Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 4 September when I was speaking on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008, I referred to its three basic elements. I indicated the opposition’s keen support for the inclusion in the bill of continuing arrangements for the universally popular Roads to Recovery program. I also indicated that the opposition were supportive of the amendments proposed on the bill in relation to unincorporated areas to ensure that funding could be provided for road projects in those places. We also support the alterations to the definition of a ‘road’ contained in the bill to put beyond doubt that AusLink and other funding can be applied to roadside projects such as rest stops, parking bays and decoupling facilities.

I also referred to the somewhat curious reference by the minister in his second reading speech to funding for electronic monitoring systems. He referred to it in the speech but there is no reference to it in the bill. I am hopeful that he will give the House an assurance that no changes will be made to the arrangements for electronic monitoring systems as a result of this legislation.

I was in the process of commenting on other elements of the minister’s second reading speech when my time was interrupted, so I want to go back to the minister’s second reading speech. Much of it had very little to do with what is actually in the bill. The minister took the opportunity to outline the government’s policy on the heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. This policy is really one of blackmail. The minister stated:

… the package is contingent on the passage of the enabling legislation for the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination …

That legislation will authorise an increase in heavy vehicle registration fees announced by the minister at the same time as he trumpeted his safety package. The opposition rejected these increased charges in the other place in March this year. We did so because we understand that the heavy freight sector is already doing it tough with high interest rates and rising fuel bills. Moreover, all Australians are battling to meet their daily requirements in the face of increasing cost of living pressures. For the Rudd Labor government to slap higher taxes on trucks—and, in so doing, belt a small business sector and push up the cost for all Australians—seems to be a remarkable response. This is obviously going to increase the cost of most items sold in supermarkets around Australia because they are transported around the country by trucks.

How can a government look pensioners in the eye and tell them that they cannot raise pensions because they do not have the money when it is going to raise taxes on everything that pensioners buy? Pensioners will be in a worse position as a result of the proposals being put forward by this government. There will be higher taxes on everything that they buy. That will make it harder for pensioners to survive—yet there is a $20 billion plus budget surplus.

The opposition makes no apology in rejecting these higher charges. They are a tax grab which would keep on going up. Regular increases are proposed to be built on a road cost adjustment formula associated with road construction. These costs, such as steel and concrete, are skyrocketing so we can be sure that registrations will go up even more than the CPI. Moreover, the structure of these charges penalise productivity since they fall heavily on highly productive multi-combination vehicles such as B-doubles and B-triples. At the same time, the government wants to increase the effective rate of the diesel fuel excise on the road user charge. Specifically, the Rudd government seeks to increase the diesel excise from 19.633c per litre to 21c per litre and then regularly increase the rate on the same formula used for the heavy vehicle registration charge. In other words, the government is seeking to reintroduce the indexation of fuel excise, and at a higher rate than the CPI.

Members may recall that the indexation of fuel excise was introduced by the Keating government and abolished by the coalition in 2001. The government tried to quietly get the relevant regulation through the parliament earlier this year but fortunately the opposition rejected it on 14 May 2008. These measures are a tax grab. They are designed to raise government revenue by another $168 million per year. The fuel tax take to Labor states and territories will rise by $80 million and the increase in heavy vehicle charges will lift Labor’s tax grab by another $88 million. So let us not get too excited about the proposed $70 million safety package—it is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul a lot less. And do not get too excited about Labor’s claim that in 2007 the then coalition federal minister for transport supported the development of a new charges regime. The coalition has always believed that the heavy vehicle sector should pay its way but we do not support the reintroduction of the indexation of fuel excise. We also want a rational registration charge-setting regime that does not unfairly penalise the most efficient vehicle combinations.

The opposition calls upon the government to take seriously its rhetoric about helping working families. The opposition calls upon the Rudd government to stop the bullyboy blackmail tactics to get this tax grab through the parliament. The opposition asks the government to simply fund the safety measures for truckie’s without condition. Do not use the lives of truck drivers as a negotiating pawn. There is money available to the government to introduce these safety measures which they regard as important; they do not have to be tied to new taxation measures which will actually raise vastly more money than the government is proposing to spend on the package.

The opposition is also concerned about the way in which the heavy freight sector is regulated, particularly the longstanding inability of the states to agree on uniform vehicle laws. The states have been promising for years to unify the laws but they have not done so. Previous governments even tied certain funding to uniform regulations but progress has been slow. The government should not be giving new money to the states out of registration and fuel taxes unless the states guarantee that they will at the same time deliver harmonisation of the laws, as has been promised for decades. As an example, I refer to the heavy vehicle driver fatigue reforms agreed by the Australian Transport Council in February 2007. These laws are designed to provide a national standard for managing heavy vehicle driver fatigue. The coalition supports a national template providing for the consistent and safe management of fatigue by drivers of heavy vehicles. Late last year the Australian Transport Council approved the heavy vehicle driver fatigue national model legislation.

Of course, the regulation of the heavy vehicle sector is the responsibility of states and territories. They must pass the required heavy vehicle fatigue management laws and implement them. I understood that the states agreed that these should be uniform laws—but this is the beginning of the problem. Not all of the states and territories have decided to do so. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are implementing the new laws on 29 September. Tasmania and the Northern Territory plan to implement them later. The Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia are not going to implement them at all. Secondly, the participating states have made changes to the national model legislation. For example, under section 56 of the model law, a truck driver engaged in standard hours only has to carry a work diary if he or she drives more than 100 kilometres from their home base or has done so in the last 28 days. This means that a driver of a truck over 12 tonnes working a regular day delivering furniture around a regional centre should not have to worry about filling in the work diary. But in New South Wales or Tasmania every heavy truck operator must fill out the diary, even for local work. So the driver delivering furniture must waste time filling out paperwork and the drivers who transport containers around Botany Bay will simply have further red tape to deal with as well. It is inconsistent, it is irritating and it loses valuable business time.

Another example is the different treatment of short rest breaks. Under section 47 of the model law, a driver working standard hours must take a short break after 5¼ hours of work. A driver may make a defence against a breach of this provision if there was no suitable place of rest to be found and the driver found a rest stop within 45 minutes. In New South Wales or Victoria this is not a defence. This is in spite of the fact that a recent audit of 12,700 kilometres of Australia’s major highways found that the states and territories have largely failed to meet the National Transport Commission guidelines regarding the provision of rest stops. Surely it is not too much to ask the New South Wales and Victorian governments to be a little more flexible, as other states are prepared to be.

The third example of the haphazard way that the states have applied national fatigue management reforms is the inconsistent transitional arrangements. For Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, drivers who operate under the basic regulated hours of 12 hours driving plus two hours extra work have six months from 29 September to move to the new standard of 12 hours work in total. Not so in Victoria. In that state there will be no transitional arrangements for drivers on standard hours. As of 29 September, drivers in Victoria on standard hours will only be able to work 12 hours a day. What is more, this arrangement will apply to interstate drivers coming in from New South Wales and South Australia. Victoria’s insistence on pressing ahead, despite the transitional arrangements in other states, is a major concern, naturally, to interstate trucking operators. The national freight carriers have to manage not only the inconsistent application of the fatigue laws but also the inconsistent transitional arrangements.

Unfortunately, there are other bizarre consequences and inconsistencies in the treatment by states of national road freight. For example, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland have designated road train routes that make it possible for trucks to pull highly efficient B-triples across those states. B-triples are highly efficient vehicle combinations; they are up to 30 per cent more productive than B-doubles. They also help to get trucks off our roads, since two B-triples are equivalent to five semitrailers. Unfortunately, New South Wales refuses to open up its road systems to these vehicles. In spite of the COAG decision in 2006 that the states and territories would establish a B-triple network, New South Wales simply refuses to recognise B-triples as a legitimate vehicle combination able to operate freely on road train routes. Victoria is not much better. It allows strictly limited B-triple use between Broadmeadows and Geelong, and then only for the trucks moving car components for the Ford Motor Company. Talk about a sweetheart deal! These odd policy decisions by New South Wales and Victoria mean that B-triple freight cannot take place on a national basis. This is in spite of the fact that the road freight task is expected to nearly double by 2020.

There are plenty of other anomalies. One is the glacial take-up by particular states of the common higher mass limits for trucks with road friendly suspension. As far back as 1999, the states and territories agreed with the Commonwealth that Australia should develop approved routes for trucks with road friendly suspension. This is an important reform that would generate freight efficiencies worth hundreds of millions of dollars and would place Australia at the forefront of the world in pioneering and applying new developments in pavement friendly technologies. According to the reform, an approved road network for trucks fitted with state-of-the-art suspension systems would roll out as specific roads and bridges were protected.

In spite of Commonwealth funding being provided for this purpose, now, after nearly 10 years, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory and areas of Queensland have developed an extensive approved road network for these types of trucks. But, ever since this initiative started, New South Wales has been blocking it by imposing unique and difficult regulations that effectively make it impossible for vehicles to qualify. New South Wales continues to refuse to publish its higher mass limit network or to open up in a transparent way its approval for vehicles to drive on it.

Another inefficient agony in our so-called national road freight system is the different treatment of widths of loads. For example, states cannot agree on a harmonised approach to minor overwidth loads, such as hay bales. Drought and even average seasons around the state generate significant movements of hay, including across state borders. In New South Wales, rigid semitrailers and B-doubles may be loaded to a width of only 2.83 metres. But, in next door Victoria, these trucks can be loaded to three metres. Beware the farmer in Victoria who dares load his truck with hay as wide as legally possible in that state and then drives across the border into New South Wales! Is he expected to cut a few inches off every hay bale? The laws are a nonsense and clearly need to be standardised. Containers that can be legally trucked in Queensland may be too long in New South Wales. Loads in New South Wales may be too high to move into Victoria.

The opposition supports the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008, but the government should not be providing any additional funding to the states unless the states deal with these issues of inconsistency of regulations. The states have been promising for years to fix this, but their progress has been appallingly slow. The opposition also notes the agreement by the Australian Transport Council, in July this year, to establish a single national system for heavy vehicle regulation and the adoption of a consistent approach to heavy vehicle licensing. The opposition supports this initiative, but let’s make it clear: this is not the first such commitment. The states have promised repeatedly and have failed to deliver. In spite of financial incentives, they do not respond. They expect compromises from the transport sector but they have not met their share of the deal made with the trucking industry. The trucking industry is prepared to respond to some of these issues, but it expects the governments to act responsibly as well. Instead, state governments consistently impose new burdens on the trucking sector without meeting their share of the burden.

No number of communiques and press statements change the fact that there appears to be foot-dragging and a fundamental lack of political will by certain non-federal jurisdictions to address this basic problem. It is time we had serious discussions about the slow and fragmented approach of some of the states and territories towards road freight reform. It seems extraordinary that, in this successful, modern and mobile country of the 21st century, those in the business of putting necessities on our supermarket shelves have to put up with this kind of irrational, irritating and inefficient nonsense.

I remind the Rudd government that ending the blame game is not code for friendly failure—or just giving up. The federal government cannot walk away from its task of driving the states to act responsibly. There should be no further concessions or additional financial grants to the states under higher fuel taxes and registration until there is clear and demonstrated approval of standardisation and harmonisation of state transport laws. If it is safe in one state, it is safe in another. If a container is okay to be hauled around the roads in one state, why is it inappropriate as soon as the truck crosses a border?

It is these sorts of anomalies that make us a laughing stock in other parts of the world. It is the rail gauge story repeated time and time again. But this is not last-century stuff. It is not 100-year-old stuff. It is happening today. The various states are simply unable to find the necessary common ground to institute laws which would enable our transport system and industries, particularly those in regional areas, to operate with a higher level of efficiency. The Labor government must stop rewarding the failure of the Labor states by giving them even more federal money. It must start placing rigorous conditions upon the states and point out that they too are part of Australia and they must contribute to this vital reform.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 is an important piece of legislation. It certainly demonstrates the government’s commitment to road safety and to the infrastructure of our local roads. It is very important to my electorate of Werriwa. As I know you appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, my electorate straddles one of the most important road transport corridors in the country, and that is the Hume Highway. The Hume Highway sees about 365,000 heavy vehicle movements per year. That accounts for about 20 million tonnes of freight. I saw the statistics that were produced in the lead-up to the widening of the F5. They showed that in my electorate there were 6,000 truck movements per day. That indicates the amount of reliance that we have on heavy road transport, which remains a vital element in the economic wellbeing of our communities.

Heavy vehicle road transport accounts for 1.7 billion tonnes of freight per annum. That means that 70 per cent of total domestic freight is moved by road. Therefore, it is only appropriate that we as a government see that every effort is made to ensure that our roads are not only efficient and effective but, very importantly, safe. Reliance on road transport, regrettably, as indicated by all the various statistics I have seen, results in a road carnage figure which is obviously devastating for those personally affected but, with respect, is also devastating to the community as a whole. This is the case particularly when you appreciate that one in five road fatalities involves heavy vehicles. Speed and fatigue are significant factors which contribute to that. They are factors which this bill sets out to do something about.

Road safety is an obligation for all road users. It is certainly a responsibility that is shared between state, territory and local governments. But the federal government’s responsibility is to provide leadership in, and resources for, the proper and efficient use of our road transport infrastructure. That is what this bill does. The government’s leadership, quite frankly, is evident in this bill. The bill demonstrates an ongoing commitment to road safety and to local road infrastructure.

The bill will enable funding for heavy vehicle safety. It will continue the Roads to Recovery program. It will allow better management of the Roads to Recovery funding list. It will also enable the funding of state governments while the most appropriate local government to be affected is being determined. So it will not hold money back while those bureaucratic assessments are being made; it will actually do something about ensuring that our roads are as safe and effective as possible in being the conduit by which heavy vehicles deliver their product to market.

The amendments in the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 will enable the funding of projects, including the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program, from 1 July 2009. The bill will allow the continuation of the Roads to Recovery program for a further five years, extending beyond June 2009. It will allow for the better management of the Roads to Recovery funding list, which sets out all the funding recipients in Australia and the amounts they receive. That is currently not able to be amended except, as I understand it, in very, very limited circumstances.

I will deal with the safety aspects of this bill. As I said, safety is very much at the forefront of this legislation. The bill will amend the definition of ‘roads’ contained in the act so that it will include heavy vehicle safety facilities. Some might think that that is just a semantic gesture, but this will enable the funding arrangements to be made so that investments can be made in the establishment of heavy vehicle rest areas; truck parking and decoupling areas, particularly in the outer suburban and regional areas; and new technology for vehicles’ electrical systems so that the performance of drivers can be validated to ensure that drivers are not driving excessive hours and that they are observing legislated rest periods. Those are very much fundamental things in improving truck safety.

I should indicate that for some time now I have been visiting a truck stop. I started visiting that truck stop probably because of issues about Work Choices in the lead-up to the last election. I regularly go down to Uncle Leo’s truck stop at the crossroads in Casula. It is a practice I have developed. I just listen to these drivers. Most of these drivers, by and large, are owner-drivers. They talk to me about what they have to do to make their times. One of the things that I did not appreciate until last year is the amount of down time a number of the transport operators have. The need to have rest areas or decoupling areas is just so critical.

I was talking to one driver who had been at Uncle Leo’s truck stop for 14 hours. He had haulage that was going to one of our main distribution points in the outer metropolitan area of Sydney, but he was waiting for a slot time. Where I came from, I dealt regularly with slot times. We had them in the aviation industry. By and large, that is how we regulated when planes arrived and departed. This driver explained to me that he had been waiting 14 hours for a slot time. His vehicle—his rig and the contents of it—was at this truck stop waiting for a time that he could unload. He was not getting paid. As he put it to me, ‘I am a mobile storage facility.’ He was simply going to be there until he could get his slot time so he could unload. This fellow was from Brisbane—he had nothing to do with my electorate to that extent—and he was simply waiting for a period when he could go and unload. In terms of the economics of that, he was not getting paid; he would have to wait for his slot. On other occasions at the same truck stop, I have heard drivers haggling and negotiating over the telephone for passage back to Brisbane. They are trying to get a load to go back. I have been with one driver there who settled on the fuel costs on a return load back to his home port of Brisbane.

The picture I am trying to paint is that, in the heavy vehicle transport industry, it is more than possible that people will, where necessary, cut corners. They will certainly push the envelope. They will certainly do what they see as necessary to make a quid, which unfortunately leads to speeding and perseverance despite fatigue. That might be their own personal business, but doing it on our roads is an issue for the community generally. That is why this piece of legislation is very important: it puts that very much in the forefront. It recognises the competitive issues within this industry and it aims to help regulate those issues in a safe and effective way.

I have got a lot of time for these owner-drivers out there. I appreciate the amount of work they have to put in to make a quid, to look after their families, to pay the mortgage and to pay the repayments on their vehicles, but when you hear their personal stories, as I have, it gives you a new appreciation. There is a large amount of pressure on drivers in the heavy haulage industry, and one in five road fatalities in this country involves a heavy vehicle. That should be of concern to all of us. That is why this legislation is so essential.

I have heard the view of the shadow minister and the Leader of the National Party. It is true that this piece of legislation has the intention of ensuring that the heavy vehicle industry pays its fair share. You are probably at the sharper end of this than I am, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, coming from a rural background, but I know from my local councils of Liverpool, Campbelltown and, to some extent, Camden the amount of money that is required for road maintenance. Heavy vehicles contribute largely to the deterioration of some of the local roads, as vehicles are using those roads to get to ports, marketplaces or other transport hubs. I do not think that it is improper to ensure that people pay their fair share for that. I do not think it is proper to think that our local government organisations are going to foot the bill. What we are trying to do in this piece of legislation is ensure that there is proper balance—the sort of balance that Minister Truss, as he was at that stage, was talking about when he gave a speech on 28 June 2007 entitled ‘The coalition government’s transport reform agenda’. In that speech he said:

The National Transport Commission will develop a new heavy vehicle charges determination to be implemented from 1 July 2008. The new determination will aim to recover the heavy vehicles’ allocated infrastructure costs in total—

and I emphasise ‘in total’—

and will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

When you hear a speech like that, you think that means they are going to come in and at least make an attempt at a fairer system by having the heavy vehicles industry pay a fair share for road damage. I sat through the last speech and, probably like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I came to the conclusion that that is not what the minister—now the shadow minister—was effectively saying. There must be that balance, and we are working hard to establish that.

The very effective Roads to Recovery program is due to run out on 30 June. It ensures that local governments are not left high and dry in having to maintain road infrastructure to accommodate damage and deterioration of local roads. This bill will ensure that Roads to Recovery will be extended a further five years through to June 2014. Additionally, the bill will facilitate Labor’s increase in funding from $300 million per year to $350 million per year. That is an increase of $250 million over five years. The Labor government’s total commitment to fixing local road transport issues will increase to $1.75 billion over the life of the Roads to Recovery program. That is certainly a major commitment to the infrastructure requirements of not only the heavy vehicle industry but also local governments, who often find it difficult to maintain roads to accommodate heavy vehicles travelling in their constituencies.

This bill deals with AusLink, and I want to put on the record the commitment that the Rudd Labor government delivered to the people of south-west Sydney. A $140-million project has been initiated to widen the F5 freeway. Of that, the Rudd Labor government has already committed $112 million, and the remainder of the funding will be found by the state government. That is effectively an 80-20 arrangement. Tenders for the project were called only two weeks ago, notwithstanding the member for Macarthur’s view that it was in never-never land. I assure him—and this could help when he visits his electorate from his home in Mosman—this project is going ahead.

I congratulate Campbelltown City Council and the mayor, Aaron Rule, who, with due respect to them, went to great lengths in lobbying both major parties in the lead-up to the last election to get the funding commitments necessary to proceed with this significant upgrade of road infrastructure. The upgrade involves a two-lane section of road about 10 kilometres long between Ingleburn and Narellan. It will be upgraded to four lanes between Campbelltown and Ingleburn and to three lanes each way between Narellan Road and Campbelltown Road. That is a significant net adjustment to the area.

It is very significant because it is what we need to be doing—that is, building these pieces of infrastructure—not simply to make it easier for people to move from point A to point B around my electorate, although it will do that as well, but also to help open up commercial land or employment-generating land so that we can establish industries that will have access to both road and transport facilities, including the M5, the F5 and the M7. It will also allow the proper development of intermodal terminals, which will facilitate the establishment of south-west Sydney as an inland port.

That is what we argued in the lead-up to the election. However, believe it or not, the member for Macarthur took the view—for which he was pilloried by the electorate—and ran the argument that the airspace on top of the Hume Highway is not owned by the Commonwealth but by the state government. Therefore, we could build it and the air would be a state government responsibility. If members do not believe me, I am happy to produce newspaper articles about that. That is the way the member for Macarthur treated the people of south-west Sydney. He had the audacity to say that the F5 freeway argument almost cost him his seat. Granted, his margin went from 11.2 per cent down to 0.7 per cent, but I think that was the result of things other than ridiculous comments like that. It might have been a result of the general servicing of the area. With respect, if members show disdain like that for the people of south-west Sydney perhaps they should not enjoy even a 0.7 per cent margin. As I have said to him previously, at least this government is building a road to make it easier for him to travel occasionally from his home in Mosman to his electorate of Macarthur. I am glad the member has joined us, because he might want to attest to what I have just said.

This project is so fundamental to south-west Sydney that it had to become a bargaining tool. Doing something fair and right should not have been a bargaining issue; it should have been committed to. (Time expired)

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to speak to the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill and, in particular, about experiences I have recently had directly with the trucking industry. The bill does two principal things. Firstly, it extends the Roads to Recovery program, which was one of the many excellent Howard government initiatives. It put more resources directly into the hands of local government, particularly for the maintenance of important local roads. Secondly, the bill amends the AusLink legislation to allow AusLink to fund and support off-road rest stops. Members on this side of the House know that they are a bugbear for people in the transport industry.

I pay special tribute to Australia’s truck drivers, owner-operators and the men, and increasingly the women, in the industry. Too often many Australians, particularly those who live in built-up city areas, do not appreciate the sacrifices that are made to get our goods transported literally the length and breadth of this country.

In the last financial year, 2006-07, road freight was worth just under $17 billion to the Australian economy. That is 1.7 per cent of the entire nation’s gross domestic product. If you add storage, you are looking at closer to $30 billion or three per cent of Australia’s GDP. There were 2.1 billion tonnes of freight carried last year—2.1 billion tonnes of freight carried right across Australia—by Australia’s transport industry and, of course, our drivers. And it is forecast that, from 2000 to 2020, that tonnage is going to double. When you think about it, there is really nothing in this country that these people do not deliver—with the possible exception of babies!

In 1996, when the Howard government came to office, road funding was less in real terms than it had been at the time of the change of the previous government in 1982-83. In other words, the record of the last Labor administration, the last Labor government, was to actually reduce in real terms funding to Australian roads. In contrast, under the previous coalition government, there had been a 24 per cent real increase by 2007. So there was a real reduction under the previous Labor government and a real increase of 24 per cent under the last coalition government. Much of that money was invested in national highways but about 80 per cent of it actually went into local councils—bypassing the seriously constipated state governments mismanaging their resources and going instead to local governments, which know exactly which roads have to be fixed, which roads have to be built and which roads best serve the local communities.

In 2000 the Roads to Recovery program was budgeted at $1.2 billion over four years and it funded 25,000 projects, including in my electorate of Bradfield, in a built-up suburban Sydney area, right through to the most remote regional communities, including in your own electorate of Maranoa, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. An issue that is very important to all Australians—particularly to the drivers but to all of us who use the roads—is road deaths. There were 10.76 deaths per 100,000 in 1996. So for every 100,000 Australians almost 11 Australians were killed. In contrast, by the time of the change of government last year, as a result of a range of initiatives, the number of deaths had declined from 11 per 100,000 to 7.6 per 100,000. I think everybody in the industry, the federal, state and local governments, the designers of vehicles and a whole variety of people should take an enormous amount of credit for that. The deaths that involved articulated trucks had declined over the last 11 years by some 11 per cent.

One thing that was done by the previous government was to reintroduce the Black Spot Program. It is estimated that, by June 2008, the Black Spot Program will have prevented some 6,000 serious crashes and saved in the order of 130 lives. So the end result is that one of the programs which we initiated in this parliament and which we fund and which we support has saved 130 lives. And, as a matter of record, it was a program that was scrapped by the Labor Party. There were 172 deaths last year involving articulated trucks.

There are a couple of things that the new Labor government has done already to which we on this side take great exception—as do people in the industry. Firstly, in an environment where this country has gone backwards under the Rudd Labor government—where Australians now are worse off than they were in 2007, with crippling increases in fuel, groceries and rents and increasing cost-of-living pressures—one of the things that the government did was to increase the road user charge. In plain language that is understood by the truckies of the country, what the government did was to increase the cost of the charge on diesel from 19.6c a litre to 21c a litre. That will raise $80 million a year. That is an $80 million tax on the industry—at a time when every motorist and, in particular, every truck driver and owner-operator knows that diesel costs are crippling them and adding to inflationary costs.

We are told by the government that it is fighting a war against inflation. We are told by the government that the price of groceries is something about which it professes to have concern. You would think that, if you were concerned about the cost of fuel to, in particular, Australian truckies, the last thing you would do is put an increased tax on diesel. Yet that was one of the first things that this government did. You would think that, if you were worried about the cost of groceries, instead of just watching the price of groceries, the last thing you would do is put inflationary costs onto it. It does not matter whether you go to a small independent grocer, a corner store or a supermarket, wherever you buy groceries, a truck driver somewhere drove those groceries to that facility and the cost of getting it there contributes to the price that real consumers ultimately pay.

So that was the first thing the government did: they increased the road user cost. They increased the cost of diesel and thereby, of course, increased the price of groceries to Australians. I bet we will not be hearing about that on the ‘grocery watch’ website that the taxpayers of Australia have paid $13 million to set up. That increase in the road user cost raises $80 million a year. So that is an $80 million tax on Australia’s owner-drivers—$80 million a year. The second thing the government did, in its enormous wisdom, was to increase the registration costs. So now we have an $89 million impost in increased registration charges. We are supposed to be fighting inflation, we are supposed to be worried about the cost of groceries and doing something about it, and the government’s first two actions were, firstly, to increase the price of diesel for truckies and, secondly, to increase the cost of registering the vehicles.

We were told that the registration charges were necessary to fund safety programs. No-one on this side opposes safety programs, but I ask: why is it that, with escalating cost-of-living pressures, rising interest rates under Mr Rudd and his government and people losing their jobs, we have to fund safety from an increased tax on Australia’s truckies instead of funding it out of the $21.7 billion surplus given to the government by the previous coalition government? When we oppose the registration costs, the government says, ‘We’ve got to fund safety.’ In other words, the government is saying that, if you do not increase taxes, you will not have funding for safety. What a load of nonsense! We were not born yesterday, and I can tell you that the truckies of this country—if they know what is going on—certainly know that this is a government that is hostile to the interests of everyday Australians and, in particular, fair dinkum, hardworking Australians who work on average about 100 hours a week driving this stuff around the country.

I had the great privilege—and that is how I describe it—of being able to spend 12 hours in a B-double weighing just over 60 tonnes with a guy called Rod Hannifey, who has seven kids. We went from Melbourne to Dubbo over approximately a 12-hour period. During that period of time, apart from getting to know Mr Hannifey very well, getting to know the issues of the drivers and getting to listen to a bit of Slim Dusty as we went along, I had the very important opportunity to get a better understanding of the issues that are facing these men and women in this industry. We stopped in Albury and I was met by the member for Farrer, who brought out a welcoming committee. We also stopped in Forbes at the Ben Hall Road Stop—and I send a very big cheerio to Carmel. There were a dozen or so truckies at the Ben Hall when we pulled in to Dubbo at about eight o’clock that night. If you are looking for a high-quality meal, particularly rissoles about four centimetres thick, you will pay $11.50 for two rissoles, salad, chips and a free coffee, and you will get the best company you could ever spend a bit of time with. I will not relate to the Prime Minister the reaction of the truckies when they saw him pop up on the TV in the corner of the truck stop. Needless to say, it was not dissimilar from the cheerio he got from the crowd at the Bledisloe on Saturday night.

There are a number of very important issues here. We had an opportunity to look at rest stops. For those of us who just drive around the country in our cars and stop every couple of hours to have a coffee and to freshen up, a rest stop is a rest stop. But, for a driver driving a 60-tonne B-double, an articulated vehicle, or, increasingly, a triple, these rest stops are absolutely essential. These men and women need a rest. All drivers need a rest, but these people need to be able to sleep. They have an enormous amount of responsibility in driving these vehicles. It is not unusual for a driver to be waiting for three or four days to get a call from a company, to get a call and then to find that he is going to be on the road for 10 days and will go through four states through that period of time. So, when a driver pulls in for a rest stop, he needs a break. Some of the rest stops are very well designed with parking that is clearly demarcated, with the trucks further off the road and with the refrigerated trucks being kept away from the non-refrigerated trucks because the engines in the refrigeration, of course, keep the drivers awake. Whilst technically they might have had a four-hour break, a driver can get back onto the road really having had no sleep at all.

Some of the rest stops have showers. Some of them have toilets that are well designed and all the rest of it, but some of them are appalling. Some of them are not only a disgrace but indeed a threat to the safety of all road users—just a bit of dirt on the side of the road with a rubbish tin and maybe a bench if you are lucky. There is no shade, trees have been chopped down and there has been no thought given to drivers driving in 40-degree heat needing to get a bit of sleep in shaded conditions—there is none of that. One of the things that hopefully this bill and this amendment will help to achieve but which political will will ultimately deliver is truck stops that are designed by drivers for drivers.

When you go over a hump in a car, you might barely notice it. If you are in a B-double and you go over a hump at 100 kilometres an hour, it is like an F18 lift-off. I commend the Queensland Department of Main Roads for what they have done with Mr Hannifey. They have put a GPS link computer system into his truck so that, when he goes over a road that has a defect that potentially threatens the safety of the truck and other road users, he can immediately lock it in and go straight to Queensland Roads, and within a very short space of time they will send a road crew out to fix it. That is in everybody’s interests. However, trying to deal with the RTA in New South Wales is quite a different matter. It takes quite a few calls. The roads minister has had a bit of a problem, but—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Opposition Member:

An opposition member—Who is it this week?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What time is it?

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My colleagues are teasing me. They want me to name the roads minister; that is a big call. His first name is Tony. On a serious note, it is important to have a system where our sentinel drivers all through the country are able to directly communicate with roads authorities and have defects in roads fixed. Too often we focus on building new roads; not often enough do we focus on the maintenance of existing roads.

It is very important for us to appreciate that these men and women run their families by phone. Ron said to me, ‘Very few people in my industry are not on their second marriage.’ We fail to appreciate that these are men and women who, uniquely, need to go away from home, often at short notice and for extended periods of time, and the stresses on families are in no circumstances to be underestimated.

I think Coles and Woolworths have a bit to answer for. I know that they are trying to do the best they can to manage the trucks as they come through the loading bays, but when a truck driver arrives six hours early and has to wait six hours before he can unload and is not even allowed to use the toilet, I say: Coles and Woolworths, if you are listening, just have a listen to some of the drivers; they need a better go. A lot of these drivers and owners are providing free storage to supermarkets. You have a truck out in the road for four, five or six hours that is completely loaded up—that is free storage, and the drivers and owners are paying for it. There is no question that, whilst there is goodwill on the part of the supermarket owners and operators, there needs to be a lot more of that and a lot more common sense.

We need plain common sense when it comes to fatigue laws. There is no question that fatigue laws, generally speaking, need to be supported and strengthened. When Rod Hannifey, who is based in Dubbo, drove for 10 minutes around the block in Melbourne and then pulled over, I said to him, ‘Mate, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m filling in my logbook.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, I’ve got to fill in the logbook.’ I said, ‘Mate, we just went round the block.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know, but I’m away from base.’ Filling in the logbook then triggers a compulsory rest period in the trip from Melbourne to Dubbo. I understand the motive, but it is a lack of plain common sense. These people are seriously battling. If they are fined they will lose not only money but demerit points. So plain common sense must be applied in some of these fatigue laws.

Another issue is pay. I asked Rod: ‘What sort of pay do these blokes get? What sort of money do you get?’ He said that, generally speaking, if you are away from home for five days and you drive 200,000 kilometres a year—about 4,000 kilometres a week—you would expect to bring in about $80,000 gross or you might max out at $100,000. A lot of people listening to this debate would say, ‘Gee, that’s a lot of money.’ However, I would not want to have to feed seven kids, be away from home for at least five days a week and have all the stress of doing what these men and women do for that kind of money. I think we should take our hats off to them.

There are a number of other very important issues, and one of them is car drivers—for instance, this bloke in a Barina who pulled out of a road stop and sat on 80 kilometres an hour. We have a 60-tonne truck doing 100 kilometres an hour, the merging lane is too short and this bloke in the Barina pulls out in front of the truck. So what happens? Of course, the truckie has to hit the brakes. Goodness knows if there was someone behind us with a caravan. When drivers are being educated for their road licence, is it too much to ask for them to watch a 10-minute simulation to give them an understanding of what it is like to be in a major articulated vehicle out on the road?

There is the issue of caravans and the drivers who tow them. Another issue is the twin headlights on new motorbikes. These lights can give truck drivers the perception that there is a car some distance away when in fact it is a motorcycle that is relatively close. A further issue that I think we should focus on is fog lights. A lot of drivers have fog lights on their cars—and they are called fog lights for good reason. You put them on when there is fog; however, these lights are blinding to other drivers, especially at night. Also, imagine being a truck driver out on the road and trying to do something as simple as getting to a dentist or a doctor or dealing with kids or with any of the problems that occur in domestic relationships.

In conclusion, I think the government has already shown itself to be hostile to the interests of working Australians—dare I say working families. It has certainly shown itself to be hostile to the interests of Australia’s road industry. Further to all those people losing their jobs, can I give you one more figure: there were 3,600 truck repossessions in the first six months of this year. Behind every one of those repossessions is a story of heartbreak. Somebody with a mortgage, somebody with debt, has had their truck repossessed. Worse still, the finance companies have stopped repossessing because they do not think they will get their money back. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.