Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to follow the member for Capricornia in relation to what she was talking about in her contribution about the safety of drivers, particularly interstate owner-drivers. It is something I know the Transport Workers Union and Tony Sheldon have been campaigning on for a long, long time. They have been particularly concerned about the pressure, from not so much the owners of the trucking companies but the suppliers, on owner-drivers in particular to meet the sorts of time lines that they are often expected to meet.

Sometimes, looking at the sorts of trips they take and the times that are set out there, it is simply impossible for a driver to get adequate rest. The member for Capricornia also raised these issues in an example from her electorate. These are important issues that we need to make sure we address. Two weeks ago I was at a ceremony at Ourimbah, commemorating workers who had passed away in the past year. Unfortunately, the largest group was truck drivers. It is an occupational hazard and one that we need to be working on. People should be able to go to work in safety. We need to always be mindful of what we expect truck drivers to do. I commend the Transport Workers Union, who for many years have put a lot of pressure on in relation to these issues and they are slowly making some progress. Tony Sheldon should be commended for that campaign.

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2010, which I rise to support today, will ensure that heavy vehicle owners who operate under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme are not unfairly levied with higher registration charge increases next financial year compared with vehicle owners who are registered in state or territory systems. The bill will ensure that from 1 July 2010 heavy vehicle owners of trucks and trailers registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme will pay a registration increase of only 4.2 per cent instead of the 9.7 per cent that was planned.

The bill proposes a minor technical amendment to delete subsection 5(6) of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985 imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme to recover the cost of road usage by heavy vehicles. Subsection 5(6) of the act specifies that any regulation made for the purpose of section 5—amount of charge—must not take effect earlier than the first day after the end of the disallowance period.

The effect of subsection 5(6) is that it prevents amended regulations that would lower the annual registration charges adjustment from a 9.7 per cent increase in registration charges to a 4.2 per cent increase from coming into effect on 1 July 2010. Instead, the adjusted lower charge would come into effect after 15 parliamentary sitting days from when the new regulations are made, which would not be until late September 2010. This would affect over 1,000 vehicle owners who would be charged the higher 9.7 per cent registration increase determined automatically under the current regulations rather than the proposed 4.2 per cent increase, because the adjusted charge would not come into effect until late September. There is no administrative option available to deal with this issue. The act does not provide a refund power that would enable vehicle owners charged the 9.7 per cent increase to have the difference returned to them.

Deleting subsection 5(6) will not in any way remove parliamentary scrutiny. The provisions of part 5 of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 that facilitate scrutiny by parliament will still apply to amendments to the regulations. Those provisions would still operate to disallow an amendment to the regulations that came into effect on 1 July 2010.

The bill will help implement the agreements by COAG that heavy vehicle charges should be adjusted annually to maintain cost recovery. In February 2008 the Australian Transport Council adopted the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charge Determination, which ensures that the road user charge and the heavy vehicle registration charge achieve cost recovery from heavy vehicle industries for their fair share of the 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 Regulation 2009 for application to the 20,500 heavy vehicles registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. The automatic annual adjustment to heavy vehicle registration charges applies from 1 July each year. Adjustments to the heavy vehicle registration charge depends heavily on changes in the level of spending on roads and bridges and on changes in road usage by heavy vehicles.

Road expenditure across all levels of government has increased significantly in recent years. At the same time there has been substantial growth in the number of higher productivity heavy vehicles using the road network. The effect of these factors in the current automatic annual adjustment formula results in a registration charge increase of 9.7 per cent and in a potential national over-recovery of $116 million from heavy vehicle owners and operators in 2010-11. All transport ministers agreed to address this over-recovery at their meeting of 30 April 2010 by amending their respective charges legislation to ensure that the formula neither under- nor overcharges the trucking industry.

They also agreed that the industry should benefit from this low adjustment from 1 July 2010. State and territory governments will implement the adjusted 4.2 per cent registration charge increase from 1 July 2010. The adjusted 4.2 per cent figure has been calculated by the National Transport Commission following appropriate adjustments to the current charges formula to address any over-recovery resulting from changes in the heavy vehicle fleet mix. The National Transport Commission undertook public consultation on the proposed charges adjustment, consistent with requirements under the relevant legislation. It would be fair to say that the industry acknowledges it needs to pay its fair share for road usage and that the 4.2 per cent adjustment is a preferable outcome for it rather than the adjustment of 9.7 per cent. The legislative action will leave up to $800 per vehicle in the pockets of operators at a time when our economy is recovering from the worst global recession in 75 years.

Heavy vehicle registration fees are adjusted annually in accordance with a formula contained in the regulation we are now seeking to replace. The new regulation, with an amended formula, will make sure the trucking industry continues to pay its fair share of the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading the nation’s road network, and not a cent more. The existing formula underestimated the growth in the number of B-doubles that has occurred since it was first developed.

As well as restoring the fair share principle, the reforms implemented by the Rudd government in 2008 slashed registration charges for the owners of smaller trucks, which constitute a fifth of the nation’s almost 375,000 heavy vehicles. It is worth noting that even after the subsequent annual increases the owners of these trucks are still paying less today than they were in 2007. In the years ahead, all operators in the trucking industry will benefit from our decision to more than double the federal road budget, an investment that will deliver safer, less congested highways and major arterial roads. The principle of cost recovery has been broadly agreed by all governments and industry, and the charges aim to recover, not over-recover or under-recover, the heavy vehicle industry’s share of aggregated government road expenditure.

I mentioned earlier that many thousands of heavy vehicles pass through my electorate on the New South Wales Central Coast, where we have a major highway—the F3. It is important that we keep these trucks moving as efficiently as possible. On many occasions I have been to the truck stop just off Sparks Road to talk to truck drivers about their experiences and how they are coping with the costs that they have in keeping their rigs on the road. This sort of legislation is important to make sure that they pay their fair share, but not more than that.

The government also recognises the need for balance between road and rail freight. Like so many of our other major highways and national roads, the F3 is shared by commuting motorists in their private or company vehicles and the large heavy vehicles that we are talking about today in this bill. There have been many incidents on our major road link, and most recently we again heard the collection of frustrating stories from motorists trying to get home to the Central Coast in peak hour but stuck on the freeway because of an accident involving a heavy vehicle. On the last occasion they were stuck for more than nine hours.

The government has committed funding to improve the Sydney to Brisbane rail link. Improving rail links on this major freight corridor will make rail more competitive for moving freight and it will take some of the pressure off our major roads. The government has already spent $15 million to accelerate planning and design work on its $840 million investment on a new dedicated freight line between North Strathfield and Gosford. A dedicated freight line will mean a number of things: more room for passenger trains on the existing line and more freight services on the dedicated line, bringing with it increased capacity and therefore more competition with road freight. Of course, if there is less road freight because there are more rail freight services it means there will be less heavy vehicle traffic on major links like the F3.

In the meantime, governments have been spending more on roads. More and heavier vehicles have been using roads. The charges need to reflect these factors. This government is working successfully through COAG with all states and territories to deliver national streamlined heavy vehicle regulation that will provide an even, certain and transparent playing field for the heavy vehicle industry. We need to be sure that this extends to all areas of industry operations, including registration charges. The passage of this bill is necessary to ensure that federally registered vehicles will not be differently and unfairly charged compared to vehicles registered under state or territory law.

The bill will ensure that heavy vehicle owners who operate under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme are charged with a lower registration charge—4.2 per cent—from 1 July 2010 and this has been made possible thanks to all of the transport ministers agreeing to address the potential over-recovery at their meeting of 30 April 2010. As mentioned, they have amended their respective charges legislation to ensure the formula neither undercharges nor overcharges the trucking industry. It is great to see that all states and territories working together with the federal authorities have been able to achieve this outcome. I commend the bill to the House.

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