Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the vital role the Australian trucking industry plays in the transportation of goods along the supply chain;

(2) recognises that the trucking industry is an industry made up of, amongst others, almost 60,000 small and family-owned businesses, operating on tight margins;

(3) notes that that the National Transport Commission anticipates that by imposing a 10 per cent annual increase to the heavy vehicle road user charge the tax paid on fuel would increase from 27.2 cents per litre to 36.2 cents per litre by July 2025, equating an additional $1.35 billion per year by 2025-26;

(4) recognises that many heavy vehicle road users are unable to pass on the increased costs, which will impact viability of logistics business, leading to inevitable collapse over coming months;

(5) calls on the Government to rule out increasing the heavy vehicle road user charge by 10 per cent in the interests of the heavy vehicle sector.

If there's one thing that the last 11 months of the federal Labor government has shown—and what is shaping, sadly, to be the Albanese Labor legacy—it is that almost everything costs more under Labor. Fruit and vegetables are up 8.5 per cent, bread and cereals are up 12.2 per cent and dairy products are up 14.9 per cent. I'm not even going to go into the price of households' energy bills. The fact is: this Labor government is hell-bent on implementing policies whose net effect is to increase the cost of living for every Australian.

Last week I spoke about how those opposite have opened tenders for water buybacks to recover water for the environment in the Murray-Darling Basin. I spoke about how this policy would drive up the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables because less productive water available for irrigation of crops means more expensive water, and more expensive water means more expensive fruits and vegetables.

Today I'm speaking on how Labor's plans to increase truckie taxes will drive up cost-of-living pressures on local families and businesses and accelerate closures for families and small operations in the transport sector. The proposed 10 per cent—10 per cent!—annual increase to the heavy vehicle road users charge would see the tax that heavy vehicle operators pay at fuel pumps go from the current 27.2 cents per litre up to 36.2 cents per litre by 1 July 2025. The proposal also includes the state and territory governments raising the road components of heavy vehicle registration charges by up to 10 per cent per year for three years. It's a 10 per cent double whammy.

All the goods we buy get to the shops where the consumer is by travelling on the back of a truck—everything, whether it be grown locally on a farm or made in a factory. At a time of high inflation and with the cost-of-living crisis impacting families, it beggars belief that the Labor government wants to excessively increase taxes on transport, which is an essential input into everything we buy. It's a reckless proposal that will only exacerbate the reality that everything costs more under Labor. Labor wants to increase taxes on our nation's truckies to pay for road maintenance. This is despite cancelling, cutting and delaying road infrastructure projects in October's budget and failing to approve a single project under the Northern Australian Roads Program over their nine months in office.

Labor is proposing to increase the heavy vehicle road user charge on fuel and truck registration charges by up to 10 per cent. As I said, this will lift the fuel cost at the bowser from 27.2c per litre to 36c per litre. This is not the right time to be increasing road user charges, particularly heavy vehicle road user charges. Those opposite either have a tin ear or don't want to listen. Everywhere I go, the first, second and third issue of concern for people is cost-of-living pressures. If you were trying to develop a policy which inevitably would drive up the cost of everything we buy, whether it's at the supermarket, the mall, the rural store or even a fair, you would increase the road user charges, because, as I said, every good we buy got to the shop—or, if not to the shop, got to our porch—on the back of a truck and, in many cases, on successive trucks. So I implore those opposite: can you just pause for a minute and listen to your constituents, unless of course, like Senator Farrell, you're going to stand on your pins and say, 'I haven't had anyone approach me on these issues.'

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