Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the disallowance motion which is currently before the House on the Road User Charge Determination No.1 2012, made under the Fuel Act 2006. The road transport industry is of great significance to the Australian economy and I am passionate about this industry. I myself have owned trucks for the last 30 years and, like the member for Moreton, I have travelled the Bruce Highway many, many times and done many, many miles between Rockhampton and Gin Gin, which unfortunately is the worst piece of the Bruce Highway on the Brisbane to Cairns run.

My heart goes out to an owner truck driver in Rolleston who, during the floods last year, could not move his truck for three months because of the flooding of the Panorama Creek in Rolleston. Later on, he could not move his truck for another three months because the roads where he had to get cattle off a farmer's property were too wet and boggy. So he went for six months without moving a wheel, and his registration at that time was $22,000, so you can imagine how much out of pocket he was.

As it stands, heavy vehicle road users have been charged to recover the part of the road maintenance cost attributed to the road use. This is done in two parts: firstly, by the states and territories through registration charges and, secondly, by the Commonwealth through the fuel based road user charges. Public consultation by the National Transport Commission last year has resulted in a number of recommendations that are based on outdated and unfounded theoretical information. This is not an acceptable manner to make a decision. Any good business person will tell you how healthy, long-lasting and effective decisions are made with appropriate and timely consultation.

An increase of as much as 2.4c litre is an increase from 23c per litre to 25½c per litre or, putting it in percentage terms, 10.4 per cent. This increase should not be imposed on an industry that is key to preventing us from running out of essential stocks around our great nation. There is a lot of movement in the transport industry. Much transport is now done on roads rather than on rail. When I was in the game in a big way, in the heartland of Emerald in the Queensland Central Highlands, grain, cattle and fuel were all carted mostly by rail. Sadly these days it is all carted by trucks, which adds greatly to the use of our roads, where there is a fight between tourists, general road users in their motor cars and the heavy loads of the three industries I just mentioned. Plus there is the fact that we have large mining equipment being dropped off from the ports of Brisbane from America and other places to supply the mines. This is also adding to the cluttering of our roads. Everyone is out there competing for the use of our roads. Our roads are deteriorating at a fast rate and we do need to do something urgently about it. Truck stops are virtually non-existent between Rockhampton and Gin Gin and after five o'clock at night you are very hard pushed to get through even the trucks parked on the road at Gin Gin. The Bruce Highway needs more upgrades—as the member for Moreton said, we need more passing lanes et cetera.

We do not need a mining tax to fix our roads. We need to fix the roads under the same terms and agreements that we had in future years. This business of saying 'We'll fix the roads if you introduce a mining tax' is just poppycock. We do not need these stipulations. We just need to get about fixing our roads and stop wasting money in other areas so that it can be applied to our roads. We are getting a return on our investment from our coal, gas, grain and cattle. They provide the money for those road upgrades—not the mining industry, which uses rail to transport coal and pipelines to produce gas and transfer it from the west to places like Gladstone.

I believe it is important that the parliament agree on a compromise of a most modest increase of 5.7 per cent, which is in line with the annual adjustment used in previous years. A 10.4 per cent increase would cripple an industry that is already struggling in a lot of areas—and the carbon tax will not help that either. We cannot cripple an industry. The mining industry at the moment is going through very tough times with the high Australian dollar and low commodity prices. There comes a time when the last straw will break the camel's back, and this, I am afraid, could happen to the transport industry.

Approximately 25 per cent of that expenditure remains in the formula. In addition $144 million was unexpectedly added to the amount to be collected because of the recalculation of the past obligations under the model. We really need to use some common sense here and look at the bigger picture of what an unsubstantiated increase of 10.4 per cent would mean for our road transport industry. I intend to raise a number of issues that I believe need to be addressed in relation to this bill. The issues are unresolved. Given the huge impact that the transport industry has on this country, I believe it is imperative that we pay close attention to some of these facts—facts such as that the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association asserts that the National Transport Commission's pricing model indicates road trains would be overcharged by $27.9 million per year, or by 40 per cent, and, as such, the principle of cost recovery by vehicle class would be undermined.

Furthermore, in May this year, the transport ministers agreed to review the National Transport Commission formula, accepting the general view that it may not be an accurate reflection of the costs attributable to the heavy vehicle classes. And, despite the majority of the transport ministers agreeing to the increase, various state governments have subsequently implemented alternative proposals. The Northern Territory and Western Australian governments, for example, have now implemented significantly lower registration increases, and the New South Wales and South Australian governments have announced concessions for certain truck configurations. Let me reinforce the view expressed by the member for Wide Bay, who said that, since all parties seem to agree that the calculation model is in need of review, it would be grossly unfair to apply this model to justify such a huge increase.

One of the most alarming issues in relation to this bill is the difference in opinion between the Australian Trucking Association and the National Transport Commission as to the most accurate number of trucks that should be used to calculate the cost attributable to the heavy vehicle industry. The National Transport Commission uses historic figures from the 2007-08 Survey of Motor Vehicle Usage to determine the number of heavy vehicles there are on our roads and what must be charged to recover the costs of their road usage. The National Transport Commission believe that figure is appropriate as it provides an average of the number of trucks that would be associated with the seven-year rolling average of expenditure on roads that they use to determine the amount to be paid.

However, on the other side of the coin, the Australian Trucking Association argues that it is more appropriate to use the actual registration information from the states and territories to determine the vehicle numbers, particularly as the fuel usage figures used to determine how much should be paid by each truck are current figures. The Australian Trucking Association believes that the flaws in the methodology used by the National Transport Commission in determining their recommendation results in an overcollection from the heavy vehicle industry. So we have a conflict. They estimate the overcollection will be $1.1 billion in 2012-13 alone.

I am not surprised that once again this industry is being hit in the leg by an unfair system, a system that is not agreed to by both associations, and therefore will suffer. It is a shame to say that at least there should be an acceptable method to come to a conclusion. We need to protect truck drivers. We should not be imposing unfair, arbitrary increases in registration and fuel excise costs. While commitments were made in 2008 to improve the relationship between the industry and the National Transport Commission and this has worked successfully in the past few years, it appears issues have reoccurred in 2011-12 and those relationships have now broken down. In this case, despite consultation beginning in late 2011 and the National Transport Commission providing its recommendations to the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure in February 2012, industry was not provided with detailed information on the formula used by the National Transport Commission or the input data and assumptions it relies on until March 2012. This information was discovered only as a result of a freedom of information request.

So that this parliament understands the process, I provide the following summary. The NTC calculates the total cost base by gathering yearly figures from the states and territories on road expenditure and then adds this to the figure local governments report to the ABS for road expenditure. The NTC deducts expenditure on non-road costs—for example, amenity expenses—to obtain the allocated cost base. This figure is allocated to the entire vehicle fleet by analysing the Survey of Motor Vehicle Usage to determine how much should be collected from each vehicle class, whether it be car, truck, motorbike, you name it. It takes into account weight, kilometres et cetera. This allows the NTC to calculate how much is owed by the heavy vehicle industry for cost recovery across the board, not just across a certain class. This figure is divided between the amount collected by the road user charge and state and territory registration fees on a basis of 62 to 38. The split is largely historical and reflects the revenue shared between the Commonwealth and the states and territories at the time the national charges were implemented. Fuel consumption and vehicle number figures from the SMVU are used to derive the level of registration and the road user charge to recover the cost of their impacts on the road network.

Conclusion: I believe that the coalition's proposal of, let me say, a more modest increase of 5.7 per cent, is a better solution to redefining the road user determination charge. As well as being in line with the annual adjustment used in previous years, it would eliminate an unexpected $144 million surcharge being imposed to correct an earlier miscalculation.

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