Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank those members of the House who have contributed to the debate on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 and the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Repeal Bill 2008. I wish to make some comments on their contributions. According to opposition members, you would think that the previous government had no role at all in developing this legislation. That is not so. This is yet another example of a coalition that has lost its way, saying one thing when it was in government and the opposite since it has been in opposition. Indeed, you can trace the genesis of the legislation back many years. The 2004 energy white paper endorsed by the Howard government as its policy framework for securing Australia’s energy future has the following to say at page 100:

The transport sector has long argued that the current excise arrangements for heavy vehicles, defined as those with a gross vehicle mass of 4.5 tonnes or more, are inefficient and need reform. The government has listened and will introduce reforms to remove inefficiencies and ensure the excise system plays a more positive role in supporting Australia’s transport task.

The existing partial excise applying to fuel used in heavy vehicles will be formally recognised and set as a non-hypothecated road user charge from 1 July 2006. The value of the charge will be set in accordance with the National Transport Commission’s heavy vehicle charging determination process. This cooperative federal-state process assesses the impact of heavy vehicles on road costs, and is used by the states and territories to set and adjust registration charges for these vehicles. The excise-based charge will be adjusted annually in the way that the states and the territories adjust registration fees. Changes to the charge will be made by the varying level of effective excise through adjustments in the level of the excise credit paid for fuel used in heavy vehicles.

The 2006 Productivity Commission study into road and rail infrastructure pricing commissioned by the Howard government found under-recovery of infrastructure costs occurs in the heavy vehicle industry. In April 2007, COAG, under the Howard government, required the Australian Transport Council to devise a new charges determination that did three things—fully recovered the costs from the heavy vehicle industry, ended cross-subsidisation between heavy vehicle classes and indexed charges. The National Transport Commission devised a determination and commenced consultation with the industry in 2007.

In a speech given on 28 June 2007 entitled ‘The coalition government’s transport reform agenda’ the member for Lyne, the then federal transport minister and Leader of the Nationals, said:

The National Transport Commission will develop a new heavy vehicle charges determination to be implemented from 1 July 2008. The new determination will aim to recover the heavy vehicles’ allocated infrastructure costs in total and will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

That was the coalition policy. The difference between the coalition policy and what is in this legislation is that this legislation delays the charge until 1 January 2009 and we have a safety and productivity package. We have listened to the industry and responded accordingly. The opposition are simply not fair dinkum in saying they oppose these bills. They set up the processes. They said it was their policy. This bill of course allows for a change in cost and cross-subsidisation. At the moment the smaller of the heavy vehicles are subsidising the larger vehicles. Common sense tells you that the smaller vehicles tend to be operated much more by smaller, family owned businesses and often owner-drivers.

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