past five years a decrease of about 22 per cent in fatal crashes for articulated trucks. While one death is always one too many, there has been a great rate of improvement in conjunction with high productivity in the industry, and we should always welcome that. If we had the same sort of reduction in road deaths in ordinary cars in Australia, I think we would all be very thankful for that. Heavy vehicles already pay registration charges, which vary by truck type and axle loads, and a diesel fuel excise.

Australia’s national freight load is expected to double by 2015. That is a very large increase. The road transport share of that compared with rail’s share is expected to increase. It follows then that it is important to keep the trucking sector cost efficient to support Australian industry’s international competitiveness. The Howard government went a long way to keeping the transport industry efficient and competitive by maintaining and extending the on-road diesel grant and keeping the indirect tax burden low on trucking. Under the Labor government, this is not so any more. The decision by state and federal transport ministers to increase truck charges is short-sighted and counterproductive. It does not make sense in the face of growing freight volumes. The Labor government will be solely responsible for the inevitable serious damage to Australia’s exports and the economy as a result of these ill-considered increased charges.

Trucking operators currently manage the freight task on very limited profit margins and are not in a position to absorb additional costs. This bill will put pressure on freight rates, which will now rise. When I was doing my economics degree, the transport industry was often cited as a near perfect industry in its pricing structures because of the competitiveness in the industry. Customers will feel the impact of increased freight charges and, accordingly, consumers will feel the impact through increased costs of consumables such as food products, white goods and building materials—everything that Australians use daily. Supermarkets will raise their prices and this will further contribute to inflation.

The reduction in charges for smaller trucks will mean that the general public will now have to share the road with one-third more trucks than is necessary. We have a state Labor government in South Australia which turns a blind eye to road infrastructure in rural and regional areas. The addition of more trucks will have an impact on the overall safety of road use in the future and will significantly increase carbon emissions. Again, this goes against the grain of what this government professes to be trying to reduce: carbon emissions and inflation. So these measures are counterproductive with regard to these two so-called goals of this new government.

The increased revenue will not be returned to road upgrades where it is collected and will simply disappear into the black hole of consolidated revenue, where it will be eventually lost through Labor’s economic mismanagement at a state government level. There is no hypothecation, there is no guarantee and there is no instruction to the state governments that they must spend that income on roads. Why can’t the federal government insist on state governments spending that increased income from these taxes and registration fees on roads where it is sorely needed? State and federal Labor ministers have ignored the views of the trucking industry and the impact of higher charges.

The Howard government’s introduction of the GST and removal of sales tax had a significant impact on reducing the indirect tax burden on the trucking industry. We all know that batteries and tyres became cheaper as a result of that tax system, and many other areas of the transport industry also became cheaper. Even when there were costs, they became an input tax credit. It was actually very good for the transport industry, given the lack of increases over recent years in transport industry charges. The only real increases have been due to world oil prices, which have increased the price of diesel.

It is very important that we have proper planning for our road needs. Developments like the Alice Springs to Darwin railway line, particularly the development from Alice Springs to Darwin—some 90 years late many South Australians would believe, but it came eventually; again, an initiative of the Howard government—took some pressure off roads, but road transport is a growing need. This bill makes no attempt to fairly attribute road costs. In addition to freight services, road networks provide local access as well as significant services for passenger transport.

In a true user-pays system, road costs could reasonably be attributed to home and business owners. Some costs of road infrastructure also can be attributed to passenger vehicles and, I agree, to some trucks, and some costs inevitably are common to all users. What does not make economic sense is to attribute the need for road capital spending only to heavy vehicles, when there is no viable alternative means of transport. Heavy vehicles already pay their share of road spending through registration fees and a net fuel charge. The trucking industry believe in paying their fair share and do not shrink from the principle that the vehicles should pay their fair share of road construction costs as well as for the damage that they do to the road network. But the industry should not be loaded with more than its fair share. The increase in the road user charge does not ensure parity of road use with fair charges and will have a major impact on a vehicle’s operating costs. Registration charge increases, coupled with an increase in the road user charge, will impose heavy costs on the trucking industry, and these costs will have to be passed on to Australia’s dispersed communities and trade competing industries.

In January of this year, independently verified analysis undertaken by the Australian Trucking Association showed that heavy vehicles are currently overcharged by $130 million a year for road infrastructure spending and not undercharged as Labor has put forward. There is more to road usage than simple axle size and weight. The significant increases in registration charges for highly productive multi-combination vehicles, such as B-doubles and B-triples, do not make sense when compared with their record of delivering greatly enhanced safety and environmental performance. The registration charge increases carry the very real prospect that industry productivity, safety and environmental performance will stall as trucking operators revert back to greater utilisation of the semitrailer configuration and slow the uptake of B-triples.

It will be an unfortunate situation if the first significant road transport deliverable on COAG’s national reform agenda detracted from the productivity of the trucking industry. This will increase inflationary pressure in the community and reduce the competitiveness of Australia’s trade-competing industries. These changes might be more palatable if they were delivered in conjunction with a commitment to expand and improve routes such as Melbourne to Adelaide via the Dukes Highway, in my electorate, or Adelaide to Sydney via the Sturt Highway, also in my electorate. There is no such commitment other than that which was given by the Howard government; therefore, there will be no gains in productivity. The simple outcome is that the cost to consumers will be greater. It will certainly put up the price of groceries, as well as everything else that households buy. Truckies will struggle to maintain their businesses, and struggling farmers and low-income families in my electorate will be hit as increases flow through to them. (Time expired)

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