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

I rise to speak on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 because it is very important to my electorate and the sorts of things that I want to achieve as a member of parliament. In fact, my first speech after my maiden speech was about road infrastructure and the need for the improvement of road infrastructure in rural areas. I have certainly kept up speaking on that matter wherever I am because it is a very important issue to my electorate of Barker.

As Deputy Speaker Sidebottom would remember, together we were on an agriculture and regional services committee of this parliament. I can remember hearing from the then President of the Australian Local Government Association, John Ross. I know him well because he actually happens to be a councillor on my local government council, the Tatiara council. He raised the issue of the need for greater funding for rural roads, especially local government roads. He showed us quite clearly that if we kept up the present rate of funding our roads would only get worse because we were not spending enough.

The Howard government responded to that report with the Roads to Recovery program. I feel proud that together, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, we were part of that happening. It has been a great program for all the roads in local government areas in this country. It has certainly helped their funding for roads. In fact, in South Australia we got the best deal of the lot, probably because we were not getting such a good deal in other areas. Our funding increased by 118 per cent for every council in South Australia. I know the Australian average was about 70 per cent, which, in any terms, is still a very substantial increase in funding for roads. I was in local government for 11 years before coming to this place. When I talk to my local council people, they are very thankful for that program and I am pleased to say that, as part of this legislation, we will be guaranteeing that funding for another five years.

There are two main purposes to the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. The first is to change the definition of ‘road’ in the Auslink (National Land Transport) Act 2005 to allow for the funding of heavy vehicle facilities such as off-road rest stops. I think it is very important that we do that. The second purpose is to allow the Roads to Recovery program to be extended for another five years to 2014. That will certainly help planning for local government areas all around Australia.

For those of us with rural electorates, especially large rural electorates as in the case of Barker, AusLink is a critical program. My electorate is so large that it is about 10 per cent larger than Tasmania. You can imagine the roads we have in that electorate and many constituents travel large distances on rural and regional roads as they go about their business and family duties. Also this has critical safety implications for the heavy vehicle industry. This is of significant economic importance in Barker with a number of major heavy vehicle transport firms based throughout the electorate. It also has safety implications for other vehicles on the road. We have large transport hubs in the Mount Gambier area and Murray Bridge, in the Riverland and Bordertown. The AusLink national network comes right into my electorate. I have the privilege of travelling on that network nearly every day that I go to my office or around my electorate. It is a very important connecting corridor in my electorate, as it is in many other electorates around Australia.

AusLink focuses the Australian government’s future investment in land transport infrastructure by providing a strategic framework for the planning and funding of Australia’s key roads and railways to meet long-term economic and social needs. In the Roads to Recovery program element of AusLink, grants are paid directly to councils if there is a council for the relevant area. Councils receive those funds and the money is intended to supplement council road spending. One of the wonderful records of the Roads to Recovery program is that something like $375 million a year, if my memory serves me correctly, is administered by two public services. I think it is quite incredible that two public servants can administer that amount of money. We have given it to the local governments and they make the decisions. I have always been a great believer of local people making, as best they can, decisions for their local area because they know it better than we here in Canberra. So that has been a great part of the hugely efficient Roads to Recovery program—that that spending has had just two public servants to administer it. Funding is also applied to unincorporated areas—that is, where there is no local council such as in the area north of the Riverland in my electorate. I have a small part of that area. The rest of the unincorporated roads in South Australia are, I believe, in the electorate of Grey—and, of course, that is a pretty large electorate.

The Howard government established the Roads to Recovery program in 2000, and in July 2005 the program became part of AusLink. AusLink was a successful program under the Howard government, and the funding was $2.24 billion, of which $304 million was for Roads to Recovery. So I correct my earlier statement that it was $375 million. The actual figure in the last year was $304 million. This bill extends the Roads to Recovery program funding from 30 June 2009 until 30 June 2014. I suspect that, when we come nearer to 2014, we will be doing the same thing, because of the absolute necessity for this program.

The benefits of the Roads to Recovery program, particularly for local government with its responsibilities for some 800,000 kilometres of roads across our country, are well acknowledged and the extension of the program is well justified. Just last week, on 16 September, four people died in 40 minutes of horror in three separate accidents on South Australian roads. I note that the member for Wakefield referred to this in his contribution to the parliament as well. One of those horrific deaths was in Ki Ki, in my electorate, on the Dukes Highway. Two other people were seriously injured in that accident. It was a black day indeed on South Australian roads, and it reminds us of the responsibility we as members of parliament bear in road safety funding. I make the point because it was the Keating government, I think, that in error got rid of the black spot funding, and the Howard government restored that black spot funding. It has been so well recognised that our state government—and, I suspect, other state governments—have copied the Black Spot Program, even using the same name. It shows the necessity of that funding.

Successes of AusLink funding in my electorate include projects such as the $205 million for the Sturt Highway, a very important road because it services the Barossa and the Riverland and, of course, is the main road from Adelaide to Sydney. In 2003—I did not actually represent the area then; it was in the seat of Wakefield at the time—the Sturt Highway featured in the 10 most dangerous stretches of highway in Australia at that time, with 25 casualty crashes and four deaths. So $205 million committed by the Howard government to the Sturt Highway has gone a long way towards fixing up some of the problems that we had occurring on that road due to poor infrastructure.

We also spent enormous amounts on the Dukes Highway, on the South Australian side of the main road from Adelaide to Melbourne. I think we probably spent more money on the Dukes Highway than on any other road in South Australia, certainly in recent times. It is the most important road for South Australians, either for their local transport or for their interstate transport. It certainly has the highest traffic. I was able to get a grant of $15 million to spend on 17 kilometres of road from Bordertown to the Victorian border because the road infrastructure had deteriorated quite badly. It is now the best part of the Dukes Highway.

I also make the point that, because the road was so bad, the state government reduced the speed limit from 110 to 100 kilometres an hour, which we all thought was fair enough because the road had deteriorated, but now that it has been fixed up, and is the best part of the whole Dukes Highway from Adelaide to the Victorian border—some 250 kilometres, I would say, at a guess—they have kept that speed limit at 100 kilometres an hour, whereas on the rest of the Dukes Highway it is 110 kilometres an hour. And guess where they put the police radars. It is on that stretch where you would expect to be travelling at 110 but they have kept the limit at 100 kilometres an hour. That is why some people get cynical about revenue raising in the name of safety, because this is the safest part of the road and yet it has the lower speed limit.

So there has been a lot of money spent on road infrastructure already in my electorate, but there is a deal more to be done. Other critical needs include a bypass of Renmark—at the moment all the heavy traffic passes through the middle of Renmark, and I do not think that is a very satisfactory position—and the Truro bypass. Unfortunately, as a result of timing and running out of funding the state government has decided it cannot afford to do the Truro bypass. We need to fund the Penola bypass; the Murray Bridge to Karoonda road, which is quite shocking at times; long sections of the Mallee Highway; sections of the road from Bordertown to Loxton; and the Barossa Valley Way. That is very important for our tourism, not just for transport. Under AusLink, I have already obtained the funding for the Millicent bypass and the Mount Gambier Worrolong Road bypass and many others. Whilst there were some people on Worrolong Road that were concerned about having that as a bypass, we actually made it a better road and the trucks were using it as a bypass anyway, so this was really fixing up what was an existing position.

The Penola bypass is a major project and a critical safety issue for the town of Penola. The safety of pedestrians and vehicular traffic in Church Street, Penola, due to existing and increasing volumes of heavy traffic using the road, has been an issue of concern for the entire Penola community for some years. Current figures indicate that there are approximately 550 heavy transport vehicle movements through the Penola township per day, and that will significantly increase when the blue gum transportation traffic comes online.

I might add that Penola is where the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre and the Tenison Woods MacKillop Schoolhouse are located, and these bring many tourists into the town. I would like to think that we could rely less on the intervention of the blessed Mary MacKillop to assure the safety of tourists and residents in Penola and more on the government to intervene and fund the much-needed bypass. On 22 February 2008, I wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government about funding for the Penola bypass, but I have not yet received a reply. I note that the minister did actually attend a function at the nearby Coonawarra race day a couple of weeks before that, so he is well aware of the issue. It would be nice to actually get a reply from the minister to show that he has some real concern about a dangerous position.

Long-distance truck driving in Australia remains a dangerous occupation. Stressful work schedules and fatigue in the long-haul trucking industry have been well documented. Back in 2000 a report found that, compared to the UK and the USA, Australians were twice as likely to die in a crash involving a heavy vehicle. The Howard government legislated, and that has gone a long way to fixing that. I know that in my electorate the industry itself has cleaned up its act in ensuring the safety of its drivers. The trucking industry over the past five years has had about a 22 per cent decrease in fatal crashes for articulated trucks. So, while one death is one too many, there certainly has been a rate of improvement in conjunction with high productivity in the industry.

Nonetheless, long-haul driving is a tiring job and rest areas play an important role in helping all drivers manage their fatigue on the road. Roadside rest areas provide opportunities for heavy vehicle drivers to take rest breaks during work periods and to check their loads. Rest areas are a vital part of the road infrastructure on rural roads. The Australian Trucking Association have called for heavy vehicle rest areas on key interstate routes to be given a high funding priority, and I support this. Whilst they have nominated 18 priority rest areas for funding, regrettably there are none in my electorate. I can assure them there are plenty of areas where there should be, although I note they have left it open in South Australia to submit more. There is also plenty of scope for the state Labor government to match the funding. In fact, it was the South Australian Road Transport Association Executive Director, Steve Shearer, who recently pointed out that the Australian national highway network should have 22,000 rest areas for heavy vehicle drivers instead of the current 986.

This bill will give the government the legal power to fund truck rest areas under its Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program and it will also open the way for the government to provide more money for rest areas under its AusLink land transport program in the years to come. Unfathomably, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government has said that the funding of rest stops is contingent on the passage of previously defeated bills which imposed higher registration costs on heavy vehicles and which would have bankrupted small owner-driver operations. While I am pleased that there is nothing in this bill that reflects that contingency, I recall saying in this place earlier this year that heavy vehicle operators already pay significant registration charges, which vary by truck type and varying axle loads, and diesel fuel excise.

Australia’s national freight load is expected to double by 2015—and let me remind the House that is only seven years away—and road transport’s share of this compared with rail is expected to increase. It follows then that it is important to keep the Australian trucking sector cost efficient to support Australian industry’s international competitiveness. Many truck drivers in my electorate are small business owner-operators who have taken out substantial mortgages so they can cover the cost of their vehicles, which need replacing every five years or so. Holding safety to ransom, as the minister would have done by linking funding for rest stops to increased registration charges, is not reflective of a responsible government.

In conclusion, I remind the Rudd Labor government that rural and regional Australians are already hurting from this government’s abolition of funding programs, to the tune of $1 billion, and that these are people who are not fooled by spin. Our country’s truck drivers deserve safety and support with no strings attached, and rural and regional Australians who have little or no public transport options deserve a decent road system. For this reason I commend the bill to the House.

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