Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is important legislation, and the opposition has good grounds to oppose certain aspects of it. It is about time that the government ceased justifying bad legislation by the simple act of accusing somebody else of taking a political position. Overall, the fundamental of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 is that all truck owners will pay an additional 1.36c a litre in what is actually an excise, otherwise known as a road user charge. They of course will, if they are able, pass that on to the consumers who reside in many parts of my electorate and certainly the bulk of the area of Western Australia, where in fact there is no rail service. It is very notable in Western Australia that there has been a very proactive approach to the trucking industry in terms of truck configurations because the government in that state, be it Liberal or Labor, has had no reason to protect an inefficient, union dominated rail system, which of course is most evident in New South Wales, where they are still trying to make railway lines work where they will not. I note now that the unions have just convinced the new Premier to hand back the ferries. I bet being run entirely by the government will make them work on time!

Personally, I have never been able to understand why governments who quite properly wish to provide services to the community have to own the shop to deliver the service, when in fact they can contract it out to the private sector, guarantee better service and of course reduce the cost to the taxpayer—whom I always thought was our prime responsibility in this place, not some union heavy who is getting worried about his superannuation. The reality is it is people for whom we have a responsibility and it is people who will pay. Working families, as we were once reminded, will pay this 1.36c.

Some of the other legislation is of a routine nature. For instance, it harmonises the type of registration fee—that is, the licence fee that the average motorist knows and understands—that is levied against transport vehicles in the states and is revenue that the states retain. Not all of them bother to spend it on roads, I might add. But the circumstances of the ‘road user’ charge, which was a Howard government initiative, involved a decision to try and identify the contribution that the trucking industry should pay for roads. Roads are typically built for motorists because they have got more votes than truckies. And it is a reality that some of the huge expense incurred by governments today is in accommodating the clutter that occurs in our capital cities because of motor cars, with the odd truck interposed. So the first issue therefore is: how should trucks pay?

The railways are constantly complaining that they provide their own ‘road’, but often that is not the case anymore. We have hedge companies and investment funds these days that buy the railway line as such and then rent it out to various other companies, such as Pacific National, just to think of one name, and Queensland Rail in Western Australia which operates the rolling stock. So that complaint is often not substantiated. But, to return to the pure economics of this, they put the argument that truckies do not pay enough and that is why they are so competitive. Of course, that competition flows through to the consumer.

The reality is that a figure, of around 18.5c a litre, was arrived at as a significant and properly calculated charge on the trucking industry for every litre of fuel they use—and the bigger the truck the more fuel they use, so that is quite a sensible approach—for their share of use of the roads. The proposal that is coming forward today in this legislation is that that road user charge should be increased. I might add that the mechanism by which this charge was levied was to say to the truckies: ‘You pay full tote, including full excise’—36c a litre, or thereabouts—‘when you purchase your fuel. You then write in at the end of each month and submit a claim for a rebate of that amount less the 18.5c.’ That is going to be increased and they will get a lesser rebate. That will cause quite significant difficulties when you consider that there are trucks on the road that burn virtually a litre of fuel in a couple of minutes.

The question we have is whether this charge should be levied when the government have indicated they want the money for a specific purpose: they intend to hypothecate it to the construction of road stops. The shadow minister for transport pointed out what these so-called road stops are for. They are not service stations. They are a clearing on the side of the road, sometimes with a few basic amenities, where a truck driver can stop his vehicle primarily to meet his rest requirements. Truckies are no longer considered to be able to drive until they drop. In fact, the law provides that they should have adequate rest periods. There is nothing wrong with that idea. But the fact of life is that east of the Western Australia-South Australia-Northern Territory border, proof of how they take those stops is kept in a logbook. Western Australian authorities have always understood that that is joke because there is no proper surveillance. Nobody sits on your shoulder while you fill in your logbook, and there are special signals transferred between truckies to let you know that down the road there is a checking point, so you stop your truck and fill in your details—and it is always pure and perfect. But it is a waste of time because it is not an adequate means of surveillance.

As a truck owner I used to get new trucks installed with a speedo—it was not all that expensive—that recorded what the truck was actually doing. They were quite a simple device. They had little circular graphs in them that could tell you whether the truck was stationary, whether—from my perspective—the bloke had stopped and kept the engine running to keep the air conditioner on, whether he had ripped off with the prime mover to meet his girlfriend. I could find out all that from those little circular graphs, and how far the driver drove before he took a compulsory rest. That was done mechanically. But we do not have that; we have these logbooks and we employ an army of policemen to stop people and fine them.

I have had within my family a personal experience that gave me some embarrassment in this place because my son drove across the South Australian border, as many truckies do, without a logbook because they do not have them in WA. You cannot buy them in WA. There is no sign on the road as you cross the Nullarbor saying ‘You are entering logbook territory’ and he did not know. But I tell you what: because he was making a one-off trip and was inexperienced in long-term driving—something that I knew better—I insisted he take a co-driver. And if that is not the best way to manage being tired or going to sleep, they were also driving two on, two off. But that did not matter to the South Australian police; they just wanted the money. When I complained about it I got covered all around Australia as ‘getting my son off a speeding fine’. I would not let him off a speeding fine. A certain person said to me, ‘My son got caught for drunk driving and I didn’t help him.’ And I said, ‘My son has never got caught for drunk driving.’ There is a difference.

Nevertheless, evidence was brought forward by the shadow minister. Another farmer who was known to me got fined $1,000 inside South Australia because the truck he was driving with a number of kids’ polocrosse ponies on board happened to have the extension tray behind the axle longer than is approved in South Australia. But of course the vehicle had been licensed and properly measured and checked in Western Australia. It cost him $1,000 taking some kids to a polocrosse meeting. That is just revenue-raising and for no good reason. This is what this legislation is supposed to be about, but it is not.

The shadow minister gave example after example of the differential from state to state in how many hours you can drive. You are either fatigued or you are not. How can fatigue be different in New South Wales? How can fatigue be an issue driving around the city of Sydney, where you get plenty of rests because you are in traffic jams engineered by one Neville Wran when he sold off all the freeway reserves in that city? I am waiting for Paint Your Wagon evidence when all of Sydney collapses in on its tunnels. Why? Because Neville Wran sold off all the freeway reserves that previous forward-thinking members of parliament on both sides had accumulated—just as Don Dunstan sold off all the reserves that previous governments had put together for water reservoirs. What is the problem in South Australia today? They cannot find a drink.

These are the sorts of circumstances that this legislation should be addressing. In my representations to the committee, I put the point, which is not part of the conditions that will apply, that the government should only get the 1.36c, which they are going to pass on to the consumers, after they have cleaned up the mess. This is another no-blame game. I love the no-blame game. What it has materialised as is: the states do not blame Kevin Rudd and he does not blame them. But we are not achieving anything. We would concede the 1.36c in this House if we knew that those costs could be saved by truckies by the simple act of a more efficient and understandable service through legislation. But it is still a dog’s breakfast and we are constantly told, particularly by New South Wales, that they, as the lowest common denominator, should set the rules.

The member for Oxley had a shot at me. In the education legislation debate the other day, I complained that we are now overtrained and that someone who drove a truck in my electorate three months a year lost his licence because he was not a regular truck driver. It so happened that he had other seasonal work that fitted with his lifestyle and his need to make a living. He lost his licence, and it was going to cost him $2,000. He had been driving for about 30 years. As I said, the next thing is that we will be licensing people to ride a push bike and taking their licence if they have not ridden one for two or three months. You do not forget those skills.

The member for Oxley said, ‘It’s more complex now.’ When I was driving trucks, there were not any automatic transmissions. Some of these trucks today drive like cars. Yes, they are typically longer, and I want to talk about that. Again, we have this mishmash of regulation, with a significant constriction on vehicle configuration in New South Wales, which is arguably supposed to save the community from being run over or something. But the reality is that in Western Australia over the years—and I was fortunate to be involved in achieving the upgrade of standards—we have had two trailer configurations driving around the city. I well remember the debate. We used to have to stop 30 kilometres out of town to break up our truck in case we ran over someone. That added $100 to the cost of your trip. Interestingly, when it was brought in after a trial, I heard a woman on the radio saying, ‘This is a scam; there has been no trial.’ What she was really saying was that she had not noticed any of those bigger rigs that now run around Perth.

But let us look at safety on the road. A three-trailer truck can be speed limited to 80 kilometres an hour and make a profit. Take one trailer off, and it has to do 100 kilometres an hour to make a profit. I put to you the difficulties for a motorist in making the passing manoeuvre in those two circumstances. So it is silly to argue that bigger truck configurations have any problems—other than that they save people money.

This legislation does not do anything about getting the states to deliver on configurations. It does not deliver anything about where these truck stops should be. They are a good idea, but the fact of life is that they are not a good idea when they are at different spacings and, of course, nonexistent for a long time yet. But, again, the log book process is a joke as a means of controlling when people take these rest breaks. It should be scrubbed out everywhere and replaced, if it is deemed necessary, with another type of equipment.

The member for Corangamite said that this is all about politics, but I do not know if he has ever been in the cab of a truck. The member for Oxley said that you have to relearn. I think it was four or five years before I got back into a truck. It happened to be an eight-wheel Volvo with a full semitrailer and a dog trailer, and I loaded it up with super and drove it for a couple of hundred miles. I got over some pretty significant hills and never missed a gear change. Do not tell me that people from hardworking families should be put out of work because they do not drive a truck every day of the week. That is stupid. But that is where we are—and let me admit: we brought in that silly arrangement. We conspired with the National Transport Commission that I would sack tomorrow, because all they want to do is to raise more money against the people I represent—and, I might add, some on the other side of this House also have constituents who do not have a railway service. Of course it is the trucks that keep the railway services honest. All of those matters have to be considered, and the opposition has every practical right to bring the government to account again.

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