Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2010 amends the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985 and in doing so ensures that heavy vehicle owners who operate under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme are charged with a lower registration fee from 1 July 2010 than would otherwise be the case. Those owners will not be unfairly levied in comparison with vehicle owners who are registered in the state and territory systems. The bill does this by deleting subsection 5(6) of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985.

The Federal Interstate Registration Scheme applies to those heavy vehicles engaged solely in interstate operations. FIRS provides for uniform charges and operating conditions for those vehicles rather than requiring owners to comply with a number of different state regimes relevant to the states they travel through. Those vehicles registered under FIRS are subject to registration charges set out in the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985. Those registration fees are intended to cover the fair costs arising from road usage by these heavy vehicles.

COAG has previously agreed that heavy vehicle charges should be adjusted annually to maintain cost recovery. In February 2008 the Australian Transport Council, made up of all the transport ministers, adopted the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination. This ensures that the road user charges and heavy vehicle registration charges achieve cost recovery from the heavy vehicle industry for its fair share of road infrastructure and maintenance costs incurred by governments in Australia. In 2009 an agreed automatic adjustment formula was included in the Commonwealth Interstate Road Transport Charge Regulations for that year for application to the 20,500 heavy vehicles registered under the FIRS. That automatic annual adjustment to heavy vehicle registration charges applies from July of every year.

Adjustment to the heavy vehicle registration charges depend heavily on changes to the level of spending on roads and bridges and on changes in road usage by heavy vehicles. When factors such as the increased expenditure on roads and growth in the number of higher productivity heavy vehicles on those roads were fed into that automatic adjustment formula, the result showed a higher than necessary increase to the registration charge to apply from 1 July 2010.

If no adjustment was made the automatic annual adjustment formula would result in a registration charge increase of 9.7 per cent for the coming financial year. The federal government would be therefore recovering more money than was necessary in the current conditions from heavy vehicle owners registered under the FIRS. It was estimated that the potential national over-recovery through the registration increase would amount to $116 million in 2010-11. When this became apparent all transport ministers agreed to amend their respective charges legislation to ensure fair treatment for the trucking industry and to avoid a situation where the industry was being effectively overcharged in a way that was contrary to the original intent of the Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination.

Amendments have been made to relevant legislation to ensure that the formula neither under- nor overcharges the trucking industry and that this should be put into effect from July 2010. This of course is something that will be welcomed by the trucking industry as it is those owners and operators who will benefit from the reduced registration increase now calculated under the adjustment formula.The adjusted figure has been calculated by the National Transport Commission and reflects the changes in the heavy vehicle mix on our roads that in turn changes the demands on our road network and the cost recovery equation. As it turns out, the adjusted registration increase is only 4.2 per cent for the next financial year as opposed to the original 9.7 per cent increase. This is good news for the trucking industry.

All governments have agreed to an amended calculation of a 4.2 per cent annual adjustment to take effect from 1 July this year. The states and territories are set to implement that change for the vehicle owners registered under their respective systems. The problem for the federal government and those owners with vehicles registered under the FIRS is section 5(6) of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act. That subsection specifies that any regulation made for the purpose of section 5—and section 5 deals with the amount of charge—must not take effect earlier than the first day after the end of the disallowance period. The operation of section 5(6) means that it prevents amended regulations that would lower the annual registration charges adjustment, from a 9.7 per cent increase to a 4.2 per cent increase, from coming into effect from 1 July 2010. The reference in the subsection to the first day after the end of the disallowance period means that it would be late September before regulations putting in place the lower registration amount could come into effect for the benefit of FIRS registered owners.

Clearly, that section seeks to give protection to vehicle owners by providing that changes to the relevant registration charge must not happen without due parliamentary scrutiny. In this instance, however, the change will have the effect of reducing the registration fee, and the operation of section 5(6) will have the perverse outcome of leaving those registered under FIRS paying a 9.7 per cent increase in their registration while owners of vehicles registered under state systems can pay the lesser adjustment of 4.2 per cent immediately from 1 July. If left unchanged this would affect over 1,000 FIRS vehicle owners who would be charged the higher 9.7 per cent registration increase, rather than the proposed 4.2 per cent increase, because the adjusted charge would not come into effect until late September.

It is very important to note that the current act has no refund authority. There is no mechanism by which the government could return to the vehicle owners the overpayment of registration they would effectively be making for the period from 1 July 2010 till late September 2010. That is why the government has proposed this bill, to deal with the situation and ensure that heavy vehicle road users pay their fair share towards the cost of maintaining and improving our roads and that they are not hit unfairly by an over-recovery. The bill will allow the new regulation to take effect from 1 July 2010 and will see FIRS owners paying the lower 4.2 per cent annual adjustment from that time. I am sure we have the support of the opposition for this fair and sensible amendment.

This area of heavy vehicle registration charges illustrates the level of agreement and cooperation between the different levels of government as we try to streamline the regulation and administration of our road transport sector. Governments recognise the importance to industry of uniform standards and legislation to make life easier and more productive for heavy vehicle drivers and owners who currently have to understand and comply with multiple sets of rules and regulations at various levels of government. Under the Intergovernmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Road, Rail and Intermodal Transport, the National Transport Commission has been given the job of producing model legislation for state and federal governments and for overseeing the implementation of agreed reforms. The owners and drivers of Australia desperately need greater national consistency in road transport laws in areas such as heavy vehicle registration charges, carriage of dangerous goods and road rules more generally. I am pleased to see that COAG has agreed that by the end of 2012 Australia will have a single national heavy vehicle regulator with responsibility for regulating all vehicles over the weight of 4.5 tonnes. That regulator will administer national heavy vehicle laws and the registration scheme.

One area that we absolutely must get right in both the content of regulation and its enforcement is fatigue management. This was brought to my attention just last week in a meeting with representatives from Kalari, Peter Renton and Margi Keyworth. Kalari is a major operator in the transport business and their trucks are a familiar sight on Central Queensland roads as they provide a vital service to the mining operations in our region, especially when it comes to transporting explosives. Peter and Margi came to see me last week to make me aware of some trouble that they have had with the operation of the Transport Operations (Road Use Management—Fatigue Management) Regulation 2008. This is of course a Queensland government regulation but it is based on the model regulations produced by the National Transport Commission.

One of the key requirements of the regulation is for drivers to maintain and have in their possession when they are driving a work diary that records relevant work activities that contribute to fatigue. Those work activities include things like driving a fatigue regulated heavy vehicle; instructing or supervising another person to drive a fatigue regulated heavy vehicle; perform another task, such as loading things onto or unloading from the vehicle; inspect, service or repair the heavy vehicle; clean or refuel the heavy vehicle. The list in the regulations of what amounts to work for the purposes of the law is pretty broad and comprehensive.

Peter and Margi are very supportive of this kind of regulation and see fatigue management and proper supervision and care for their drivers’ safety as an important part of their role within Kalari. The problem for them has been in the interpretation and enforcement of the regulations. At the end of last year one of their drivers was pulled up by an officer from Queensland Transport and he was asked to present his work diary. It is part of the management policy of Kalari that drivers record work activities beyond those listed specifically in the regulation, because those managers are of the belief that managing their drivers means being aware of all the things in their day that might cause them to be fatigued when they get behind the wheel of their truck.

When their drivers are hauling loads of explosives, who could blame them for being super cautious and going beyond the minimum required when it comes to recording activities in the work diary? One section of the regulations talk about work, including performing another task relating to the operation of a fatigue regulated heavy vehicle. It goes on to list some examples. Kalari chooses to interpret that section very broadly as part of fully managing fatigue in their drivers. It means that their drivers record things like—and I will paraphrase from an email I got from Margi—travel in a company vehicle for about 30 minutes from where they are staying out to a mine site before they start their shift, arrival at the mine site, before they get into a heavy vehicle, and attendance at a start-up meeting, which can be up to one hour long. Kalari has taken the view that those sorts of things should be recorded in the work diary.

The problem is that the Kalari driver who was pulled over last year was warned that he was in breach of the regulations for having those sorts of things in his work diary and that the entry in his work diary actually amounted to an infringement of the regulations. Queensland Transport informed Kalari it was an offence under section 105. This was understandably very distressing to the driver, who after all needs to stay on the road to earn his living, and Kalari want to know why he and they should be under threat of penalties for going beyond the minimum requirements of the regulations when they judge that to be part of fulfilling their duty of care to their drivers and other motorists.

The message from Peter and Margi was that, as we move towards uniform national regulation of things like fatigue management, those regulations should be seen as minimum standards, and transport operators should be encouraged to go beyond those minimum standards when it comes to managing their drivers. It is also important that the eventual national laws are interpreted consistently and enforced consistently from state to state or place to place around Australia.

I hope that this point of difference between Kalari and Queensland Transport can be worked out quite easily, and I will certainly be helping Kalari to have those discussions with Queensland Transport, but I guess it is a message to us that governments need to do everything we can to remove the complexity that is currently in the regulation of this important industry. That is what this bill does in its small way, and I commend it to the House.

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