Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and cognate bill. Before we get into the substance of the bills, I welcome to the parliament today Drysdale Primary School and Gary Vaughan, who is looking after a group of 70 kids from Drysdale Primary School who will be here later in the day. Drysdale Primary School is within my electorate of Corio. It is always a wonderful thing to me to be able to go out to Drysdale Primary School, which is a fantastic school run under the stewardship of its principal, Claire Wilson.

These students come to this place in a very significant week. They will see some important discussions about our nation’s affairs, not the least of which is this debate, as well as the debates afterwards on the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Amendment Bill 2008 and, particularly relevant to them, the Tax Laws Amendment (Education Refund) Bill 2008. So I very much welcome them to the parliament and hope that they have an educational and enjoyable time.

This bill amends the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act of 1985, and it does so to enable the implementation of a new registration system of charges under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme as detailed in the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination. The minister, in his second reading speech in relation to this bill, noted that there are approximately 365,000 heavy vehicles currently operating in Australia. The work that the heavy vehicle industry performs is vital for our national economy. It generates $1.95 billion per annum in revenue for road funding. To put that in some kind of context, the total national road funding expenditure in Australia is currently running at $11.67 billion per annum. This revenue is generated through the application of registration fees and through the road user charge.

The National Transport Commission has identified that the current revenue-raising methods provide for a shortfall of about $168 million per annum in relation to the heavy vehicle industry share of road usage. The Council of Australian Governments has determined that the costs associated with providing our national road network to the heavy vehicle industry ought to be fully recovered. That is, in its essence, the fundamental purpose of this bill that we are debating today. It brings the federal charges into line with those that currently exist under state registration systems and state enforcement systems. It ensures that there is a uniformity amongst heavy vehicle registration charges throughout Australia.

By providing that consistency we will also remove what might otherwise serve as a disincentive for the states to invest in road infrastructure designed to serve the heavy vehicle industry. That said, the Rudd government understands the vital importance of the Australian heavy vehicle industry to our national economy, and also the difficult conditions under which drivers in the heavy vehicle industry operate. It is for that reason that part of the proceeds that arise from this bill will go into a government fund—a $70 million fund—for heavy vehicle safety and productivity, which will provide a safer working environment for those who are driving heavy vehicles and, of course, therefore provide a safer environment for all Australians who share their roads with heavy vehicles.

Before I entered the parliament, in my previous career it was my great honour and privilege to serve as an official of the Transport Workers Union—indeed, ultimately as its national assistant secretary. The Transport Workers Union is a body which represents 85,000 transport workers around Australia, a number of whom work in the heavy vehicle industry. So it is an industry with which I am familiar and so I am also very familiar with the pressures that are placed upon those who drive heavy vehicles. But I also understand, through that experience, the importance of continued investment in road infrastructure, which is what this bill will ultimately provide. It will increase productivity and it will provide for a safer working environment for all drivers of heavy vehicles.

The industry supports this measure. The Business Council of Australia’s Infrastructure: roadmap for reform in September of 2007 stated:

We need to ensure that high productivity (that is, larger and longer travelling) trucks are charged appropriately. Not only will this help road/rail neutrality, it will facilitate having B Doubles and B Triples on our roads.

According to current forecasts, those needs only stand to increase. There is a real imperative for additional infrastructure investment, particularly in our road network. Our nation’s roads carry 72 per cent of all the annual national freight tonnage in Australia, and Engineers Australia predict that the current national freight tonnage will double over the next 20 years. If you add to that the overall projected increase of 2.6 per cent in road usage and congestion you can see that there will be a significant demand placed upon our road system by all vehicles leading up to 2020. You can then see what will happen if you do not have that investment. You will move to a point where the level of road congestion ends up stifling productivity and growth. This, indeed, has been one of the key capacity constraints on the productive capacity of our economy, which is why it is so essential that we now invest in our road transport infrastructure.

The Rudd government understands that roads are the arteries of our nation. They provide cheap and accessible means for industry to transport goods around our country. Their maintenance and expansion is utterly critical to continued national growth and productivity. This is an understanding which has permeated through federal Labor governments going back into history. It was the Whitlam government in 1974, for example, that established the national highway system with the National Roads Act 1974. It was Paul Keating, in his One Nation statement of February 1992, who articulated the importance of transport infrastructure to the national interest. Indeed, it was the vision contained in that document which was vital to the establishment of many of the ring roads which now encompass our nation’s cities—such as Melbourne’s Western Ring Road, which the Keating government funded to the tune of $555 million. As well in that package was the upgrading of rail links between major capitals such as Melbourne and Sydney, and Sydney and Brisbane.

Of course, in the first budget of the Rudd government in May of this year, funding was provided for the completion of the Geelong ring road, which is in my electorate, and that road will be utterly critical to the continued growth and prosperity of the Geelong region. Indeed, the Rudd government allocated over $3 billion for road funding for the current financial year in the May budget, and in doing so it maintained the ALP’s legacy of nation building in this area. Under the Hawke and Keating governments, average funding per annum for roads ran at a rate of $2.3 billion. Conversely, in the first eight years of the Howard government, that average dropped to $2.05 billion, representing a total reduction of $2 billion in spending on our road infrastructure system during that period. Overall, it represented an 11 per cent reduction over the term of the Howard government in spending per annum on our nation’s road infrastructure compared to the spending that occurred under the Hawke-Keating government.

The diminished level of investment in our nation’s road infrastructure coincided—and it is no coincidence that it did so—with a corresponding drop in national productivity growth under the Howard government. In 1995-96 the annual increase in labour productivity was running at a rate of 3.7 per cent. In 2007-08 the rate of productivity growth had fallen to 1.1 per cent. In 2006-07 productivity was increasing at a rate of 0.9 per cent. In fact, on average the rate of productivity growth in the four years leading up to 2007-08 was only 1.2 per cent. The Howard government had a multiplicity of views when it came to infrastructure investment and productivity. There was absolutely no consistency at all in the way they acted. The former member for Lyne, the former Deputy Prime Minister, said in this place on 20 June 2007:

You—

in reference to the government—

need to continue to invest in much-needed infrastructure across the country to continue increasing competitiveness and productivity.

Yet, at the same time, there was a decreasing level of funding and an ignoring of the infrastructure capacity constraints which then existed in our economy. What we saw from the Howard government was mere blaming of the states—buck-passing for their alleged underinvestment in infrastructure. The hypocrisy in all of that would have made Machiavelli himself blush. But the Rudd government is utterly committed to improving our nation’s infrastructure, to meeting the current shortfalls in our infrastructure and to removing the capacity constraints on our nation’s economy so that we can allow it to grow. We are committed to investing in the nation’s road network to ease congestion, to provide increased capacity and to increase access for Australia’s heavy vehicle operators to our national road system. Most importantly, we are committed to ensuring that our nation’s roads are safer for heavy vehicle drivers and for all users. This bill assists the government in meeting those commitments.

This bill allows regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges for application to Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles. In doing so, it enables the implementation of registration charges prescribed in the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination as devised by the National Transport Commission. The determination was requested by the Council of Australian Governments following the April 2007 meeting chaired by the former Prime Minister, and it was in part a response to the 2006 Productivity Commission study which found that heavy vehicles and the heavy vehicle industry were not paying their fair share of infrastructure costs. That meant, accordingly, that those vehicles were gaining an unreasonable advantage over rail and also over smaller trucks operating on the road. So what this scheme will do is to bring the new charging regime into line. It brings registration costs for heavy vehicles registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme into line with the same levels of cost of registration which currently exist in the states. It is important to understand that only three per cent of heavy vehicles are in fact registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme; the remainder are registered under the state schemes.

Part of the proceeds that will come from this bill will be directed into a $70 million heavy vehicle safety package. At the moment approximately one in five road deaths involves a heavy vehicle. Speed is regarded as the causing factor in 30 per cent of those crashes and driver fatigue in 60 per cent. According to the report of a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts inquiry in the year 2000, entitled Beyond the midnight oil: managing fatigue in transport, fatigue was regarded as being a factor in 20 to 30 per cent of general motorists’ accidents, costing the nation around $3 billion per year, while heavy vehicle accidents related to fatigue cost around $300 million per year. These are very disturbing figures, both in the contribution that they make to the very tragic size of our national road toll—which last year totalled 1,616 people—and in the staggering costs which they impose upon our nation’s economy. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Transport Workers Union on all of its campaigns, and in particular its recent campaign to highlight the importance of safety within the heavy vehicle industry. One of the key elements of that campaign has been to stress the importance of managing driver fatigue. (Quorum formed)

I am impressed by the power of the Transport Workers Union; the mere mention of their name sees the opposition jump to their feet and close down the debate. But I would like to congratulate the Transport Workers Union on the campaigns that they have run in relation to safety within the transport industry and, in particular, the heavy vehicle industry. If you go to their website, you will find a video which has some stark footage which compares the effects of fatigue amongst office workers to those driving trucks. The video ends with the office worker tired, the result of that fatigue being that they drop their coffee cup. Of course, it then cuts to the tired driver of a heavy vehicle, and the consequences of their fatigue are much more considerable.

In conclusion, this bill will provide increased uniformity and fairness in heavy vehicle registration fees. It will assist in improving safety within the heavy vehicle industry and within the road transport industry in general. It will also assist the government in rectifying the years of disinvestment in infrastructure, which was the hallmark of the previous government. The Rudd government is determined to address infrastructure capacity constraints. We are determined to increase productivity and access to suitable roads for Australia’s heavy vehicle operators, as demonstrated by the investments announced in the last budget. This bill absolutely forms part of the Rudd government’s commitment to its nation-building agenda.

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