Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Road User Charge Determination (No. 1) 2012. I come from the electorate of Grey, which is almost 1,000 kilometres across and 1,000 kilometres from top to bottom. Transport is the lifeblood of an electorate like Grey. We are an agricultural region and a mining region. We supply resources to the rest of the state and the nation, and we pay freight both ways, so any policy artificially increasing the price of freight has a very real impact on all of my communities, and not just the truckies that service them.

We in the coalition have concerns there is overcharging in the case of the new road users charge, which I will explain later on. Mr Deputy Speaker, we are dealing with a tax and spend government, a government that has spent itself into a very unviable position and is looking to try in any way possible to claw back any of the debt they have run up. Unfortunately, in this case it seems to be coming, at least partially, from the transport industry. The old sticker that we used to see on the back of windows that said 'Truckies carry Australia' is as true today as the day they were printed.

Just to give some framework to the road user charge, I would also like to have a brief look at the recent changes in state taxation for road users. From 1 July 2012—apart from a couple of states, it must be said—the fuel tax credit claimed by truck operators decreased from 15.043c to 12.643c per litre, and so the effective tax paid by the industry increased by 10.4 per cent from 23.1c to 25.5c a litre. There was also a decision to increase many truck and trailer registration charges, even though the registration charge on an A-trailer did fall. Registration charges for multicombination prime movers increased by almost 22 per cent, with the charge for a three-axle multicombination prime mover increasing by $1,693 from $7,764 in 2011-12 to $9,457 this year. The registration for many rigid trucks also increased substantially and the total registration charge for the trucks that really do service this area of Australia, my electorate—the nine-axle B-doubles—will fall $1,300 from the $15,000, but the registration charges for the triple road trains—and I might point out that B-doubles are not the flavour of the month in South Australia because we have the option of the B-triples—increased from $13,693 to $16,607.

It is certain the transport industry does not have a lot of friends in government, but it is also certain that there is a lot of public misinformation about trucks and truckies and the transport task in Australia. Truckies are constantly demonised for filling up the road with these monstrous great road trains. I point out to people that in the unfortunate case of an accident the effect of a car getting hit by a 22-tonne rigid tipper or a 90-tonne B-triple is exactly the same. If you do not have the B-triples on the road, you are going to have five to six times as many rigid tippers on the road. It would be a far more dangerous place. People should think about that argument before they start getting stuck into truckies. In fact, their safety record is very good. More often than not, when trucks are involved in an accident, it is not their fault.

Even before the carbon tax, which is set to give another effective 25 per cent increase to the road user charge in 2014, we have loaded up this industry. A large regional operator in the industry recently told me that, despite government rhetoric that transport will not pay carbon tax until 2014, since July almost all of his suppliers have raised prices, not blaming the carbon tax alone, it must be said, but citing the tax as part of the reason and taking the opportunity to lift prices. If they had solely blamed the carbon tax they would have the government and the ACCC on their backs. But the increases have been significant.

The Australian Trucking Association has maintained since day 1 that the mechanism used to calculate the road user charge is flawed, leading to overcharging to the tune of $700 million. I was listening to the member for Windsor's comments and he pointed to this side of the chamber and said we are playing politics because the House is hung. He said there is a process and we should follow it. But the problem is that the process is flawed. I would have thought that the member for Windsor would be backing a review of the process before these charges are implemented to make sure that we have the process right.

In effect, the National Transport Commission is using an estimate of truck numbers based on the 2008 figures. 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—that is, cars, each type of truck, motorbikes et cetera—taking into account size in passenger car units, weight, kilometres driven and the equivalent standard number of axles. Supposedly this allows the National Transport Commission to calculate how much is owed by the heavy vehicle industry for cost recovery.

However, the reality is that truck registrations are much higher than the survey of motor vehicle usage indicates—and it is not hard to find the correct figures. All NatRoad had to do was go to the state registration authorities and get the actual numbers. We do not need an estimate based on 2008 figures; we need the actual numbers. Why wouldn't the National Transport Commission use those actual numbers? It really does make one wonder if they are on the job.

If the number of registrations is higher, if there are more trucks on the road and their individual accounts are collected as a proportion of the total maintenance bill, obviously the collections will far exceed the required amount. That is not even an error; it is a dereliction of duty. If we are to raise taxes on the road by a significant amount, we should have the figures right. In fact, in South Australia alone, according to the National Transport Commission's formula, the government should collect $75.4 million. That is, if they went off the current registrations, the tax would be $75.4 million. However, based on the registration figures from 2008 extrapolated through to 2012 they will be collecting $110 million—a $35.6 million overrecovery. That is just in South Australia. The government's efforts to achieve national laws and regulation once again seem to be failing. These laws and regulations are not performing as we would all like them to and as I would hope the government would like them to do. Despite a majority of the ministers on the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure agreeing to the increase, various state governments have subsequently implemented alternative proposals. I have drifted onto the registration area, so I will continue and then come back to the road user charge. The ministers did disagree, and the Northern Territory and Western Australian governments, as I alluded to earlier, have implemented significantly lower registration increases. There is not a coherent view across all governments in Australia at the moment. Quite simply, this is a problem that should not have arisen.

It seems clear to me that the government, in establishing its total road maintenance figure, have used the amount of money that was spent on roads in Australia in the financial year. In that case, it includes much of the flood reparations in Queensland. Flood damage can hardly be blamed on the truckers of Australia. It was an act of God. The government have imposed a levy on all Australians to help pay for the flood damage, yet they have still rolled that figure into the total road repair bill for the year to establish the total cost. So it is misleading, mean and sneaky. Not only is the mechanism flawed, because there are more trucks on the road than the extrapolated figures indicate; the government has been inflating the amount of money—the total road rebuilding figure—that is spent within Australia by adding in the Queensland flood figures. That simply should not be part of the equation. This is the reason for the disallowance motion: the sums are not right.

The government are trying to claw back money from the stimulus package. Remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, the stimulus package was about keeping the economy going. They are trying to draw back funds from the stimulus package and from the flood reparations and put them into the total road maintenance bill and say, 'This is what we spend on roads every year,' underestimating the number of trucks and then dividing it up between the truckies and the road. No wonder the trucking industry is not happy.

I support the disallowance motion because the increases in road user charges are based on dodgy modelling and are yet another example of a government seeking to cover its out-of-control spending.

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