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

The shadow minister says it is not in the bill. There are a lot of things that are not in the bill. This is about registration charges. The changes in excise that you spoke about are not in the bill either. This debate is about two things. One is the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill. This adopts new heavy vehicle charges for vehicles registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme from 1 July 2008. It ensures that federal charges are consistent with state and territory registration charges. They will go ahead anyway, so let us not create a two-tiered system. The second is the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Repeal Bill 2008, which repeals the 1993 act and allows the ACT government to introduce new heavy vehicle registration charges into its own legislative arrangements in the same manner as other states and territories. In total the bills deliver the road transport reform requested by the Council of Australian Governments with broad agreement from the industry. The reform follows the self-evident principle that the heavy vehicle industry should pay for its share of the infrastructure costs incurred by governments. I commend the bills to the House.

Question put:

That this bill be now read a second time.

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