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

It is with great pleasure that I speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. I have to make the comment, though, that when the government members have spoken on these bills they seem to have forgotten about a program called AusLink. AusLink was a creature of the Howard government. It did a lot for our country and would have continued to do so. In fact, I think the last amount we spent in government on AusLink in about five years was $38 billion. To put that into perspective, in real money terms that is about eight times the size of the Snowy Mountains scheme. So it was a nation-building exercise and, whilst we do not have a problem with the nation-building exercises of the present government, it almost seems strange that this government does not give any credit where credit is due.

My electorate under AusLink, in the last three years alone, got $225 million for main roads. There is the Dukes Highway, which is the main highway from Adelaide to Melbourne, and the Sturt Highway, which is one that goes through the Barossa, the Riverland and on to Sydney. So they are two major highways which have received a huge and very necessary commitment in funding. Of course, on top of that we had the Roads to Recovery program which every local government in Australia is very thankful for because of what it has delivered for local roads. In many cases we have been in partnership with both state and local governments all around Australia to improve our roads. In fact, the first speech in this parliament that I made after my maiden speech was about infrastructure. That is something that I feel is very important. I know you do too, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, because we as a committee in our first term brought down one of the most important standing committee reports to do with infrastructure in rural areas and that is something that we are both very proud of.

Like the member for Groom, I also have a heavy truck licence. It would be interesting to actually see how many people in this chamber have a heavy truck licence. I have been involved with trucks all my life being a farmer. The first truck that I grew up with was an approximately 1953 Chevy long-nose truck and it did not have any indicators. It had a thing that stuck outside the door and you pulled it to say you were turning right or you put your hand up to say you were stopping. We have come a long way since then. In fact, when my parents got their driver’s licenses, they wrote away for them. It was a bit like getting them in a Kellogg’s Cornflakes packet—you just wrote away and got a licence. To this day, I think, my 91-year-old mother still has a licence to drive a semitrailer. Thank God, she has never tried, although she is quite a good driver in her own right.

The semitrailers, the B-doubles and the road trains that we have in this country now have certainly made the transport industry much more efficient than it was when we just had the simple lorries of, say, 50 years ago which were basically all we had. If you look at our transport industry in comparison with, say, Europe’s, we are far more efficient because they still have a large number of lorries rather than the B-doubles and the semis that we have, certainly in the same sorts of ratios.

Indeed I still have a truck on my farm, which my son runs. It is an international ACCO bullnose truck. One of the great enjoyments I always had was driving the truck because generally if I was driving the truck it meant I had something in the back that was worth some money. That is why it was important—whether it was carting hay, grain, lucerne seed or sheep, there was always something in the back that was going to be part of my income. The transport industry is a very important part of our economy. I do not think anybody doubts that and I do not think anyone doubts what this legislation will do for the transport industry. It is nowhere near as large as AusLink, but it is nonetheless a very important part of what we do as members of parliament.

Transport is a major industry in my electorate of Barker and the road network is a challenge across the region. We all take it to heart as MPs when somebody dies on our roads and we believe those roads could have been better. We wish we could have made sure that that sort of thing did not happen. Unfortunately, you can never engineer or legislate against stupidity or people who, through lack of attention, make mistakes. Often it is in a split second and we have fatalities as a result.

The city of Mount Gambier in my electorate is situated midway between Melbourne and Adelaide and is the centre for a very large transport industry. It is the transport hub for Scott’s Transport, K&S Freighters, SWF Transport and many other trucking companies, and all of Mount Gambier’s and the surrounding region’s industries rely heavily on incoming or outgoing freight services.

Elsewhere, firms like Ielasi Carriers, McKenzie Freighters and many others contribute billions of dollars annually to South Australia’s gross domestic product. While a firm like Scott’s Transport in Mount Gambier would have at least 600 trucks, there are many small business owner-drivers in the electorate struggling to cover the costs of diesel, which daily gets closer to $2 a litre, as well as the expenses involved in increased registration charges along with higher maintenance costs of their vehicles.

Given that transport and in particular heavy vehicle transport is of immense importance in my electorate, I have taken a very keen interest in the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 before us today. If the Labor government is so keen on bringing forward bills which aim to increase the road user charge by 1.3c a litre and raise charges for vehicles under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme then it is essential that any benefits of those charges be returned to the industry and its hardworking operators.

Fatigue is a significant issue for drivers in South Australia and indeed for all of Australia. We have vast wide-open spaces and fatigue is particularly relevant for those travelling long distances in our rural road environment. It is estimated that heavy vehicle driver fatigue is estimated to cause about 30 fatal crashes, 150 serious crashes and 3,200 minor accidents a year. The provision of rest opportunities for drivers through heavy vehicle rest areas is therefore paramount in addressing fatigue related crashes.

Historically, rest areas in South Australia have been subject to greater criticism by road users and representative groups. Criticisms of rest areas in South Australia include their poor quality compared with other states both visually and functionally, and I can certainly attest to that; that many of them are poorly maintained, with particular issues being rubbish and damaged facilities; a lack of toilets—many rest areas have used toilet paper and human waste present because there is a lack of toilets, and that is not a very nice thing for anyone; and, in many cases, the use of those rest areas for stacking aggregate for building future roads. It seems to have been a convenient place for local government but mostly, I think, state government to deposit all that aggregate, which of course takes space away from those rest areas. A further criticism is the lack of truck-friendly rest areas. Many rest areas are prohibited to trucks for whatever reason, although historically used by the industry. Another criticism is the inappropriate size of rest areas. Many of them, because they were built some time ago, do not have the required capacity for the number of trucks and B-doubles in my area. At some rest areas, it is necessary for road trains to turn across traffic to access the rest area, which is contrary to regulations for these vehicles. So there are still many complaints about the rest areas around South Australia.

Fatigue is not the only reason that drivers break up long-distance trips; they also need rest stops, toilet stops and time to consume the food they have with them. Unfortunately, there is also a growing trend for tourist travellers, with a large percentage of new caravans and all motorhomes being self-contained, to camp for free in rest areas, and that is not what they were designed for. Whilst I support tourism, especially in my electorate—we welcome everyone; we have a green light at all the borders to encourage people to come into the electorate—we should encourage caravan and campervan drivers to plan their journeys to take advantage of the available opportunities in towns and commercial facilities. They need to do this so as not to impact on the ability of heavy vehicle drivers to continue to utilise the rest area facilities for genuine fatigue management reasons at any hour of the day or night.

In June of this year, the Rann Labor government identified a number of locations in my home state of South Australia where the demand for rest stops is high. These included the South Eastern Freeway; Dukes Highway, between Tintinara and Bordertown; the Sturt Highway, between Waikerie and the Victorian border; and the Sturt Highway, between Truro and Gawler. All of these come within the electorate of Barker. Others out of the electorate were Port Wakefield Road, between Port Wakefield and Gepps Cross, and approaches to Port Augusta.

In August 2008 the Australian Trucking Association called for heavy vehicle rest areas on key interstate routes to be given the highest funding priority, which makes sense in a lot of ways. In its submission to the government, the ATA provided a list of 18 priority locations where new or expanded rest areas are needed right now across Australia. Confusingly, there was only one specified in South Australia and it was not in my electorate. It is a mystery to me why the critical areas identified by the state Labor government just months earlier were not included. However, I am pleased to note the South Australian Road Transport Association is submitting an additional list of rest areas in South Australia to the Australian government for its consideration. I trust this list, whenever it is submitted, will include areas identified in the electorate of Barker and that attention to these areas will not be delayed in any way for not being on the recent list.

Monday, 29 September 2008 saw the introduction of the new fatigue laws in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The new fatigue laws require truck drivers to take more breaks, including seven hours of continuous rest every 24 hours, and to drive fewer hours each day. I remember that one of my neighbours used to do a regular trip to Perth, non-stop, which took him 25 hours. I do not think we should ever encourage that sort of practice. So we have new fatigue laws requiring truck drivers to stop for rest breaks more often, but there simply are not enough places for them to stop. It is all well and good to have these laws in place but, if they have nowhere to stop, what is the point? It is putting the cart before the horse. These new laws to reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue will only work if there are enough rest areas for drivers to stop. They cannot just park on the shoulder of a major highway and go to sleep for seven hours; it is unsafe and it is likely they would not be able to sleep anyway because of the passing traffic.

The Australian Trucking Association’s recent audit concluded that none of Australia’s major highways have enough rest areas to meet the national guidelines. I will repeat that: none of Australia’s major highways have enough rest areas to meet the national guidelines. The ATA said in their media release of 22 August 2008 that thousands of new rest areas are needed across the country, including on state roads. Specifically, they called for 900 new truck stops to be built by the year 2019 on the AusLink network and they have given their support to the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill before us today in return for a commitment from the Rudd Labor government.

The lack of places for heavy vehicles to stop is not unique to South Australia, and the Australian Transport Association says thousands more are needed to address the severe shortage of truck stops around Australia. They call for capacity upgrades to the existing rest areas, given the rest areas just are not big enough to cope with the larger number of trucks that will need to stop at each place.

The amendments to the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill proposed by the coalition today are necessary to ensure that the heavy vehicle industry benefits from the higher charges being imposed on trucking companies and owner-drivers. Labor should not be free to index the excise at will. They have certainly got form in that: the Hawke government had an automatic excise increase in line with the CPI. What Labor are proposing here is a road user charge that is actually greater than the CPI, and they should not be allowed to do that without further parliamentary scrutiny and negotiation. If these amendments do not succeed, the Rudd Labor government will have given itself yet another stealth tax lacking in scrutiny and consultation and with no need to justify why the increase is necessary. Our proposed amendments would require the government to adopt an open and transparent system for setting the road user charge, instead of indexation.

A few weeks ago in this place I spoke out about the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government’s stated intention to link the passage of AusLink legislation to the release of funds for rest areas. While he ultimately did not reflect that in the legislation, it nonetheless revealed that we do not have a minister with the safety of Australia’s heavy vehicle drivers in mind. Holding the safety of drivers to ransom at a time when there are not enough rest areas for truck drivers on Australia’s major highways reflects the level to which this government will stoop.

Lack of rest areas means that drivers are forced to press on when they are fatigued—a serious threat to road safety. Just last week the Chief Executive of the Australian Trucking Association, a former member of this House, Stuart St Clair, provided details of a report by the government research agency Austroads. It has audited the rest areas along 12,700 kilometres of Australia’s major freight routes against the national guidelines for rest area facilities. 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. We are certainly nowhere near that.

It is with reluctance that I support bills which impose higher charges on the Australian transport industry, but I do support these bills because of the assurance of the industry bodies, such as the Australian Trucking Association, that the industry will wear the charge in return for a commitment to a specified number of rest areas. I support them because it would be unfair to impose tough penalties under the new fatigue laws on truck drivers who have to keep driving because there is not a rest area nearby where they can stop safely. I give notice to the government that I will be watching them very closely on this commitment. I expect to see evidence in the form of many more rest areas as I travel throughout my electorate.

My electorate is bigger than Tasmania. I do a lot of travelling. Every day that I have been in my electorate since I was elected I have averaged over 300 kilometres. Because of the size of my electorate that is the amount of travelling that I have to do to service my constituents. It is not unusual to have a 500- or 600-kilometre round trip in one day, because of the size of the electorate. This is not something I complain about; it is just a fact of life. I do see a lot of our roads and get to know every turn, corner, bump and hole.

I used to regularly ring up the former minister and say, ‘We need to do a bit of work on this road’—the Dukes Highway or the Sturt Highway—‘We need to fix this up.’ In time we did get those patches filled. That was not just as a result of my complaints, as I am sure other people made the same sorts of complaints. Like most members of parliament, when the road is in your electorate you believe it is your road and you take responsibility for that road and what happens on it.

I commend this legislation to the parliament and wish it well in the future. I hope we can get some support for the amendments that we propose. They are only about transparency and commitment, and that is all we are after.

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