Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I enjoyed what I heard of the member for Dunkley’s contribution. It makes me think that the federal government should have a major cities unit. And guess what? Now we have one. The Labor government have introduced a major cities unit; we are putting up our hands and accepting responsibility for infrastructure and planning in our cities in a way that the previous government, in which the member for Dunkley was a minister, never did. I will let the member for Dunkley stand up for his urban electorate and I will get on with making sure that my regional electorate gets its fair share of the infrastructure, planning and investment that is now happening under the Rudd Labor government.

As I make my contribution on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008, I note that it is such a pleasure to be able to speak with such regularity these days about what is happening in the area of infrastructure, planning and investment. It is one of the major priorities of the Rudd Labor government and it is certainly not before time. This bill has two main purposes: the first is to change the definition of a road that is contained in the AusLink act to allow funding of heavy vehicle facilities, such as off-road rest stops, and the second is to allow the Roads to Recovery program, which is funded under the AusLink act, to be extended for another five years.

I turn firstly to the Roads to Recovery program, which has been warmly welcomed and made much use of by my local councils since its inception in 2000 or 2001. Roads to Recovery provides funds to local councils to upgrade and maintain their road networks, to make them as efficient and as safe as possible. The Rudd Labor government is increasing funding under this bill, so increasing the funding that goes direct from the Commonwealth government to councils to do that important work at the local level. We are now going to be providing funding of $350 million per year—that is an increase of $50 million a year—to councils for those important works. I was speaking to one of my Rockhampton regional council councillors yesterday. Greg Belz has been one of the driving forces at the local level in making good use of the Roads to Recovery money. He is certainly welcoming the increase that Rockhampton Regional Council will receive under the new funding arrangements.

This bill confirms the government’s commitment to extending the Roads to Recovery program. It was set to expire on 30 June 2009. We are now extending that for a further five years. As I said, we are increasing the total funding by $50 million a year, or $250 million over the five-year program, compared to the previous government’s allocations under the Roads to Recovery scheme. My councils can now get on with making plans to improve our local roads, and I am very sure that they will be doing that as we speak. Just to confirm the funding that those councils will be receiving under the next round of Roads to Recovery: Rockhampton Regional Council is getting $1,845,000 this year; Mackay Regional Council, $1,719,000; Isaac Regional Council, which contains the mining towns in my electorate, is getting $2,368,000, which reflects the size of that council and the many local roads that that council is responsible for; and the Whitsunday Regional Council, which represents a small portion of Capricornia, is getting just over $1 million in the next year. I look forward to benefiting from those road improvements as I spend time driving around my electorate with the other road users in Capricornia. As I said, this is a program that local councils have very much come to rely on. It is a very popular program. With the announcement that the Rudd government will extend the program for five years, the Australian Local Government Association gave its endorsement, saying that the Roads to Recovery program is an essential element in local government’s ability to maintain and upgrade the local road network.

As I was saying, the other part of this bill is to make a technical amendment but one that has significant implications. It is to change the definition of a ‘road’ in the existing act. That is to facilitate the work that the government want to do in rolling out our heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. This was announced earlier this year, in the May budget. It is one of several measures aimed at reducing fatigue which include the new heavy vehicle driver fatigue laws coming into effect later this month. We are now set to dedicate $70 million of funding towards the heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. Much of that will go towards building additional rest stops on our highways, rest areas and parking areas, heavy vehicle bays, decoupling areas, weigh stations and similar facilities, and we are waiting on the Senate to agree to the road user charge increase that we brought before the House earlier this year. It is curious that the opposition have taken the position that they have on the road user charge, because it was actually proposed by them when they were in government in 2007. They are now playing a spoiling role in the Senate, which I guess we are getting used to, and holding up the funding under that charge. What we want to do is to get on with implementing our heavy vehicle safety and productivity package and using the $70 million earmarked out of the road user charge to do that important work of building rest areas and parking bays, particularly for our truck drivers, who are out there working hard and need more opportunities to rest and to stay safe.

In a release in March this year the Australian Trucking Association commented on the release of the Austroads report. The report is pretty damning reading, to be honest. The release says:

… the report audited the rest areas along 12,700 kilometres of Australia’s major freight routes against the national guidelines for rest area facilities.

Austroads is a government research agency that was commissioned to do that work. It continues:

The report concluded that none of Australia’s major highways fully meet the national guidelines, which require a major rest area every 100 kilometres, a minor rest area every 50 kilometres, and a small truck parking bay every 30 kilometres …

This is of particular concern to me, as someone who represents an electorate in Queensland where there is an incredible amount of not just your standard semis and B-doubles but trucks hauling huge pieces of machinery on roads that are getting busier and busier with normal traffic as well. The report found that the problem of the shortage of rest areas was especially acute in Queensland and particularly on the Bruce Highway. I have about 400 kilometres of the Bruce Highway running through my electorate, and that is of particular concern to me on behalf of the thousands of people and trucks using that road every week. The Labor government, as I said, have committed to doing something about that, to doing our bit to increase the number of rest areas, and we look forward to the opposition supporting us in that effort by passing the road user charge and allowing those funds to flow.

Another part of the government’s commitment to road safety is the spending that we have committed to for the Bruce Highway. Of course, that funding is being pledged through the next round of AusLink. It is coming forward between 2009 and 2014. This formed a major plank of our election commitments to Queensland, and to Capricornia in particular. We have committed $2.2 billion to the Bruce Highway over the five years of the AusLink 2 funding program and we are already seeing work starting in my electorate on some of the highest priority road projects. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government was in Mackay just last week. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

Debate adjourned.

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