Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this year—I cannot recall the exact time—I spoke in this parliament about the extent of the carnage on our roads, which I again raise today in speaking in support of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 is one of two bills to implement the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination, which sets a new road user charge and new registration charges for heavy vehicles in Australia as agreed by Australian transport ministers back in February 2008. The determination recovers from the heavy vehicle users in that industry its share of Commonwealth and state and territory government road infrastructure costs. The second bill, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No.2) 2008, will amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It too was agreed to by Australian transport ministers at their meeting in February this year. Regrettably, in talking on these bills I do need to remind the House of the extent of the carnage on the roads that we experience each year. In the year to April 2008, 275 people died in heavy vehicle accidents throughout this county. Of all the road deaths that occur in this country, one in five involves heavy vehicles. Over the same period, the number of deaths in articulated heavy vehicle and rigid vehicle incidents increased by almost 12 per cent when compared to last year. These are astounding figures.

In 2004-05, 5,350 people who worked in the transport industry suffered serious injuries. This equates with the rate of about 31 serious accidents per day. In 2005-06, 2.8 per cent of the workforce in this industry suffered serious work related injuries. Apart from the pain, suffering, loss and grief, there is also an economic cost to these accidents. If you go through and look at the figures for last year, you can see that for each one of the road deaths that occurred there was an economic cost of $1.7 million. These figures are deplorable, but what is worse is the suffering, pain, hurt and grieving that the carnage produces. That will take a long while to be alleviated for the families—as a matter of fact, it probably never will be.

As I said, the prevention of road fatalities and serious injuries has been at the forefront of the Rudd government’s $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. Under this $70 million package, the government will fund bridge-strengthening projects and upgrade the linkages between the existing AusLink freight routes, enabling access to those roads by more productive heavy vehicles. It will also trial black-box technologies that electronically monitor a driver’s hours and the speed et cetera of a vehicle. In respect of that, I had the opportunity, not all that long ago, to talk to Lindsay Fox. He was telling me that he was absolutely committed to this form of technology being introduced, not simply to work out where his trucks were going at any particular time but, because the safety of his drivers is paramount, to ensure that issues such as management of fatigue and proper adherence to road regulations were being maintained. That technology is very much at the forefront of his mind as a critical safety measure.

The other aspect of this $70 million plan, which I have spoken about previously, is the construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops on our highways. Again, facilities to pull these vehicles over and ensure that the appropriate rest breaks are taken so that people are not driving with fatigue are a critical aspect of our road transport infrastructure. The passage of these bills will make this safety package possible by introducing a fairer heavy vehicle charge which will ensure that all heavy vehicles pay their way for the impacts that they have on our roads.

Heavy vehicles operate right across Australia, moving freight through every state and territory. They are responsible for moving 1.7 billion tonnes of freight, which represents some 70 per cent of the total tonnages carried by all transport modes in this country. Of the 365,000 heavy vehicles operating on Australia’s roads, a fair proportion of those actually pass through my electorate of Werriwa. As you would be only too well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, running right through the middle of my electorate is the Hume Highway. The Hume Highway is the main interstate corridor between Sydney and Melbourne and carries some 20 million tonnes of freight every year.

For some time I lobbied the minister responsible for roads in the former government, trying to make a case for the widening of that freeway. Far too often the freeway is blocked during peak hour traffic and it also causes freight congestion around our intermodal terminals at Minto and Ingleburn. It is a vital piece of infrastructure upgrade—one that the opposition, while they were in government, could not agree to. Fortunately, on taking office the Rudd government committed to widening that piece of road infrastructure, agreeing to fund it through AusLink 2. The government committed to 80 per cent of the road project, which I understand is valued at around $140 million. That will be a significant net contribution to infrastructure in my electorate of Werriwa. It will not only allow residents to access one part of my electorate from another without facing the difficulty of road congestion—parents will be able to get kids to and from schools—but, probably more importantly, allow for commercial operations to run more seamlessly through our intermodal terminals, where rail freight can be unloaded and placed on the Hume Highway for distribution to various towns and cities between Sydney and Melbourne. I must say that this is a top priority for my community, as we have currently 80,000 truck movements per day, including 6,000 heavy trucks. This figure is expected to grow by some two to three per cent over the next 20 years. Therefore, it is a significant issue in my electorate.

Improving road safety, quite frankly, is the single biggest thing, I think, that we should be addressing here today. The only real way to address road safety is to address the issue of road conditions and road infrastructure itself. Investment in these pieces of infrastructure, we say, is critical, and therefore road safety involves the individual and shared responsibilities not only of the operators of heavy vehicles but also of those responsible for ensuring that these roads are in a condition which is as safe as possible not only for the heavy vehicles but for all the associated road users who come into conjunction with these roads while they are being used for transport and freight between one location and another.

A range of measures have been adopted in recent decades in an effort to mitigate road trauma, with some considerable success. The latest initiative is the National Road Safety Strategy and related plans, which were approved by the ministerial council in February of this year. They provide a framework for coordinating the road safety initiatives of Australian state, territory and local governments as well as the major organisations with road safety responsibilities. The aim is to reduce our road fatality rate by some 40 per cent by the end of the decade. However, the government must play its role in formulating and reviewing these road safety practices. A key to that is for users of heavy vehicles and the heavy vehicle industry itself to pay their fair share of upgrading the road infrastructure to provide for safety and more sound operating conditions for all transport operators in that industry. A little earlier I said that I had the opportunity to have a discussion with Lindsay Fox. I know how much he stresses safety in his industry, but I also know how critical it is that he, his organisation and all the other heavy truck based organisations out there play a role in servicing the needs of our community by providing freight both inwards and outwards at appropriate times to ensure that our local communities operate reasonably. In 2007 the then Minister for Transport and Regional Development, Mark Vaile, put reform of the heavy vehicle charges on the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments. He said:

The National Transport Commission (NTC) will develop a new heavy vehicle charges determination to be implemented from 1 July 2008.

The new determination will aim to recover the heavy vehicles’ allocated infrastructure costs in total and will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

What that did in bringing this to COAG was to put fairly and squarely on the national agenda the full recovery of costs associated with road infrastructure from the heavy vehicle industry. Currently the amount of money raised does not cover anywhere near the cost of providing the infrastructure necessary for the heavy vehicle industry. Recovery of the expenditure is achieved through a combination of fixed registration charges which are collected by the states and territories and a road user charge collected by the Australian government.

The heavy vehicle charges have not changed since 2001, when it was determined that the charges would recover past expenditure from the heavy vehicle sector, which subsequently lowered registration fees for some larger trucks, effectively cross-subsidising them from other road users. This overhaul of the heavy vehicle charges is urgently needed to construct and maintain the infrastructure necessary, as I indicated, for the proper functioning of the heavy vehicle industry itself. In fact, the National Transport Commission estimated that the underrecovery of transport charges is currently in the order of $100 million per annum, which is a pretty sizeable chunk of infrastructure missing from the Commonwealth and state governments and also from local governments that take responsibility for facilitating the use of roadways for many of the heavy vehicles in this particular industry.

In 2007 the National Transport Commission was asked by the Australian transport ministers, who were directed by COAG as part of the overall transport reform package, to prepare a new heavy vehicle charge determination to deliver revised charges for introduction during this year. In undertaking the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination, the National Transport Commission determined that the current rate of the Commonwealth’s road user charge of 19.63c per litre was insufficient to recover the infrastructure costs caused by heavy vehicles and proposed changes to truck registration charges imposed by the states to end the cross-subsidisation of larger truck operators by smaller truck operators. If not addressed, the underrecovery of heavy vehicle charges provides a strong disincentive for states and territories to invest in road infrastructure. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 will allow an increase in the road user charge of 1.37c. That will take it from 19.63c per litre to 21c per litre. It will come into effect from 1 January 2009 and, as I mentioned earlier, was agreed to by all Australian transport ministers in their February meeting this year.

As I noted at the opening of this speech, the purpose of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No.2) 2008 is to amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s voluntary Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. I understand that 97 per cent of trucks are registered under state based schemes and have already implemented these charges, which have applied from 1 July this year. This bill will allow regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges to apply under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It will enable the implementation of the registration charge elements of the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination, which revises the national charges for heavy vehicles and trailers. The implementation of the determination is part of the national road transport reform agenda and will go a long way to fully recovering the costs for the provision of the road network for the use of the heavy vehicle industry and will contribute to nationally consistent heavy vehicle registration charges being placed throughout the country.

This is a necessary piece of legislation. It is absolutely critical for the efficient operation of our heavy vehicle industry, which plays such a critical role in our modern economy. The industry has at its forefront the delivery of appropriate safety. It is also, regrettably, an industry which has shared the awful experience of many. As I say, one in five deaths that occur on Australian roads at this stage involves heavy transport vehicles. We need to address that. It is not just for the heavy transport industry to address. This is also good for the rest of the community who are road users as well. I commend the bills to the House. (Time expired)

See this speech in context