Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was getting close to a conclusion before the debate on this bill was interrupted, but I want to go back to those statements about the issues of my electorate—its proximity to the capital city of Brisbane and the fact it is bordered by New South Wales. It is a Gold Coast hinterland seat, and I see the member for one of the Gold Coast seats sitting here in the chamber. We know our region has been underfunded, we know that we have a lack of infrastructure, we know that all of those things I have spoken about are serious issues.

My concern is that we now have to get some leverage in place to ensure that we can provide the sorts of facilities and the infrastructure that we require in that region, particularly the road infrastructure which then leads to the transport infrastructure. In fact, I was very happy to have Minister Albanese visit the region some time ago during the announcement about the area of Bromelton—the state development area I spoke about before. It is a major area for development. It will need an enormous amount of private and public investment, certainly in the road infrastructure. It is an area of great interest to the state and to the nation because it will be the largest intermodal port in the country. But at this point in time, essentially there are no major roads that service the area and no corridors have even been put aside. It is going to need an enormous amount of planning, but these bills are all about ensuring that through the road transport logistics industry and through all the users, the growth of that industry—which, in my region, will be a major amount of growth—and the fact that some minimal charges will be put back into the system will provide for the safe use of those roads.

I will continue to bring the issues of my electorate to this chamber, particularly when we have legislation like this that lends itself to allowing us to make better investment. I mentioned earlier in this speech the example of Duck Creek Road—and I will continue to use it. I know that the member for Dobell, who sits next to me, has on a number of occasions been aware that in an area like the seat of Forde—in south-east Queensland, close to the capital city—the level of infrastructure has been very poor. This is one small part that will go towards the transport logistics side of providing infrastructure. Our work with local governments, our Building Australia Fund and Infrastructure Australia will certainly allow us, as a government, to achieve.

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I know your area. I have heard you speak many times about the lack of infrastructure in transport logistics. I am sure that this is a start, to have a piece of legislation that will allow us to roll money back into areas of need and priority, particularly if it is for the safe use of roads and if it is in the interests of the public as well as the industry who use those highways. With that, I commend these bills to the House.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to speak to this bill. The issue of road transport is very important to my electorate as I have several major highways dissecting it—most notably the Newell Highway, which is the main corridor between Melbourne and Brisbane. I am pleased that the changes have been made to the original bill to make it more worth while. I would be a little more opposed to the charges except for the fact that this bill is only going to affect about five per cent of trucks—the interstate plated trucks and the ones registered in the ACT—and, to a large degree, the states have already implemented a level of charges, so this is just keeping everything in line.

What I am pleased to see in the amendment to this bill is the commitment to build the rest areas on these highways. The Newell Highway through my electorate has large areas between towns and fatigue plays a major problem. Indeed, we have had some severe tragedies over the years on the Newell Highway. I commend the work of Rod Hannifey, who is an advocate for the trucking industry. Through his lobbying, there are some trial locations on the Newell now where rest areas are identified leading up to them so that a truck driver who is not familiar with the road gets warning that a rest area is coming up and can prepare to slow down and turn in because if they miss that one, it is quite a few kilometres to the next one.

One of the things that I am a little bit concerned about in regard to this bill is that it does concentrate on the AusLink roads and the main transport routes. We need to not forget the minor highways and the other local roads that feed off these highways. One of the issues that the transport operators confront in the regions, particularly in my area, is the problem of mixing tourists—especially the so-called grey nomads—up with heavy transport. I spend a lot of time on the road in my electorate, Deputy Speaker Scott, as would you, and the situation that causes the most discomfort is a campervan travelling at 80 kilometres an hour—you will see it with half-a-dozen B-double transports that can comfortably sit on a 100. When you get these bottlenecks that is when frustration seeps in and people make foolhardy decisions.

One of the remedies for this is funding alternative routes. Indeed, I would commend the previous government for the instigation of the strategic fund, a component of Roads to Recovery. Work is underway in my electorate now on a couple of those. One in particular is the Wellington to Narrabri road and the Coonamble to Bindra road, which connect to each other. When there is an alternative sealed route through probably smaller, picturesque towns it will encourage those nomads off the highway and separate them out from the trucks.

The freight task is growing. It was interesting to listen to the previous speaker, the member for Forde, Mr Raguse. He was speaking about the development at Bromelton. That is quite an exciting development because, hopefully, with the Queensland government getting on side and the planning process underway for the inland rail, Bromelton I think is probably going to be one of the very important sites on that network. While the trucking industry is in the here and now, the freight task is set to double in the next few years and we need to be always pushing for that alternative for the rail line to take that pressure off these major highways.

One of the other issues of this concentration on the major AusLink highways is the transport that uses the alternative routes. A lot of these laws that come in are fine for line haulers and people who have large companies and have regular runs, but quite often the operators that get caught up in legislation and fall through the cracks are people like local transporters and stock transporters. The fact is that a lot of these people operate on secondary roads and quite often there is no provision for rest areas.

The other issue is the lack of uniformity across states. The top end of my electorate, as you know Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, joins yours at the Queensland border. There are huge problems with the transport industry because a truck can be perfectly legal in Queensland—I have got to say that the Queensland government seems to be more progressive and innovative in their approach to transport than New South Wales—but as soon as they cross over the border they will have issues with dimension, mass-weight limits and even with accessibility of road trains. If we are really going to make the transport industry more efficient and safer, we need to identify that.

In Gwydir shire in the northern part of my electorate we have an issue with road train access only to the boundary of that shire. While we have perfectly acceptable roads, because of the bureaucratic nature of the Roads and Traffic Authority in New South Wales, road trains are not allowed into that area. So we have problems then with animal health issues, where road trains will come in bringing stock down to the Myola feedlot from large areas up in Queensland. They have to unhook the trailer. There is no provision for uncoupling in these areas. Quite often in wet weather they are parked on the road or the cattle are left in the sun for maybe an hour and a half or two hours while one trailer is emptied and the other one comes back. We are going to have to have a national approach to this problem, because it is causing all sorts of problems. The lack of uncoupling areas between road train routes and non-road train routes are a big issue.

In Gwydir shire last year when I was the mayor we got B-double access. It was quite ironic. I was bringing cattle to my property from Queensland and they were brought in on a truck configuration with two B-doubles, the equivalent of three single trailers, right to the Queensland border. Then they had to come in separately. For the last few kilometres it was even difficult getting access for the B-doubles. The issue is the number of movements. On a lot of these country roads movements are the issue. It does not matter whether it is a single semitrailer, a tabletop or a road train, there are still issues with dust and overtaking and things like that. I think we need to have a more rounded approach when we are looking at the issue of making uniform configurations for trucks across the state.

The other issue we have trouble with across borders is the issue of fatigue management. No-one more than I understands the issue of fatigue and the fact that it is a great cause of accidents. But there is a lack of consistency from state to state in fatigue management. In New South Wales there has been a reprieve for 12 months with the workbooks that are introduced for people within 100 kilometres of their base area. That is particularly important for the grain industry leading up to the harvest, which is commencing in my area at the moment. There is a real issue with trucks that are spending maybe eight hours a day in a line-up at a silo, but that is considered work. So they will sign off there and then they will have to pull up and have a rest because they have timed out on their logbook. We need to have a sensible approach to fatigue management, taking into account the local operators.

I do commend this legislation to the House. We do have issues with the bills—we need to make sure that we do not have these charges indexed. If we are going to increase the charges to transport then that money must be used wisely. I commend that fact that in the bill we do have an allocation of a number of rest areas per year. I think that is a positive.

Chris Trevor (Flynn, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. These two bills will implement the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination as agreed by all Australian transport ministers on 29 February 2008. The purpose is to amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian governments Federal Interstate Registration Scheme.

The new charges that were implemented by all states on 1 July 2008 will ensure that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of the cost of providing the road network and for the damage that they cause to the roads. The new changes meet the COAG requirement that cross-subsidies between heavy vehicle classes be removed. The new charges result in decreases in registration charges for one quarter of the fleet, increases of no more than 10 per cent for 69 per cent of the fleet and significant increases for the remaining six per cent of the fleet, being the heavy truck trailers and multicombination vehicles that are currently subsidised by smaller vehicles. Starting from 1 January 2009 the Australian government intends to implement an increase in the road user charge from 19.633c per litre to 21c per litre, as agreed upon by Australian transport ministers. Additionally, the ministers have agreed to heavy vehicle registration charges. So as to remain fair and equitable with the rail system, it is important that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of the costs of providing and maintaining roads.

As with a lot of electorates, roads are a major problem in my electorate of Flynn in Central Queensland. Considering the damage to roads generally attributed to heavy vehicle usage, the Productivity Commission report of 2006 found that the industry as a whole was not paying or contributing enough to cover its share of road construction and maintenance costs. Therefore, in April 2007 the Council of Australian Governments directed the preparation of new heavy vehicle charges in order to fully recover the cost of damages caused by these vehicles and remove cross-subsidies between different elements of heavy vehicle fleets with the aim of maintaining full cost recovery in the long term through amended indexation arrangements.

According to National Transport Commission figures, the current total shortfall from the heavy vehicle industry amounts to more than $100 million per annum, or around $170 million inclusive of enforcement costs. Since road user charges were last set, there has been a significant increase of approximately 33 per cent in road expenditure by Commonwealth, state and territory departments. In addition, the number of B-doubles has increased, but they do not pay their way. The amended charges will not only provide parity among vehicles classes and between road and rail but also address the current under-recovery of these costs. I have some examples of how many trucks used the highways in my electorate of Flynn in 2007. The average daily number of trucks using the Bruce Highway between the townships of Mount Larcom and Port Alma was 1,417; the figure for those using the Capricorn Highway between Comet and Emerald, to the west of my home town of Gladstone, was 490; and the figure for those using the southern intersection of the Burnett Highway to the northern intersection of the Burnett Highway was 575.

It has become imperative to substantially increase the registration fees of large trucks so as to avoid them being subsidised by small trucks and to endeavour to spread costs fairly throughout the industry. Long-haul and interstate runs are usually served by larger vehicles such as B-doubles, roadtrains and large combination vehicles; and it is these that will feel the greatest impact of the new charges. The increases will be introduced incrementally over a three-year period in order to allow the industry to adjust. Once the new charges are fully implemented, smaller trucks can expect a total fee increase of around 0.2 per cent, with fees for larger B-doubles increasing by up to 2.8 per cent. According to estimates from the Australian Trucking Association, the new charges will result in the average grocery bill increasing by only about 30c per week. As previously stated, all governments are currently spending 33 per cent more on road funding than they were in 2001. These charges aim to recoup from the industry only costs of enforcement which result directly from damage caused by extra weight loading. Such infringements cause untimely wear and lessen the life of road surfaces, ultimately resulting in increased road maintenance costs. Enforcement needs to be carried out to ensure that road users adhere to safe practices. Currently, agencies that enforce these procedures are not benefiting from the fines collected. Commercial vehicles share our roads with private motorists, therefore their behaviour must be monitored and the costs incurred should naturally be carried by the industry.

There was extensive consultation in the development of new charges. On 6 July 2007 the NTC released a draft heavy vehicle charges determination regulation impact statement that outlined a number of options. In developing the options the NTC was informed by the third determination process, the analysis of potential impacts of changes in the level of charges and the Productivity Commission inquiry. Stakeholders were strongly encouraged to participate in the subsequent public consultation process. Written submissions were accepted and a number of focus groups were held throughout Australia. A technical workshop was conducted with road transport industry representatives and government.

The NTC conducted further discussions with industry representative groups such as the Australian Trucking Association and its member associations as well as the National Farmers Federation. Following this consultation process the NTC made further changes to the determination to take into account feedback from key industry stakeholders. A group of key industry stakeholders were further consulted about the subsequent changes, to gauge their views.

In theory the heavy vehicle industry agrees that costs should be fully recovered, and also accepts that some adjustments in the registration charges from smaller heavy classes towards larger classes may be necessary. It is also in agreement regarding the estimated amount that needs to be recouped, although the industry believes that it already pays this amount and that, as such, it is not necessary to increase charges further. The industry cites a figure of around $130 million as the amount it believes it is currently being overcharged. However, independent analysis shows that the methodology used to determine that claim has resulted in an overestimate of the current payments. It goes without saying that no industry wants to pay more than it already does; however, the trucking industry has benefited from major increases in funding over recent years and can expect to benefit further from record levels of investment in road infrastructure in the future.

Unsurprisingly, the trucking industry opposes having to pay for the full cost of monitoring its practices—around $66 million in enforcement costs—although this is a major component of the package. In order to ensure the safety of all road users it is vital that enforcement is carried out to make sure that trucks are not overloaded, potentially causing damage to our roads. Industry has stated that if the proposed charges eventuate it would like to see an increase in funding in the area of productivity-boosting investments. However, during recent years the industry has benefited from major productivity improvements. Among these improvements was an agreement to enable the use of higher productivity vehicles such as 26-metre B-doubles as opposed to the 25-metre previous maximum, a trial introduction of quad-axle combination vehicles with an increase of up to eight tonnes, an expansion of the higher mass limits network and an agreement to an extra four tonnes for semitrailers fitted out with twin-steer front axles.

This bill addresses the concerns, raised during the Senate debate in March, that the first bill did not allow the Australian government to set charges for FIRS vehicles without the agreement of Australian Transport Council ministers. This new bill provides the Australian government with the flexibility to implement charges for its FIRS registered vehicles in its own right, through regulations.

The Australian government supports national consistency and full cost recovery. To this end, implementing the new charges as set out in the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination will bring charges for FIRS vehicles into line with those of the rest of Australia. This will provide full cost recovery for FIRS vehicles as well as creating a level playing field for all of Australia’s heavy vehicle operators. Charges introduced into regulations will be subject to scrutiny through compulsory RIS and parliamentary disallowance processes.

The Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Act 1993 was enacted by the Commonwealth on behalf of the Australian Capital Territory and was designed also as a regulatory tool to allow jurisdictions to implement aspects of national heavy vehicle reform, such as registration charges, by adopting or referencing the national legislation within their own respective legislative arrangements. However, this process is now not used by most jurisdictions as they implement these reforms directly in their own legislation. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 will enable the Australian Capital Territory government to implement the new national heavy vehicle charges directly in its own legislation in the same manner as the other states and territories. The repeal also accords with the Inter-Governmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Road, Rail and Intermodal Transport—the intergovernmental agreement—entered into by the Commonwealth of Australia and the states and territories.

The road user charge is one component of heavy vehicle charges, the other being registration charges. Being based on the amount of fuel consumed, the road user charge is a much better proxy for heavy vehicles’ use of, and damage to, our roads than a flat registration charge. This is one of the reasons cost recovery from the road user charge makes up the bulk of heavy vehicle charges revenue. The National Transport Commission has reviewed all heavy vehicle charges and rebalanced them to ensure that heavy vehicles pay their fair share and that each class of heavy vehicle is not subsidising or being subsidised by another. The National Transport Commission will collect and collate the necessary data to undertake the annual adjustment calculation each year. This will then be published in the Commonwealth government Gazette and take effect on 1 July each year.

Inclusion of the road user charge in the annual adjustment process was a principle specifically supported by the Howard government. The June 2004 energy white paper released by John Howard included a specific commitment to annual adjustment of the road user charge in the same way that the states and territories adjust heavy vehicle registration fees.

Should the government implement regulations which establish automatic annual adjustment of the road user charge, it is likely that the rate of the road user charge would increase by between 1c and 2c per litre in the early years because of recent government road expenditure increases. The annual adjustment will help to ensure that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs. If government spending stabilised, then so would the road user charge. The National Transport Commission will undertake annual reviews to ensure that the automatic annual adjustment does not result in charges which would overrecover or underrecover heavy vehicles’ share of these costs. It is perhaps worth mentioning that, should government expenditure on roads fall or should other factors result in greater productivity within the heavy vehicle industry, the automatic annual adjustment could actually lead to a reduction in the road user charge and heavy vehicle registration charges. These bills allow regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges for application to the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles. I commend the Rudd Labor government’s leadership on this issue. It cannot be overstated that these bills are for the safety of all road users. Safety for our road users is of absolute paramountcy, and I commend these bills to the House.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 will allow the application of new registration charges to the five per cent of heavy vehicles that are registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. Apparently there are some 21,500 trucks, out of a total of 470,000 trucks, that will fall under this registration scheme. Obviously all the states have their own registration, and this bill will affect five per cent of the total number of registered heavy vehicles across Australia. These changes were agreed to at the Australian Transport Council meeting in February this year, and the states and territories have already imposed these new charges because that is where most of the trucks are registered.

To give a bit of background on this proposal, the bills originally proposed earlier this year were blocked by the Liberals and Nationals in the Senate because the schedule of charges contained an annual adjustment component based on a road construction index—in other words, that index would have been a measure of the costs of building roads—and it would have resulted in a likely annual increase in these charges of some seven to eight per cent had that bill passed in its original form as proposed by the Labor government. Also, the government wanted to increase the road user charge from 19.633c per litre—that is the fuel excise that the trucking industry and heavy vehicle industry pay for every litre of fuel consumed—to 21c per litre from January next year. Once again, this would have been subject to an annual adjustment. If the Liberal and National parties had not been successful in blocking that bill in the Senate, we would have seen the reintroduction of a fuel excise indexation scheme, where fuel excise as it applies to the trucking industry would have been increased annually based on the CPI. The former coalition government rightly abolished the automatic indexation of fuel excise, but what we were going to see was this new stealth tax, not announced by the now Prime Minister to the trucking industry prior to the last federal election—an increase in tax on the very transport sector that is so vital to the health and wealth of all Australians.

We do not oppose this second form of the bill, but we still have some concerns. We will propose amendments, and we want to see this government accept our amendments, because we want to make sure that the government cannot automatically index the road user charge by a formula. Our amendments would mean that the government must submit any of those proposed increases in charges to the scrutiny of the parliament. When a new tax is imposed on an industry—in this case the trucking industry—I think any fair-minded Australian would agree that that should really have the scrutiny of the parliament, and that is what our amendments would seek to ensure. We want to make sure that the charge is open, that there is a transparent process to the establishment of any increases that the government would want to propose in the future and that part of this fuel excise increase that the government would have the ability to make should this bill pass in its amended form goes to the construction of truck rest stops across the AusLink network. I have a very significant interest in truck stops. My electorate of Maranoa is of some 560,000-odd square kilometres and has major arterial roads. The Warrego, Gore, Cunningham and D’Aguilar highways are all major arterial roads that lead from Brisbane through to Darwin, Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney. We know that the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and the government have responded to our concerns on this side of the House, but we want to make sure that this bill removes that link between the road user charge and the indexation and leaves the matter of adjustment to future regulation and the scrutiny of the parliament. So we will certainly be watching very closely, should this bill pass with our amendments, to make sure that the process is open and transparent and that the parliament is able to scrutinise any proposed increases in the fuel excise.

Currently, the government may make a regulation that contains an indexing formula, which means that, should a regulation pass this parliament, the charge would increase every year without the opportunity for parliamentary debate or disallowance. Our proposed amendment would require the increase to the road user charge to be passed by the parliament. One of the concerns I have, of course, with the establishment of this road user charge is the fact that, whilst it will go towards establishing rest stops on our major arterial highways, it will not put any money into those roads that are not on the AusLink network. I notice the Minister for Resources and Energy is at the table. I have large networks of roads in my electorate that go into the resources sector, which I know he would have a very keen interest in. All of those industries out there in the Cooper Basin, the Eromanga oil and gas basin and the Surat Coal Basin, including the beef industry, are significant contributors to the national wealth. They will not see any of that money going to those roads for truck stops.

I will give you a little example, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was recently out at Birdsville in the back of my electorate. It is some 400 kilometres through the Cooper Basin and through to Windorah before you start to get onto a sealed highway. On the way back, I went into the Cuddapan oil refinery. Almost daily they truck out oil—a vital product in this day and age—for processing further east. They bring that out on type 2 road trains. A type 2 road train has three trailers and carries a very heavy load. They are pulling that out on a gravel road for the first hundred or so kilometres, and then they have another 250 kilometres into Quilpie, for example. But it is still not a road that will get any truck stops. They then have to go from Quilpie to Charleville before they get anywhere near an AusLink highway, another 200-odd kilometres. The point I raise here is that those trucks that are coming in and out of the resource rich Cooper Basin and Eromanga Basin will also be paying—they pay it today—the fuel excise. They continually ask me when the money that they pay in fuel excise is coming to benefit their roads in the outback of my electorate. Many of those fully laden type 2 road trains—whether it is with oil, with equipment for the exploration of oil and gas in the Cooper Basin or with cattle for export into meatworks in the processing sector and, of course, into the feedlot industry—will be using two litres of fuel per every kilometre. So you can start to see how any increase in tax will impact on those industries and those truck operators without any benefit being returned to the roads on which they have to operate.

The electorate of Maranoa really is a powerhouse for the Australian economy. I mentioned the oil and gas industry in the Cooper Basin and the Eromanga Basin, but we also have the Surat Coal Basin further east in between Dalby and Roma. That is really in its developmental infancy. We know it is a great resource. I am sure the minister is aware of the potential of the coal seam methane in that area. Power generation using natural gas is a very clean source of energy. Power stations are being developed and built as we speak, but that also requires trucks to come in and out loaded with equipment to construct the new power stations or powerlines to feed into the national grid. We have one just west of Dalby—there is going to be a base load, gas-fired power station at Braemar. There is another one near Miles going in for Queensland Gas using coal seam methane as one of their sources. This is all putting additional pressure on the Warrego. I met yesterday with members of an energy company, Linc Energy, who are using the resource of fairly deep coal—it is not economic to mine that coal for the quality of the coal that is there.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Chinchilla.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is exactly as the minister says. Only this week, the company ran the world’s first trials of the technologies that they will use to convert that coal into methane and into hydrogen and to bring it to the surface to then produce kerosene and diesel. If they get the approval of the state government and from the EPA and other approvals required, they will be constructing the enterprise. It is just one of many, I might add, that is being constructed right now, but this particular one will deliver 800 jobs during the construction phase and 200 jobs permanently thereon. Their estimates, on which they base their economic studies for the viability of their operation, indicate that they are looking not to the next two, three or four years but to the next hundred years. They will be producing 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per week. Putting aside all the coal seam methane development, the power station developments using coal seam methane for clean energy or the coal resources of the Surat basin that Xstrata want to open up near Wandoan and the development that will go hand in hand with that—the equipment will of course all come in on roads along the Warrego Highway—Linc Energy say that by 2012 they will be putting a B-double on the road transporting fuel from Chinchilla to Brisbane every half hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We are seeing in the electorate of Maranoa an exponential rise in transport not only on our major roads but also on our local government roads and, of course, state governed main roads. I am sure the Minister for Resources and Energy, who is at the table, would be aware that if the road user charge goes up to 21c not every road will benefit from that increase in terms of a truck stop. We will certainly be monitoring the situation to make sure that truck stops are appropriately placed along our national highways.

I have raised this concern about truck stops with some of my colleagues. In the far west in my electorate there are very long distances between communities, even between small communities. I am not sure that we should be putting truck stops in the middle of nowhere. Many people would say that they would be in the middle of a beautiful part of Australia, and I would agree with that, but I think that these truck stops would be much better placed if they were close to or on the outskirts of those smaller communities. When truckies stop they like to get a cooked meal from the local cafe or service station, which generates some revenue. If you put them in the middle of nowhere there is very little benefit to those smaller communities. On the Landsborough Highway there are places like Tanbar and Blackall, and then you get to Winton on the way up through to Cloncurry. East of Tanbar are Augathella and Morven. They are very small communities and their economies are very fragile. Locating some of these truck stops near those small communities will bring a benefit not only to the trucking industry but also to the economies of some of those communities. I think we would see a win-win situation. If we put them 30, 40 or 50 kilometres out of town, between major centres or even small communities, as we have in my electorate, I think we would see tourists pulling up to camp the night and use the facilities. Although their vehicles are often self-contained and they have their food and water in their refrigerators, I think they would use these truck stops, which is not their intended purpose. I hope the minister has some influence on his colleagues in relation to where these truck stops will be located. I will certainly be pushing that point, as I will be pushing the issue of outback roads, where truckies will still be paying the fuel excise but seeing little if any benefit on the roads on which they operate on a day-to-day basis.

My time has almost expired, so I would like to say that I hope the government will accept the opposition’s amendments. I want to make sure that we do have transparency in any increase in taxes that are imposed by this government. It is important that we do not have a process where the government can automatically increase indexation on fuel excise without the scrutiny of the parliament. As I said earlier, that was something that the coalition abolished. It was one of those policies introduced by the Hawke and Keating governments, and we all know what that led to in Australia. When there is a process of automatic indexation of any excise there can be no scrutiny and no influence from the other side of the House. The industries that have to pay that increased fuel excise do not have any input into how and where those moneys are spent.

I commend the bill to the House in the hope that we can get these amendments through. I hope the minister at the table is able to have some influence in relation to the points I have raised about the location of truck stops and the importance of making sure that the outback roads of the AusLink network will benefit from the increased revenue from this fuel excise. Those who use the road pay the excise and they deserve to see some benefit from it on the roads on which they operate on a day-to-day basis.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the two bills before the House, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. In doing so I think it is appropriate to commence my contribution to this debate by reflecting upon the principles that are contained within these two bills. They are principles that have received bipartisan support in the past and that have formed the basis for the policy of successive governments in this area. They relate largely to the notion of cost recovery from heavy vehicles and the heavy vehicle industry in respect of road construction and maintenance. These have been incurred through the collection of heavy vehicle charges and, as I said earlier, these principles have been supported by successive governments. Indeed, in a speech delivered on 28 June 2007 entitled ‘The coalition government’s transport reform agenda’ the then federal Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Leader of the Nationals, Mr Vaile, 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 will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

The sentiments contained within that comment really do support the propositions that underpin these two bills. They are that there should be, appropriately, a reallocation of costs imposed upon various heavy vehicle drivers and users to reflect the contribution to the damage and the requirement for continued maintenance generated by those vehicles. As a result of the reference of the matter to the Council of Australian Governments at that time, the comments of the then minister were ultimately taken on board and the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination was made. Earlier this year, on 29 February, the Australian Transport Council adopted and supported the implementation of the elements of the heavy vehicle charges determination.

In respect of the two bills being considered by the House, the first of the two bills, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill, deals specifically with changes to the registration costs principally of those vehicles that are registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It is relevant to note that they account for only approximately three per cent of heavy vehicles. There is the voluntary system of registration at the federal level, but there are obviously many more vehicles covered by the respective state and territory regimes. In respect of those particular regimes and the actions taken by those jurisdictions it is worth noting that those jurisdictions have already implemented the terms of the agreement nutted out at the meeting of the Australian Transport Council, which in effect endorsed the implementation of the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination. What we now have is a situation where various changes have been made in respect of road user charges that apply insofar as those vehicles that are registered at the state and territory levels are concerned, but those adjustments have not been made under the federal scheme.

This is of course an integral part of our ongoing efforts to achieve a seamless national economy to try and overcome some of the barriers and challenges that the federal system can sometime present. In the area of heavy vehicle driving, I think that is one example of where there are numerous issues that arise on a fairly frequent basis in respect of different regulations, requirements and charges that apply from one state or territory to another. It is important that we restore a position where some uniformity is achieved, and that is what this particular bill seeks to do.

It is worth noting that, in respect of the registration charges, one-quarter of the drivers of heavy vehicles that are registered will benefit from an overall reduction in costs as a result of this measure. It is worth taking that into account. They are, in particular, the smaller of the heavy vehicles, which are currently carrying a disproportionately high share of the burden of ongoing maintenance costs associated with our very extensive road network.

The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 deals specifically with changes in respect of the road user charge, which is ultimately levied as a result of the excise impost in concert with the fuel tax credit rebate process, which under present arrangements ultimately leaves a 19.63c per litre impost in the form of the road user charge. This bill proposes that that be lifted to 21c per litre. This initiative comes against the backdrop of increased road funding by all levels of government. I note that in the press release made by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, when he introduced this bill, he made the following statement:

It will also lift the Road User Charge for heavy vehicles to 21 cents per litre from 1 January 2009. This small increase reflects the fact that since the last change to the charge in 2001, spending by all levels of governments has risen by 33 per cent.

This reflects the additional contribution that governments at all levels are making when it comes to road spending. As a result of that, to ensure that we continue to provide sufficient investment in roads, that charge is being increased by a fairly modest amount, to 21c per litre.

One of the key elements of this package, and it is one that I wish to direct my comments to, is the range of initiatives that will address some of the safety concerns on our roads—safety issues facing all road users but more particularly those who are behind the wheels of heavy vehicles and who do such a great job in keeping the wheels of the national economy moving. The issue of the safety challenges faced by people in the road transport industry in particular is particularly close to my heart and one that I have spoken about in this place on numerous occasions in the past.

Importantly, this package makes provision for $70 million to be spent on safety initiatives. I think most observers would say that this is a welcome investment and a step in the right direction. In fact, I note that the Australian Trucking Association, in a press release, said:

The $70 million of funding is a good start, but it is not nearly enough to build all the rest areas that we need.

That is probably a fair point, but it is worth noting that it is a very good start. Those funds will be applied to a range of purposes, all relating to various safety initiatives that we hope will make our roads safer not only for heavy vehicle users but for all road users.

The package sets out some of the detail of the vehicle productivity and safety agenda of the government. There is a four-year heavy vehicle safety and productivity package, which will fund a number of things but in particular the construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities to assist truck drivers rest. It will involve trials of black-box technologies that electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed. There will also be significant investment in bridge strengthening projects and upgrades to linkages between existing AusLink freight routes.

I want to direct my comments towards three particular aspects of the safety package. There is the issue of providing greater investment for rest areas. This is a critical area, and I commend the government for recognising the great need for more rest area facilities for heavy vehicle users across this country. The Australian Trucking Association issued a press release setting out a list of funding priorities. There are many items that have been identified within that list and, as a consequence of their consultation with other stakeholders, they suggest many areas which would be and should be some of the first locations to be considered for these new rest areas. The No. 1 priority that was identified—at least, it appears as the first one on the list—was:

Construction of a major rest area, including adequate capacity for changeovers and decoupling, in proximity to the intersection of the M7 and M4 in Sydney.

This area is located very close to my electorate, although it is not in my electorate. The Westlink M7 is a tremendous motorway that has been of great assistance to economic development right across the Western Sydney region. Where it intersects with the M4—if you consider the M2 to be the north-western motorway and the M5 to be the south-western motorway then the M4 is the central western motorway—has become known as the Light Horse Interchange. It truly is one of the most significant intersections throughout our road network in this country. It has been a great boon for investment in the Western Sydney region. Anyone who has driven along the M7 in that area will see the proliferation of new businesses providing local jobs in the Western Sydney region. The sheer volume of truck drivers using that particular route does lend real support to the proposition that we should look at funding improvements for rest areas in that location. I support the comments that have been made by the Australian Trucking Association and would like to lend my voice in support of that particular proposal.

Another element of the safety package is the trial of black-box technologies that electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed. Clearly, the very demanding and gruelling hours required of many truck drivers, who often subject themselves to these as a result of financial necessity, need to be balanced against the need for public safety on our roads. Governments at all levels are moving, albeit somewhat slowly in some cases, towards increasing the extent of regulation in this area to ensure that drivers are not being forced to work hours that ultimately threaten the safety of other road users—not to mention the safety of the drivers themselves. It is one thing to start to beef up these requirements and to increase the extent of regulation on our heavy-vehicle drivers, but that really only underlines the significance of my earlier point about the need for greater investment in rest areas if we are requiring greater monitoring of the hours that are being driven. I think there are legitimate reasons for doing that; there are, of course, arguments on how best to achieve that. Certainly, some of the chain-of-responsibility initiatives that have been supported by the New South Wales government in the past have gone a long way towards achieving best practice in that regard. But as we require more of our truck drivers at a regulatory level, it is only fitting that we make that investment in the rest areas. The bridge-strengthening initiatives are also to be supported.

These bills form an important package. They will go some way towards addressing the massive safety concerns and issues that we face on our roads, particularly those that are faced by heavy-vehicle users. I think it is a package that will be welcomed throughout communities right across this country because of the important role that it will play in trying to make our roads safer. I commend the bills to the House.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008, and also in support of the transport industry in Australia, which is part of the lifeblood of our economy. Truck driving is an arduous, difficult and dangerous occupation. As one of the few members in this House who has a heavy-vehicle licence—that is, a licence to drive a truck—I have great admiration for the road transport industry. These rigs, which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—some of them are worth more than half a million dollars—are not only essential in the transport of our goods but take real skill and capability to manoeuvre on the road in a way which maintains the safety of not only the trucking industry but, more importantly, the general public, who at times are held in awe by the size of these vehicles and the speed at which they travel. They travel at the same speed as a normal motor vehicle and they are able to stop in a more than safe distance, but they do require highly skilled operators—men and women who are dedicated to the profession. Part of my speech on these bills will deal with some of the issues which those men and women face as they go about their day-to-day activity of not only earning an income for their family but also, importantly, transporting goods across Australia. These goods provide the powerhouse of Australia in the energy they deliver to households every day, as well as to industry which, in turn, provides jobs.

The transport task in Australia is going to increase dramatically over the years ahead. We need to ensure that the industry is sustainable—sustainable in terms of its economics, sustainable in terms of obtaining people with the skill set and the desire to drive these rigs often from one side of Australia to the other and sustainable in terms of the infrastructure that those people travel on and the service they provide.

These two bills implement new charge-setting elements of the heavy vehicle industry: the registration charge and the road user charge, which is deducted from the fuel excise rebate paid to operators of heavy vehicles, an arrangement that was introduced by the previous government. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 applies the first feature of this legislation—that is, it deals with the registration charges that apply to the five per cent of heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. Commonwealth, state and territory transport ministers agreed to these new charges in February in a process that was undertaken to provide an outcome, and that process included consultation with the industry. Therefore, the states and territories have already implemented the new schedule. This means that 95 per cent of Australia’s truck fleet are already paying for the charges.

The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 puts in place the second charge-setting feature, the road user charge. At the moment, the road user charge is set by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government using a feature of the Fuel Tax Act 2006. This bill will amend the Fuel Tax Act 2006 and set the road user charge at 21c per litre. It will also enable new regulation to change or index that charge. The bill also repeals the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Act 1993 to allow the ACT to set its own registration charges, a practical amendment which the coalition in opposition supports.

The history of these bills is very much part of the continued development of legislation around and applying to the heavy transport industry in Australia. The coalition recognises that the changes that have been made in these two bills were presented in essentially similar terms earlier this year to the House. Importantly, changes have been made to ensure the Commonwealth maintains the discretion to determine its own charges on federally registered trucks. This is important as it allows for competitive pressures to be applied to state registration fees and in turn ensures maximum efficiencies in state based regulation systems, bringing into play a very important facet of this bill.

The reality is that states can, by and large, charge whatever they like for registration. Some states allow their own quirkiness and peculiarities to come into the equation. Thus, having an anchor, a cornerstone or a point at which their charges can be judged is extremely important. It may only affect five per cent of the fleet, but it provides a base from which not only state governments can be judged but also the industry itself can say, ‘This federal charge is based on a transparent policy which we understand,’ because it is involved in consultation with the federal departments. Therefore, its arguments are strengthened when it goes forward to argue its cases on the balance of trucks that are registered under state schemes.

It is important also that the legislation has been changed to remove annual adjustment fees to fees based on costs related to road construction and maintenance. This could have been in the order of seven to eight per cent, and it would have been a huge impost on the trucking industry, which is already bearing the burden of high fuel costs and the impact of global financial pressures.

The trucking industry is an industry where profit margins are slim. It is an industry which requires a huge amount of investment. As I say, these rigs—B-doubles and, in western areas, B-triples, double-B-double road trains and other massive rigs—can cost up to $1 million. If you are operating a three-B-double combination—that is, effectively six trailers pulled behind a prime mover—it is more than possible that, by the time you put all the extra electronic monitoring equipment on it, you could be approaching a million dollar investment. Also, if you own one, you tend, as is always the case, to own half-a-dozen.

So you have truck fleets worth millions of dollars. You are then employing men and women to drive them—predominantly men. I am informed that women are gentler on trucks, and I also hear that is the case in the mining industry. From my previous profession, I also know that women harvesting contractors have a lighter touch. But the industry still is predominantly a male domain. These men and women have to be paid, and it is a profession which requires them to be away from home. So, on top of the initial capital expenditure, you have the wages and the conditions for the drivers. Then, as is always the case, fuel costs are a very significant part of operations. We see an industry that is very competitive and that operates in an environment where costs fluctuate almost on a weekly basis with fuel prices. This industry could not have borne the burden of the extra costs associated with road construction and maintenance. The removal of the annual adjustment of that is certainly important.

The coalition recognises the importance of a consistent regulatory regime to the trucking industry that covers all of Australia. That is of particular importance to the trucking industry because an industry which operates the same truck in perhaps every state or at least in four or five states, sometimes in the same week, needs to know that the rules are consistent. If they have a fleet based in Brisbane they need to know that the rules are the same as for a fleet based in Adelaide or Melbourne or Perth or Sydney. The coalition therefore has no objection to the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 component of this legislation. The bulk of this tax is already being collected, as I said earlier, as the states have already implemented the changes.

The coalition also has no objection to the element of the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 as it applies in the ACT. Without the change, ACT truck owners would be paying higher registration fees than those in the states. The second component of the bill lifts the road user charge to 21c per litre from 1 January next year. The idea behind this is to recover some of the costs that are incurred from heavy vehicle use on our roads. No-one denies that there is a cost associated with that, and the road transport industry certainly acknowledge that they need to make a contribution. Currently the road user charge is 19.633c per litre, which is calculated by applying a rebate to the 38.14c a litre in tax that the trucking industry pays per litre of fuel. The coalition acknowledges that changes have been made to this provision from the original position, in which it was linked to indexation and was essentially the reintroduction of the indexation of fuel.

In terms of industry consultation, there has been a comprehensive, consistent and safe system of road regulation in Australia, and that is a fundamental part of road transport in this country. It must be transparent, it must be accountable and it must be developed in close consultation with the industry. The coalition has long believed that sharing the load is an important part of the system and that the trucking and transport sector should make a financial contribution for the betterment of the entire transport network in Australia. The industry certainly agrees. It is a collective responsibility; it is one which is shared, but it is a responsibility on all of us. However, this legislation should not lead to the declaration of open season for a tax grab on the sector. It is important that it should not be a one-way street.

The Rudd government has made it very clear that its proposed four-year, $70 million, heavy vehicle safety and productivity package, which will fund the construction of roadside facilities and trials for electronic monitoring equipment, is a commitment that is contingent upon the successful passage of this bill. I express my support for the investment through this package. The construction of roadside facilities, though, has not been defined. We do not know where they will be and we do not know when they will be constructed. We hope that the package will include a transparent process to ensure that these facilities are built where the industry needs them. The industry knows this issue best. It is very easy when you are driving a motor vehicle from A to B and see a truck stop on the side of the road to wonder: ‘Why is that there?’ The reality is that the truck using that stop may have started its journey in Melbourne, Adelaide or perhaps even Perth and that that truck stop is strategically placed not only to give the driver the opportunity to rest but, probably more importantly, the opportunity to rest as per the legislation—that is, that he or she does not exceed the number of hours before a rest is required to comply with the legislation.

As I mentioned earlier, the road transport industry is a crucial part of Australia’s future economic growth. This is important in looking at where Australia goes with infrastructure—and I note the government’s infrastructure fund becomes more and more complicated and less and less transparent every day. I also note the fund is currently allocated $20 billion, which is substantially less than was promised by the Howard government. If the coalition had been re-elected we would have been spending more than $30 billion on infrastructure in Australia. Particularly in the area I come from, that infrastructure would have been crucially important to the development of South-East Queensland. There is a massive amount of road transport going on in Australia at the moment. Road transport is the key to economic growth, so it should be no surprise to anyone that the areas where there is very high pressure on the infrastructure because of the need for extra freight tasks are those with high population growth. Talking of high population growth, I see the member for Braddon sitting over on the other side of the House. I know he has some beautiful roads down there in Tasmania but high population growth perhaps is not his most immediate problem.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Planning for the future, Macca!

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I like to hear a strategic approach from the member for Braddon. But the here and now, Member for Braddon, is that in South-East Queensland we are under enormous pressure for infrastructure to be built. I look forward to a process through Infrastructure Australia where the mayors of the local shires, the transport operators, the commuters, the state governments and all community groups have an opportunity to explain the priorities. And in terms of explaining the priorities, I reject the comments by the member for Longman. I note he is not here now, but if I were him I would not be either. He suggested that there should be retribution against coalition seats because of the coalition’s debating of government legislation in the Senate. He said that, for holding up those new taxes that this government is trying to introduce, there should be retribution taken against coalition seats and that the infrastructure should not flow to those seats.

I hope the member for Longman has reconsidered that statement, because not only is that a damnation of democracy in this parliament; it highlights the fact that the Labor Party is already considering a political fix on infrastructure rather than making Infrastructure Australia a proper, transparent and key process. If it is a proper, transparent and clear process, one of the priorities of Infrastructure Australia should be the Toowoomba bypass, the range crossing north of Toowoomba, to ensure that 5,000 trucks a day do not have to drive through Toowoomba’s main street and mix with school buses and, in particular, mums taking their children to school. The main street of Toowoomba cannot sustain carrying heavy vehicle transport in the longer term, and at the moment it is starting to choke the economic growth of western Queensland.

The Howard government recognised the importance of the Toowoomba bypass. They allocated in the May 2007 budget $700 million to start the construction of this range crossing. That money has been withdrawn by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. That money is being squirreled away for some other process. The people of Toowoomba are growing impatient. On the basis of necessity, on the basis of the environment, on the basis of safety and on the basis of economic growth—criteria that the Prime Minister outlined in this House about the allocation of these moneys through Infrastructure Australia—the Toowoomba Range crossing should be at the top of the list.

If you have a B-double at Helidon and you want to traverse that crossing and end up who knows where—perhaps in Roma, Darwin, Moree or Goondiwindi—you face the prospect of travelling for nearly an hour up a range crossing that has such a steep gradient that some of these trucks do less than 10 kilometres an hour. The emission from those engines is then carried into the city as the trucks traverse the city, stopping at 16 sets of traffic lights. It is not only the safety issue but also the impact on the environment. All of that can be swept away and these trucks can traverse the range in probably 15 minutes or less, saving three-quarters of an hour of operation. The range crossing is a priority and I support this legislation.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the contribution by the member for Groom. I agree with 95 per cent of it, except I would remind him before he tears out of the House looking for the Toowoomba Range crossing application that he is going to put in—

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s already in.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

that the former government had 12 years to deal with major infrastructure throughout Australia and the bottlenecks that the lack of infrastructure caused. I can assure him that our processes for introducing major infrastructure funding throughout Australia will be transparent and open and will not be the political fix that he so ungraciously commented on. But in the main his comments on this legislation were very positive. Indeed, he has made a very positive contribution towards improving transport and infrastructure in Australia, particularly in his role as a former minister.

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 is to amend the Interstate Road Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s voluntary Federal Interstate Registration Scheme, or FIRS. By way of background, the vast majority of trucks—that is, 97 per cent—are registered under state schemes that have already implemented these changes and, indeed, these charges. The bill allows regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges for application to FIRS vehicles themselves. The bill will enable the implementation of the registration charge elements of the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination, which revises national charges for heavy vehicles and trailers for application to heavy vehicles registered under FIRS.

Again by way of background, the determination was agreed to by the Australian Transport Council on 29 February 2008 and was implemented by all states and the Northern Territory on 1 July 2008. The implementation of the determination is part of the national road transport reform agenda as agreed under the Inter-Governmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Road, Rail and Intermodal Transport. The determination implements the Council of Australian Governments’ request to fully recover the cost of provision of the road network to the heavy vehicle industry.

This bill is another important but small step that will help to restore balance in this country and put players in the transport industry back on a more level footing. The bill will essentially mean that everyone is paying their fair share to cover the impact they have on the transport network around Australia. Our broad and diverse nation cannot survive without an efficient and well-maintained road network, and this is what we are trying to achieve through this current amendment.

My own state of Tasmania is particularly reliant on road transport. As a very productive state, we have a great need for strong links between the various corners of the island state to send our quality products to the world stage. I note my Tasmanian colleague the member for Franklin is in the House and would agree that these quality products that we all share very much rely on movement by road transport in Tasmania. If the transport industry is not driving then the Tasmanian economy is not moving. More than 400 heavy vehicles traverse Tasmania daily, and the industry directly employs thousands and is critical to the success of so many other businesses throughout the state.

Robin Phillips, from the Tasmanian Transport Association, tells me that the importance of the road networks to my state cannot be underestimated and, with some uncertainties currently surrounding rail operations in Tasmania, it may even play a greater role. Mr Phillips says this is why investment in road infrastructure, which this bill is partly about, is so critical. He says many parts of Tasmania’s key roads are at a similar stage to the Hume Highway of more than two decades ago, when a major push for upgrading began. Road accidents will always be an issue when there are a huge number of vehicles travelling towards each other on one carriageway. The more one can isolate vehicles from oncoming traffic the better. We have seen a great example of this recently in my electorate, where I was privileged to open the final stage of the duplication of the Bass Highway between Burnie and Devonport. The Bass Highway is the most heavily freighted traffic road in Tasmania, due in part to the ports of Bernie and Devonport. Indeed, the Bass Highway goes through to Launceston.

The completion of this section helps overcome poor service levels and queuing problems; reduces the number and severity of accidents with consequential economic benefits to our community; delivers longer term economic benefits through improved trade and commerce, both within the state and with markets on the mainland and overseas; and improves the connectivity in the north-west of the state. The final stage of the duplication was worth $47 million and it included a second bridge over the beautiful Leven River at Ulverstone. It also completed the entire $70.5 million project, which has meant a major improvement in the safety and travel time between the two major centres of Devonport and Burnie.

Safety on our roads is something that we can never downplay. An important spin-off of this legislation will be the Rudd government’s $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. So what does this include? As the member for Groom mentioned, trials of black box technologies that electronically monitor truck drivers’ work hours and vehicle speeds can only have but good, positive, safety oriented results. The construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops and parking areas along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities again can only have very positive, safety oriented effects, as can bridge strengthening projects and upgrades to linkages between existing AusLink freight routes. The safety measures will tie in with other changes in the transport scene across Australia.

In February 2007, as I mentioned, the Australian Transport Council approved model legislation to reform the management of heavy vehicle driver fatigue. The new nationally consistent laws should have come into effect in most mainland states on 29 September this year. Tasmania plans to introduce the reforms next year. The reforms will apply to heavy vehicles with a GVM of 12 tonnes or more and buses that seat more than 12 adults. Driver fatigue remains a leading contributing crash factor for heavy vehicle drivers. Indeed, the pressure on heavy vehicle drivers is great, and I am not sure that people appreciate the demands that are made on these drivers by the transport sector. I sometimes also believe that most car drivers fail to recognise the significant driving skills needed to handle these rigs in particular on our roads.

The new laws change the focus from regulating hours to managing fatigue. Working longer hours and fighting the body’s natural clock at night is recognised as a high-risk activity and dealt with accordingly. More flexible working arrangements are offered to those parties who can clearly demonstrate proper management of driver fatigue issues. The new laws also recognise that other parties in the chain of responsibility can influence on-road driving behaviours. Parties in the supply chain whose actions, inactions or demands cause or contribute to road safety breaches can be held legally accountable. Everyone in the supply chain must take reasonable steps to prevent driver fatigue and ensure that a driver does not drive a heavy vehicle while impaired by fatigue—an approach consistent with occupational health and safety laws. Offences under the new laws are classified according to the actual level of risk: the greater the risk involved the more significant the penalties. Penalties will range from fines under an infringement notice to court imposed penalties and the loss of demerit points.

This responsibility for fatigue is something that the Transport Workers Union says cannot be overstated. Bill Noonan, branch secretary for the Transport Workers Union, says it is up to everyone in the delivery chain to play their part in ensuring the safety of heavy vehicle drivers and, in turn, everyone else sharing the roads. That is common sense and makes for greater safety. He says people on the distribution end of the supply chain need to make sure they do everything they can to avoid excessive queuing wherever they can, but also provide proper facilities and areas for drivers to rest, hence the relationship to this legislation. This is not just peculiar to areas of the transport industry on long-haul road transport, but also sectors like logging, where it can sometimes be overlooked. Indeed, the transport undertaken by logging contractors and others in my state is considerable.

Mr Noonan tells me that people often think of transport as being the big long-haul routes across the various states. But he challenges anyone to go to their local shopping centre and look at everything on the shelves and realise that it was all delivered by a truck or a van of some description. He says the industry is one that is used to meeting challenges, such as the current rise in fuel prices, and is prepared to pay its way for a reasonable return in areas such as road infrastructure and safety. Some have said it will be just another cost that will be passed on to consumers, but these are recommendations that have come from work initiated by the former government.

The National Transport Commission says the cost of groceries in remote areas may increase by a maximum of 17c for every $100 spent. I accept this is a cost, but in terms of trying to develop greater safety it is something that we must do for the benefit overall. It must also be noted that the change to this legislation will only impact on a small number of transport operators across the industry who have federally registered vehicles. State registered trucks, as I mentioned at the commencement of my speech, are already covered under the new regime.

Improving transport infrastructure and increasing safety is the central point of this bill. It will ensure that everyone is making a fair contribution to the funds that will make that infrastructure a reality and encourage government to invest in both roads and safety both now and into the future.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I rise to speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 I do so knowing that the transport industry is always under pressure. The owner-operators of trucks—and there are thousands of them; they are probably the biggest class of self-employed small business people in Australia—by and large are under the most competitive pressure of almost any small business people in Australia. They do a good job. Unfortunately I think they are taken advantage of at times by big companies and big operators, because a lot of their work is subcontract work. Obviously this country is very dependent upon road usage, road haulage, and always will be. But it is acknowledged by everybody that we need to get as much as possible onto rail—not so much the current amount of goods moved around Australia, but the increase that is going to happen over the next 10 to 15 years. We need to get it onto rail rather than have it all come on road, because common sense says we are not going to lower the amount of goods that are hauled around Australia. The object certainly is to get as much of the increase, especially the long haulage increase, onto rail as is possible.

The first part of the bill, as has been mentioned by others, we basically agree with. The fact that the Commonwealth registration situation is coming into line with the changes made by the state governments to user charges we pretty much agree with. It is good to see that FIRS will continue to exist. It does provide an alternative—competition if you like—to what is done by the states. I think in one sense it keeps them on their toes—and they know it, because registration is a very big income stream for state governments, particularly New South Wales—and while ever FIRS exists, which is an alternative registration situation, if they get too out of line, then instead of registering with New South Wales or Victoria or whichever state it might be, operators do have an alternative. I believe that is a good thing.

It is very important that the approximately $88 million that will be raised out of these increased user charges—and I certainly hope that the current government takes note of the fact—is spent by the government state counterparts on roads and not stuck into general revenue. In New South Wales, certainly, that is something that will need to be watched pretty carefully, given the desperate situation of the government and their desire to simply try to keep Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle thinking at least that they are being looked after. There is no guarantee that that money will be spent on roads and certainly no guarantee at all that it will be spent outside of the Sydney basin.

There are some issues in the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill that we are far less comfortable with. In March this year the government attempted to bring in what was in effect indexation—something brought in by Labor originally that we put a stop to in 2001—when they increased the charges for trucks. I think to line it up in an indexation sense was a very dangerous thing to do. The fact that they have removed that section from this bill is obviously a good thing. They will no longer be able to automatically increase those charges to the trucking industry or to any other sector of the road industry. I acknowledge that that is no longer there. Once again, though, the extra almost 2c that will be gathered from heavy road users really does need to go into roads.

As I look at New South Wales in particular it would seem that the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is very keen to help New South Wales out in urban transport rather than the roads and the passage of goods around the country. One of the things that he seems to have totally ignored, forgotten or deliberately put aside is the need to put through a Melbourne to Brisbane rail link, which is called the western route, which would go through—

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Baradine?

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Parkes. It would go through, quite obviously, between Dubbo and Narromine, which is the obvious route for it to take, as indeed it should.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pilliga?

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, yes and no. It must happen; it is a question of when. Personally I have no problem with private industry being involved in making it happen, but the point is that it will not happen—and neither will something probably just as important, and that is to have a freeway through the mountains opening up Sydney to western New South Wales. This is very, very important and I believe it should be rail as well as a freeway.

Linking western New South Wales via a western route for a Melbourne to Brisbane link is an incredibly important thing. We had allocated $20 million to do the engineering study for that route through the mountains. We put in $15 million to push ahead with the engineering placement for the western route for rail access from Melbourne to Brisbane. If you link those two things up in western New South Wales, you have immediately unclogged Sydney. I think one of Sydney’s biggest problems is access. To persevere with getting goods from Melbourne through to Brisbane and vice versa, even from Sydney to either of those two places, via the coastal route is a little akin to madness because you are going to keep throwing good money after bad. Without spending the kind of money that the American administration is currently spending on underwriting credit in the US—and around the world, in effect—you are never going to make it an open link from Sydney.

It would be far cheaper, far faster and far better to spend money where our previous government saw it needed to be spent—that is, in opening Sydney up to western New South Wales and making western New South Wales the much faster route for goods going from south-eastern Australia to the north; and also linking it up with the Indian-Pacific railway line going to Perth, and by virtue of that also linking it up with Adelaide and with Darwin. As trade increases—and it is generally the lighter and faster goods that are travelling out of Darwin to Indonesia, Malaysia et cetera—that will become more and more important. But this does need a strategy, and that is certainly lacking in New South Wales transport ministers. I recall the previous Deputy Premier of New South Wales, Mr Watkins, once saying, ‘Why would you want to spend money west of the Blue Mountains putting in a rail link from Melbourne to Brisbane?’ I guess it is that kind of short-sighted ignorance of strategic planning that has left Sydney in the mess it is in today.

It is well known, and many people involved in transport have proved this, that businesses with their warehouses located in Sydney could deliver goods much cheaper and much faster, for example, from the town of Parkes to south-eastern Australia—in fact they could deliver all the way from Brisbane to Adelaide within 24 hours. If they warehoused there, they could deliver anywhere from Brisbane all the way around to Adelaide within 24 hours and it would save them money compared to their situation in Sydney now. Sydney is such a bottleneck in terms of going north, south or west. If you put a freeway and a decent railway line through the Blue Mountains out to the central west, you would open up Sydney. I think the estimate is that 14 hours less is needed to go through the central west—through Parkes and Dubbo—from Melbourne to Brisbane or the other way to transport goods as against the 2½ to three days it takes currently to go along the coastal route through Sydney. That does not make very much sense. We do have to think long term.

I get very worried when I hear the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government talk about in effect subsidising the deficits owed by state governments, particularly New South Wales, and wanting to put all the money held in reserve for infrastructure—out of AusLink, be it 1, 2 or 3—into urban transport. Clearly that is nobody’s responsibility except the state government’s, who have obviously got themselves in a terrible pickle in New South Wales; but that is their fault and nobody else’s. They should let New South Wales concentrate on fixing that. The federal government and the new minister should take responsibility for fixing the strategic nature of transport infrastructure around Australia at the federal level. Previous transport ministers—be it Warren Truss, John Anderson or Mark Vaile—set up a system whereby we took over the major train routes. To simply forget them now that we have actually taken responsibility for them and start spending more and more money on what are very much state responsibilities is going to condemn the strategic movement of goods around Australia to continued confusion.

It is all very well to pick up urban transport, be it in Melbourne, Brisbane or Sydney, but to do that at the cost of the future of transport, be it transport to port or transport inland, is to do a very short-sighted thing. It is certainly looking after your old mates, as the minister would be if he starts pouring all that money into Sydney. I think that money was designated for the strategic movement of goods around Australia, as I just said—things like the inland rail from Melbourne to Brisbane through the central west of New South Wales and things like opening up a freeway, which will in effect in the medium and long term be of enormous benefit to Sydney. His only concern seems to be relieving the pressure on the New South Wales government.

In conclusion, I would like to say that we basically support the first part of this bill. It is certainly good to see that those parts which relate to indexation seem to have been removed from the second part of the bill. The issue really is that the money gathered by the Commonwealth government and by the state governments is spent on roads rather than trying to get them out of a hole that they may be in.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and cognate bill. Before we get into the substance of the bills, I welcome to the parliament today Drysdale Primary School and Gary Vaughan, who is looking after a group of 70 kids from Drysdale Primary School who will be here later in the day. Drysdale Primary School is within my electorate of Corio. It is always a wonderful thing to me to be able to go out to Drysdale Primary School, which is a fantastic school run under the stewardship of its principal, Claire Wilson.

These students come to this place in a very significant week. They will see some important discussions about our nation’s affairs, not the least of which is this debate, as well as the debates afterwards on the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Amendment Bill 2008 and, particularly relevant to them, the Tax Laws Amendment (Education Refund) Bill 2008. So I very much welcome them to the parliament and hope that they have an educational and enjoyable time.

This bill amends the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act of 1985, and it does so to enable the implementation of a new registration system of charges under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme as detailed in the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination. The minister, in his second reading speech in relation to this bill, noted that there are approximately 365,000 heavy vehicles currently operating in Australia. The work that the heavy vehicle industry performs is vital for our national economy. It generates $1.95 billion per annum in revenue for road funding. To put that in some kind of context, the total national road funding expenditure in Australia is currently running at $11.67 billion per annum. This revenue is generated through the application of registration fees and through the road user charge.

The National Transport Commission has identified that the current revenue-raising methods provide for a shortfall of about $168 million per annum in relation to the heavy vehicle industry share of road usage. The Council of Australian Governments has determined that the costs associated with providing our national road network to the heavy vehicle industry ought to be fully recovered. That is, in its essence, the fundamental purpose of this bill that we are debating today. It brings the federal charges into line with those that currently exist under state registration systems and state enforcement systems. It ensures that there is a uniformity amongst heavy vehicle registration charges throughout Australia.

By providing that consistency we will also remove what might otherwise serve as a disincentive for the states to invest in road infrastructure designed to serve the heavy vehicle industry. That said, the Rudd government understands the vital importance of the Australian heavy vehicle industry to our national economy, and also the difficult conditions under which drivers in the heavy vehicle industry operate. It is for that reason that part of the proceeds that arise from this bill will go into a government fund—a $70 million fund—for heavy vehicle safety and productivity, which will provide a safer working environment for those who are driving heavy vehicles and, of course, therefore provide a safer environment for all Australians who share their roads with heavy vehicles.

Before I entered the parliament, in my previous career it was my great honour and privilege to serve as an official of the Transport Workers Union—indeed, ultimately as its national assistant secretary. The Transport Workers Union is a body which represents 85,000 transport workers around Australia, a number of whom work in the heavy vehicle industry. So it is an industry with which I am familiar and so I am also very familiar with the pressures that are placed upon those who drive heavy vehicles. But I also understand, through that experience, the importance of continued investment in road infrastructure, which is what this bill will ultimately provide. It will increase productivity and it will provide for a safer working environment for all drivers of heavy vehicles.

The industry supports this measure. The Business Council of Australia’s Infrastructure: roadmap for reform in September of 2007 stated:

We need to ensure that high productivity (that is, larger and longer travelling) trucks are charged appropriately. Not only will this help road/rail neutrality, it will facilitate having B Doubles and B Triples on our roads.

According to current forecasts, those needs only stand to increase. There is a real imperative for additional infrastructure investment, particularly in our road network. Our nation’s roads carry 72 per cent of all the annual national freight tonnage in Australia, and Engineers Australia predict that the current national freight tonnage will double over the next 20 years. If you add to that the overall projected increase of 2.6 per cent in road usage and congestion you can see that there will be a significant demand placed upon our road system by all vehicles leading up to 2020. You can then see what will happen if you do not have that investment. You will move to a point where the level of road congestion ends up stifling productivity and growth. This, indeed, has been one of the key capacity constraints on the productive capacity of our economy, which is why it is so essential that we now invest in our road transport infrastructure.

The Rudd government understands that roads are the arteries of our nation. They provide cheap and accessible means for industry to transport goods around our country. Their maintenance and expansion is utterly critical to continued national growth and productivity. This is an understanding which has permeated through federal Labor governments going back into history. It was the Whitlam government in 1974, for example, that established the national highway system with the National Roads Act 1974. It was Paul Keating, in his One Nation statement of February 1992, who articulated the importance of transport infrastructure to the national interest. Indeed, it was the vision contained in that document which was vital to the establishment of many of the ring roads which now encompass our nation’s cities—such as Melbourne’s Western Ring Road, which the Keating government funded to the tune of $555 million. As well in that package was the upgrading of rail links between major capitals such as Melbourne and Sydney, and Sydney and Brisbane.

Of course, in the first budget of the Rudd government in May of this year, funding was provided for the completion of the Geelong ring road, which is in my electorate, and that road will be utterly critical to the continued growth and prosperity of the Geelong region. Indeed, the Rudd government allocated over $3 billion for road funding for the current financial year in the May budget, and in doing so it maintained the ALP’s legacy of nation building in this area. Under the Hawke and Keating governments, average funding per annum for roads ran at a rate of $2.3 billion. Conversely, in the first eight years of the Howard government, that average dropped to $2.05 billion, representing a total reduction of $2 billion in spending on our road infrastructure system during that period. Overall, it represented an 11 per cent reduction over the term of the Howard government in spending per annum on our nation’s road infrastructure compared to the spending that occurred under the Hawke-Keating government.

The diminished level of investment in our nation’s road infrastructure coincided—and it is no coincidence that it did so—with a corresponding drop in national productivity growth under the Howard government. In 1995-96 the annual increase in labour productivity was running at a rate of 3.7 per cent. In 2007-08 the rate of productivity growth had fallen to 1.1 per cent. In 2006-07 productivity was increasing at a rate of 0.9 per cent. In fact, on average the rate of productivity growth in the four years leading up to 2007-08 was only 1.2 per cent. The Howard government had a multiplicity of views when it came to infrastructure investment and productivity. There was absolutely no consistency at all in the way they acted. The former member for Lyne, the former Deputy Prime Minister, said in this place on 20 June 2007:

You—

in reference to the government—

need to continue to invest in much-needed infrastructure across the country to continue increasing competitiveness and productivity.

Yet, at the same time, there was a decreasing level of funding and an ignoring of the infrastructure capacity constraints which then existed in our economy. What we saw from the Howard government was mere blaming of the states—buck-passing for their alleged underinvestment in infrastructure. The hypocrisy in all of that would have made Machiavelli himself blush. But the Rudd government is utterly committed to improving our nation’s infrastructure, to meeting the current shortfalls in our infrastructure and to removing the capacity constraints on our nation’s economy so that we can allow it to grow. We are committed to investing in the nation’s road network to ease congestion, to provide increased capacity and to increase access for Australia’s heavy vehicle operators to our national road system. Most importantly, we are committed to ensuring that our nation’s roads are safer for heavy vehicle drivers and for all users. This bill assists the government in meeting those commitments.

This bill allows regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges for application to Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles. In doing so, it enables the implementation of registration charges prescribed in the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination as devised by the National Transport Commission. The determination was requested by the Council of Australian Governments following the April 2007 meeting chaired by the former Prime Minister, and it was in part a response to the 2006 Productivity Commission study which found that heavy vehicles and the heavy vehicle industry were not paying their fair share of infrastructure costs. That meant, accordingly, that those vehicles were gaining an unreasonable advantage over rail and also over smaller trucks operating on the road. So what this scheme will do is to bring the new charging regime into line. It brings registration costs for heavy vehicles registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme into line with the same levels of cost of registration which currently exist in the states. It is important to understand that only three per cent of heavy vehicles are in fact registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme; the remainder are registered under the state schemes.

Part of the proceeds that will come from this bill will be directed into a $70 million heavy vehicle safety package. At the moment approximately one in five road deaths involves a heavy vehicle. Speed is regarded as the causing factor in 30 per cent of those crashes and driver fatigue in 60 per cent. According to the report of a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts inquiry in the year 2000, entitled Beyond the midnight oil: managing fatigue in transport, fatigue was regarded as being a factor in 20 to 30 per cent of general motorists’ accidents, costing the nation around $3 billion per year, while heavy vehicle accidents related to fatigue cost around $300 million per year. These are very disturbing figures, both in the contribution that they make to the very tragic size of our national road toll—which last year totalled 1,616 people—and in the staggering costs which they impose upon our nation’s economy. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Transport Workers Union on all of its campaigns, and in particular its recent campaign to highlight the importance of safety within the heavy vehicle industry. One of the key elements of that campaign has been to stress the importance of managing driver fatigue. (Quorum formed)

I am impressed by the power of the Transport Workers Union; the mere mention of their name sees the opposition jump to their feet and close down the debate. But I would like to congratulate the Transport Workers Union on the campaigns that they have run in relation to safety within the transport industry and, in particular, the heavy vehicle industry. If you go to their website, you will find a video which has some stark footage which compares the effects of fatigue amongst office workers to those driving trucks. The video ends with the office worker tired, the result of that fatigue being that they drop their coffee cup. Of course, it then cuts to the tired driver of a heavy vehicle, and the consequences of their fatigue are much more considerable.

In conclusion, this bill will provide increased uniformity and fairness in heavy vehicle registration fees. It will assist in improving safety within the heavy vehicle industry and within the road transport industry in general. It will also assist the government in rectifying the years of disinvestment in infrastructure, which was the hallmark of the previous government. The Rudd government is determined to address infrastructure capacity constraints. We are determined to increase productivity and access to suitable roads for Australia’s heavy vehicle operators, as demonstrated by the investments announced in the last budget. This bill absolutely forms part of the Rudd government’s commitment to its nation-building agenda.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on theInterstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. Many of the members opposite, in speaking about both of these bills, have taken care to emphasise their understanding of the trucking industry, their understanding of what life is like to be an interstate truck driver and of the difficulties those drivers face, but I think they speak with forked tongues. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government makes it very clear in his second reading speech that the package dealing with driver fatigue ‘can only be funded following the passage of this bill’. I think that that is an insult to all of our hardworking truck drivers, both those employed by trucking companies and those who work as independent contractors and who are doing it particularly tough at the moment.

If this government really cared about truck drivers, they would act quickly and effectively to put in place their $70 million package to fund rest areas for truckies. Anyone who travels the state highways would have to conclude, if they thought about it, that there are insufficient places for trucks to pull over. For the government to arrogantly say that some sort of increase in excise over a period of four years is required down the track before it can take action and build these vital rest stops is, as I said, an insult to truck drivers and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of and a lack of care for this important sector of the community.

There are two bills under consideration today, and the coalition has very little issue with the first one. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 permits new registration charges to apply to the five per cent of heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme, which we have heard called FIRS in this place today. Already, 95 per cent of Australia’s heavy vehicle fleet are operating under the revised registration schedule. FIRS provides an alternative to state based registration for heavy vehicles and is designed to provide uniform charges and operating conditions for heavy vehicles that carry interstate goods exclusively. Currently, slightly more than 21,000 heavy vehicles are registered under FIRS.

In spite of its limited application to our heavy vehicle fleet, we in the coalition recognise not only that the bill promotes regulatory consistency for vehicles solely involved in interstate operations but also that this is a scheme that provides competition and discipline in the heavy vehicle industry. I think it is fair to say that not charging heavy vehicles for the full cost of the damage they cause to roads is, if you like, counterintuitive to an efficient freight industry. The consequence of not recovering costs in full is that heavy-truck operators, especially operators of B-doubles, are being subsidised. The National Transport Commission estimates the value of the subsidy to be around $168 million, and there has been some discussion that this subsidy may adversely affect the rail freight industry because heavy trucks, notably B-doubles, compete most directly with rail freight. The principle does hold that the service user should pay the full cost to society of providing the service, though with some important considerations and some genuine understanding. But an efficient freight industry requires that this principle does apply to road and rail alike.

I would like to point out that the revised registration charge that is now being levied across almost all of Australia’s heavy vehicle fleet will generate an extra $88 million per annum to the coffers of the states and territories, and I would expect that the states and territories will use this extra money appropriately—or I would hope that they would use it appropriately; I cannot say that I would expect it. I do think it is essential that truckies see a return on this charge. The Rudd government has made much of its great relationship with state governments and I think this is an area where it should put some pressure. I think it is fair to say too that the coalition will not support future increases in registration fees unless we can see clear evidence that this extra money is being spent on roads. With those qualifiers, we will not oppose the bill.

The second bill, about which more has been spoken today, is the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. I want to talk about the second part of the bill, which amends the Fuel Tax Act to implement a road user charge rate of 21c a litre from 1 January 2009. The road user charge is levied on the basis that the costs arising from the industry’s use of the road system should be recovered. Both the trucking industry and the opposition accept this principle, but what is most important is that the amount is seen to be fair, not hiked up unnecessarily, and that it is spent on roads.

Motorists and the trucking industry currently pay 38.14c in tax for every litre of fuel they purchase. That, of course, is the excise. The trucking industry claims a partial rebate under the Fuel Tax Act, and this act sets a road user charge for the heavy vehicle sector, which is intended to recover the costs attributable to the industry’s use of the road system. Trucking operators can then receive a rebate through the tax system for the difference between the fuel tax they pay at the pump and the road user charge. The road user charge is currently 19.633c a litre, and the rebate is 18.51c a litre. Should the road user charge be set at 21c a litre, the rebate will be 17.143c a litre. So, effectively, that is a 1c a litre increase in the road user charge. It sounds a small amount, but of course it does not take long to add up the number of litres of fuel used on long-haul truck driving routes. When you consider the distance travelled, the freight covered and the task at hand, this is certainly a significant increase. This increase is the result of a decision by the Australian transport ministers earlier this year. It is very easy for transport ministers to sit around a table and make decisions about increased charges. I do not think it is that easy for those who have to wear the effect of them, but I accept that the transport ministers did make that decision.

In this bill the government has removed the link to indexation, which was something that the coalition raised as a very serious concern earlier this year, and we acknowledge that it has made that change and we believe that it is a constructive improvement. But, as has been mentioned in previous speeches, there is a concern that there is still some ability through regulation for an automatic indexation to take place and we need to make absolutely certain that that is not the case. Parliamentary scrutiny of an increase in this charge should not be removed the next time the government decides that it needs to extract more money from the trucking industry.

My main concern is that the government has linked these bills to the implementation of its announced $70 million, four-year heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. Members of the government have talked up this package in their speeches and emphasised its importance. I am not sure how many rest stops you would get for $70 million, even if you spent the entire $70 million on rest stops, but I acknowledge that any funds allocated for this important provision should be recognised. What the transport minister is doing by tying the passage of these bills to date to this productivity package amounts to blackmail. Threatening to block this $70 million package, inadequate as it is, is dirty politics. It harms the safety of those who work on our roads and it harms the safety of those who drive on our roads, whose lives and whose families’ lives matter to us as their representatives in this place.

Anyone who has experienced the life of an interstate truckie, or who has seen a truck pulled over at the side of the road, knowing that they themselves are on their way to a comfortable bed in an air-conditioned room, when the temperature outside might be 45 degrees—notwithstanding that the truck might be air-conditioned and notwithstanding that it is not the same as sleeping in the back of a car—will tell you that it is not particularly comfortable. You get up the next day and use inadequate washroom facilities and in many cases there are inadequate catering facilities and then you have to present yourself for a full day’s work, which requires a high level of concentration to drive at the speed you do on our interstate highways. You are dealing with other drivers, who are not always predictable, and when you get to your destination, you possibly have to wait hours in a queue while you get your slot in order to unload the freight that you have brought. During that time you cannot sleep. You just have to sit there and wait.

I cannot overstate the annoyance and the anger that I have at the government’s tactics in relation to this paltry amount of $70 million that we are allocating, which I might add is not all for rest stops; it is for three other measures as well. The amount that will actually trickle down to rest stops is bound to be very small indeed. The arrogance that they are displaying over this measure is an insult. We really need to make a very strong statement about that in this place.

New tax increases are not required. State governments and this government have very efficient methods of collecting tax. They have the money in the bank. They need to get out and do the job and get the rest stops in place. I think the Australian Trucking Association has nominated 18 that need to be built immediately. Members in this place need to travel some of our highways—they say they have—and actually observe where the rest stops would be and how inadequate they would be. The government has not linked the new charges to obligations on the states to deliver their promises to harmonise transport regulations, and I think that is a real problem with this bill, when Mr Rudd talked about ending the blame game. What is the government doing about this failure of the states to eliminate these cross-border rule changes, which are completely impeding the development of an efficient and cost-effective national road transport system?

All this talk about wall-to-wall Labor governments meaning we can get things happening has come to nothing. The key weakness of these bills is that they simply do not address the problem of regulation reform. We have talked in this place about heavy vehicle driver fatigue reforms. As I said, I think that links very strongly to rest areas. The states and territories have responsibility for the regulation of heavy vehicles in their jurisdictions. They have to pass the required heavy vehicle fatigue management laws and implement them, but the problem is that all around the country, despite promises made by transport ministers sitting around a table and signing off—how easy is that—the laws are not being implemented nationally. If you are driving an interstate truck between New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, in some places the new laws came into effect on 29 September but some have been given a period of grace. So as a truck driver you really have no consistent picture in your mind of how the new laws will impact on you and whether you are breaking them in the particular state you are in, because of the differences in laws and transitional arrangements. I think the need to harmonise laws between states is the most important thing, apart from providing adequate rest areas.

In New South Wales, my home state, 29 September saw the introduction of the new fatigue management laws. The government has passed laws requiring trucks to stop at rest areas that do not exist, and that is outrageous. There is a work diary that truck drivers are required to fill in. When I conducted a fuel forum in Broken Hill, in the west of my electorate, some months ago, truck drivers raised the concern that they had gone to a forum where the issue of these new requirements and laws was discussed. They had been told—and I appreciate that this is anecdotal, and I need to note that—that if they made spelling mistakes in their work diary they could be fined. A group of them heard this and obviously did not react very positively to it. I think truck drivers are paid for their ability to drive and operate an extremely complex piece of machinery, not their ability to spell correctly. So there are baffling inconsistencies in the treatment of national road freight by the states. Nothing sums this up better than a letter I received from Hehir’s Transport, based in Rand in my electorate of Farrer. I will read part of the letter:

Dear Sussan

               …            …            …

I write ... to express my support for the development of a single national heavy vehicle licensing, registration and regulatory system for heavy vehicles in Australia.

... my business and my drivers have been frustrated and penalised routinely by inefficient and ineffective regulation of the road transport industry. In these tough times the burden of regulation is crippling my business and the industry.

Our company has been accredited in the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme since 2004 in Mass and Maintenance modules. A national scheme it is far from. As you may be aware, the road transport industry is separately regulated by every State and Territory Government as well as by the Commonwealth Government. My business, moving freight into and out of my local community, is not limited by borders, however in the 21st century the regulation that affects my business is.

As an example, there are individual pieces of legislation in every state and territory governing numerous issues that affect the day to day operation of my business, ranging from fatigue (In some States this can be three different pieces of legislation), driving hours, vehicle axle and gross weights, dimensions, road rules, driver licensing, registration, vehicle access, driver behaviour, vehicle roadworthiness, load restraint, vehicle design, combination design, emissions and noise control, to name a few. Each of these matters is duplicated around the country, and none, not one is the same. There are more than fifty pieces of legislation around the country, and that’s not even starting to list the other general business operating laws ... taxation, workers compensation, OHS etc.

In addition, we must know about and carry individual permits for each state, in each vehicle, just to move freight for the benefit of the nation around the country. Each permit can range from 2 pages in length to some ... 300 pages long, with every page required. These permits are regularly updated. To administer this process can be a nightmare, and if we miss a single page the fine can range from $180 to $1100 on each occasion.

You may be aware that over recent years, the chain of responsibility provisions has been introduced to a number of pieces of legislation governing the road transport industry. By and large a positive move, however as a result my customers now require my employees to fill in more documentation, complete more forms on every journey and carry more paperwork on their behalf.

Much of this has been done under a national model approach overseen by the National Transport Commission (NTC). With all due credit to the efforts to date by the NTC, the national model approach has not worked.

The practical implications of the laws are also a significant concern for my business. Rest areas are a key issue. Laws regarding fatigue and driving hours are very specific in relation to the need for drivers to take rest breaks, which will often occur whilst in the middle of a journey. There is a fundamental shortage of heavy vehicle rest areas, and when drivers do find a rest area it is often full. Combined with Road Rule 200, which prevents heavy vehicles from parking around towns and cities for greater than an hour, heavy vehicle drivers are being forced to drive in contravention of the law and whilst fatigued due to demonstrably insufficient places to take quality rest breaks.

It is in this context that I write to you seeking your support to bring some sanity to the current situation. I cannot emphasise strongly enough that running an interstate transport business efficiently is now almost impossible. The paperwork is never ending.

I would like to thank the truck drivers in my electorate, the independent contractors, the big truck companies that provide employment to drivers, the owner-drivers and those who travel the long and sometimes terrible distances in rural and outback Australia, with very little thanks and certainly not much understanding, it would seem, from the present government.

I look forward to the amendments that the coalition will move in this parliament to the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill to prevent the establishment of an automatic formula for excise rises. As I said, although there has been some recognition by the government in this legislation, we want to make quite sure that the next time the government needs to find an excuse to raise taxes it does not go to the trucking industry.

We are also moving to lock the federal, state and territory governments into promises made in February to build heavy vehicle rest areas. We in the coalition believe that at least 50 should be constructed on the national road network each year, and plenty of money has already been collected from the industry to fund such works. We do not have to turn to the transport industry in this time of drought and financial uncertainty and, as a government, put our hands out for more money. States are introducing new fatigue management rules requiring drivers to stop and rest; but, as I said, there are inadequate rest areas available. The coalition wants the states and territories to get on with the task of delivering uniform national transport laws and regulations because so far the promises have been empty.

I have not mentioned—and I probably should—that the increases in charges that these bills will bring about when they are passed through the Senate will of course be passed on to consumers, increase the price of goods that we buy in the supermarket and add to the pressure that households are already under. It would have been good if the government could have absorbed some of these costs. I look forward to the amendments that we in the coalition will move and to the ongoing support from this side of the House of the trucking industry generally.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure for me to speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. Not only do I support truckies and their families and not only do I—like many people, if not everyone, in this House—have friends who are truck drivers but also I have a real affinity with the work they do. I think many of us in this place should ponder the type of work they do, the workload, the time away from home and what it means to their families. Truck drivers, particularly interstate truck drivers, are very much like us. They tend to leave home, perhaps on a Sunday evening, travel interstate, spend the whole week away from home working and then return home on a Thursday night or Friday morning. That would be very familiar to members of parliament. I always feel that there is an affinity between our working hours, if not the type of work that we do. I have been known on occasions, when asked what I do, to say, ‘It’s like being an interstate truck driver; you leave home on a Sunday afternoon and you get back on a Friday morning.’

With that said, I want to acknowledge the essential services provided for this country by the broad trucking industry and truck drivers. There is no question of the essential nature of the service they provide. There is no question of the need. It really is the backbone of Australia. Moving freight across this nation is what makes our economy tick. There have been a number of reports in this area. In the last parliament, I was involved with a very significant report as a member of the House Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services. We inquired into the freight task across Australia and learned a lot about some of the needs of truck drivers and some of the job and family pressures that are on them.

They also do a very complex job, while on the surface it may not appear to be to some—we have heard in this place a variety of views on that. We just heard the last speaker saying that truck drivers drive an expensive and complex piece of equipment. It is good to hear that from at least some members of the opposition, but that is not the view of all members of the opposition. We heard a most interesting view last night—a contribution from the member for O’Connor, Wilson Tuckey, who tried to make a comparison in his normal, colourful way between what a truck driver does and himself. He was saying that he was once the holder of a heavy vehicle licence but was not allowed to renew it because there had been too much of a gap. He had lost, the authorities said, the experience or skills to drive a truck, so he could not renew it. He thought that was an affront to him. He likened it to riding a pushbike. He said, ‘Once you know how to drive one of these trucks, you know forever; you don’t need to go through all this complex stuff like having a licence and renewing it and all the other bits and pieces. It’s just like riding a bike; one you know how to do it, you’ll know how to do it for the rest of your life.’ It is probably a little bit more complex than riding a bike, and you are not going to kill too many people or get into a very serious accident on a pushbike compared with what you might be doing hauling an 18-wheeler or a B-double down a crowded road.

What has characterised the opposition in this debate, sadly, is either their lack of empathy, understanding and knowledge or their sheer opposition for opposition’s sake. In debating what makes a really good bill and in moving forward on a range of things that need to be done, we need to make it very clear from the outset that both of these bills perform some very critical tasks. One is a very small increase in the fuel excise from 19.3c to 21c. It is a very small increase, a very small charge, but an essential one and it is essential for truck drivers. This increase gives them a boost. It is about providing them with better facilities and resources. It is about improving the road transport network for them and other road users. Those are the facts not according to us but according to a Productivity Commission report which was commissioned by the previous government. It was commissioned by John Howard, who in April 2007 was the Chair of COAG, which required the Australian Transport Council, through the National Transport Commission, to come up with a new system of charges, to be implemented by 1 July 2008. This is really a follow-on from the previous government’s acknowledgement that there was a need to do something.

I think we in this place need to accept that there are only two things you can possibly do that will make a real difference practically and immediately. The first thing is to improve our road network in terms of safety. Improving our road network is critical. If we want fewer accidents, if we want truck drivers to be better rested and if we want the freight task to be more efficient and safer overall, then we need a better road transport network. How do you pay for better roads? In the end you do it through taxes. That is the bottom line. The states and territories very clearly provide the greatest proportion of funding for roads within the states and territories and the federal government comes to the party for the national road network. The reality is that the Productivity Commission’s study into road and rail found that there just was not enough capacity in the existing system. The recommendation is that we have a very small increase. We need to be clear about that. It is a very small increase from 19.3c to 21c, but it will make a very big difference. That is the key. We have coupled it up with a number of other packages, but it is essential.

The government is determined to make a difference in road safety, to improve our roads, to make sure that truck drivers have the proper legislative networks in place and that there is harmonisation across the states and territories so that the things we here are criticising are dealt with. That is why we are moving down this path. We also heard from opposition members on unfair increases of taxes and charges and how detrimental this might be. A number of organisations, including trucking bodies, have done their own estimations of the impact this charge will have on families and out in the community. Their best estimates are that between 7c and 17c per $100 will be added to the grocery bill. That is the sort of difference. I think it is an acceptable difference when we start talking about people’s lives, about road carnage and about the things that we in here can practically do to make a difference. I am prepared—and I know most families are—to accept 7c to 17c extra on a $100 grocery bill as a necessary cost of improving the safety in which those goods at our supermarkets travel.

Let us not hear this claptrap from the opposition, this banging of the table and this carrying on about how there is going to be devastation and carnage and how this will be the end of the industry. You hear all the doom and gloom. There really is a three-ring circus in the opposition. Yesterday we saw the first ring of that three-ring circus. The Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, came into this place and did what he has been doing for some time. He is trying to create the greatest magic trick of all time. He is the Australian version of Harry Houdini. He is trying to make a budget surplus disappear not once but twice. He is getting up on stage and trying to do this. Yesterday we heard from the member for O’Connor, Mr Tuckey. He decided he was going to be a clown in that three-ring circus. Today we see the third ring. We have opposition members coming in here and claiming all sorts of rubbish about what this bill will do, about its necessity and about where it has come from. I would say to them: take a close look. (Quorum formed)

I have to say that it is pretty rich of the opposition to come in here and call a quorum on what they consider to be one of their areas. This is their territory. They are talking about road transport. You hear the National Party batting on and carrying on in here about how important it is. But, when the debate is on and when there is freedom to speak in this place, what do the opposition do? They take every opportunity to silence debate. They want to gag debate. We see the member for Ryan in here. He is the culprit; he is responsible for gagging debate. The reality is that, if you are interested in these issues—and these are about really important things: safety and reducing the road toll—then you will allow people to speak on these bills. I am quite disappointed in the way that the opposition have behaved.

Let me put on the record right now some of the statistics, which are the reason we are making the very vital changes in this bill. At a national level, one in five road deaths involves a heavy vehicle. Usually speed and fatigue are the largest contributing factors. That is why the state, local and federal governments need to act together. They need to act in a coordinated way to ensure that we provide safer roads. I am sure I am about to get a little bit more, if the member for O’Connor has been listening to my contribution, as he is walking into the House! I expect a few words to come flying across any moment. In 2007, at the national level, road crashes killed 1,616 people. Those involved motorists, truck drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians, and the number was 18 more than in 2006. The really frightening part about the statistics, particularly those involving heavy vehicle use, is that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of fatalities on our roads. Governments, trucking associations and everybody else involved cannot just sit back and let these shocking statistics continue. We are talking about people’s lives and people’s families. We are talking about essential services.

Forty-seven per cent of those accidents involved single vehicles and 10 per cent involved articulated trucks, the rest being made up of others. On the surface, these figures may not seem like a large percentage but, when you look at the national level or turn to my own state of Queensland for a moment, the figures are much higher and much worse. In fact, they are quite frightening figures. Today, when I did some extra research on the carnage on our national roads, I was taken aback by just how large the problem is. In Queensland as of 10 March this year, heavy vehicles were involved in 26 of the 65 deaths that occurred on Queensland roads. This represents around 40 per cent of the total road toll for this year, and that is despite the fact that in Queensland heavy vehicles represent only two per cent of registrations. It is a very disproportionate representation in terms of road fatalities and it must be acted on.

For a long time there has been a debate, and again I think a false debate, as to who is at fault. Often truck drivers get blamed. The blame is pointed squarely at them because they drive the bigger, heavier vehicles, but let me assure people listening to this debate now and people who might read this debate later that that is actually not the case. It is a myth. The case is that the great majority of fatal accidents involving articulated vehicles, heavy vehicles and trucks are not the fault of the truck driver. I think there is an easy explanation as to why that is the case. While at times it is the fault of the truck driver, and accidents will occur—there is no question of that—I think where we come in and where our responsibilities can best be applied is in providing better roads. That is why this government is acting, after waiting 12 long, wasted years and seeing the now opposition do very, very little about the road transport network, investing very little in national infrastructure and not dealing with the issue or accepting that our road transport network and rail systems interlink. We need to play a leading role.

I think the former federal government for a long time decided they were busy doing other things, that there were other things more important. They actually articulated that over many years and in many different places. They said it was not their responsibility. Their view, their ideology, was: ‘We’ll do the big-ticket things that we think are really important—national security, immigration and a couple of other things.’ We agree they are important. We also agree, though, that road transport is important, that the freight task in this country is important. We think it is just not good enough to say, ‘That’s just the responsibility of states and territories.’ We say no, that we live in a pretty wide land—this is a big country—and that if you are going to move freight right across the country you need to act in partnership with the states and territories, you need to harmonise and you need to take some action, as we are doing today.

Again, I heard criticism earlier from one of the members of the opposition, who was saying that there was no real commitment to working with the states because we had not compelled them. Let me inform the opposition there is more than one way to deal with this matter. It is not all about compulsion. It is not all stick. You can actually offer a few carrots in this debate, and that is what we have done. We are prepared to work through COAG. We are more than prepared to sit down at the table and negotiate. We see this as a long-term strategy. We see this as a way forward in partnership with the states and territories—something I know is a foreign concept to the opposition. They have never worked in partnership. They have always worked for themselves. They have always worked in their own best interests.

These two bills will do a number of significant things. They will be part of a $70 million fund across the country to improve rest stops and to provide some new black box technology for trucks. We are going to be working with trucking associations, the trucking industry and trucking unions, making sure that we consult widely and with the whole sector. We want to make sure that businesses have their concerns addressed, we want to make sure that truckies have their concerns addressed and, in the end, we want to make sure that we provide a decent level of funding and an ability for the states and territories to provide the safe road network that we need.

If there is one thing we can do in this place and one thing alone that will make the biggest difference in reducing the road toll, it is improving our roads. We have taken that on board and we have done it in a number of ways, not only through this legislation but also through Infrastructure Australia and through making a massive commitment to infrastructure right across the country. We said in opposition and through our policies coming up to the last election that we wanted to be nation builders, and we are now delivering on that. These two bills that we are discussing and debating here today are adding to that.

I think both of these bills should be supported unanimously by everyone in parliament because of the essential work they do. The small, petty criticisms that we have heard from the opposition are just that. In the end, they began this process last year through COAG. John Howard, then the Prime Minister, was chairing the COAG meeting when he asked the Productivity Commission to look into this and look at new charges in terms of delivering better roads. So there was some commitment, but what happens when they get in opposition? They just decide, for opposition’s sake, that they will oppose, criticise and hinder these bills as much as they can. I commend these bills to the House, because they are about road safety. They are about truck drivers. They are about improving the lot of all the families involved in the freight task across Australia, about acknowledging and recognising the contribution they make and about the partnership role that we ought to be playing with the states and territories.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. I have to make the comment, though, that when the government members have spoken on these bills they seem to have forgotten about a program called AusLink. AusLink was a creature of the Howard government. It did a lot for our country and would have continued to do so. In fact, I think the last amount we spent in government on AusLink in about five years was $38 billion. To put that into perspective, in real money terms that is about eight times the size of the Snowy Mountains scheme. So it was a nation-building exercise and, whilst we do not have a problem with the nation-building exercises of the present government, it almost seems strange that this government does not give any credit where credit is due.

My electorate under AusLink, in the last three years alone, got $225 million for main roads. There is the Dukes Highway, which is the main highway from Adelaide to Melbourne, and the Sturt Highway, which is one that goes through the Barossa, the Riverland and on to Sydney. So they are two major highways which have received a huge and very necessary commitment in funding. Of course, on top of that we had the Roads to Recovery program which every local government in Australia is very thankful for because of what it has delivered for local roads. In many cases we have been in partnership with both state and local governments all around Australia to improve our roads. In fact, the first speech in this parliament that I made after my maiden speech was about infrastructure. That is something that I feel is very important. I know you do too, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, because we as a committee in our first term brought down one of the most important standing committee reports to do with infrastructure in rural areas and that is something that we are both very proud of.

Like the member for Groom, I also have a heavy truck licence. It would be interesting to actually see how many people in this chamber have a heavy truck licence. I have been involved with trucks all my life being a farmer. The first truck that I grew up with was an approximately 1953 Chevy long-nose truck and it did not have any indicators. It had a thing that stuck outside the door and you pulled it to say you were turning right or you put your hand up to say you were stopping. We have come a long way since then. In fact, when my parents got their driver’s licenses, they wrote away for them. It was a bit like getting them in a Kellogg’s Cornflakes packet—you just wrote away and got a licence. To this day, I think, my 91-year-old mother still has a licence to drive a semitrailer. Thank God, she has never tried, although she is quite a good driver in her own right.

The semitrailers, the B-doubles and the road trains that we have in this country now have certainly made the transport industry much more efficient than it was when we just had the simple lorries of, say, 50 years ago which were basically all we had. If you look at our transport industry in comparison with, say, Europe’s, we are far more efficient because they still have a large number of lorries rather than the B-doubles and the semis that we have, certainly in the same sorts of ratios.

Indeed I still have a truck on my farm, which my son runs. It is an international ACCO bullnose truck. One of the great enjoyments I always had was driving the truck because generally if I was driving the truck it meant I had something in the back that was worth some money. That is why it was important—whether it was carting hay, grain, lucerne seed or sheep, there was always something in the back that was going to be part of my income. The transport industry is a very important part of our economy. I do not think anybody doubts that and I do not think anyone doubts what this legislation will do for the transport industry. It is nowhere near as large as AusLink, but it is nonetheless a very important part of what we do as members of parliament.

Transport is a major industry in my electorate of Barker and the road network is a challenge across the region. We all take it to heart as MPs when somebody dies on our roads and we believe those roads could have been better. We wish we could have made sure that that sort of thing did not happen. Unfortunately, you can never engineer or legislate against stupidity or people who, through lack of attention, make mistakes. Often it is in a split second and we have fatalities as a result.

The city of Mount Gambier in my electorate is situated midway between Melbourne and Adelaide and is the centre for a very large transport industry. It is the transport hub for Scott’s Transport, K&S Freighters, SWF Transport and many other trucking companies, and all of Mount Gambier’s and the surrounding region’s industries rely heavily on incoming or outgoing freight services.

Elsewhere, firms like Ielasi Carriers, McKenzie Freighters and many others contribute billions of dollars annually to South Australia’s gross domestic product. While a firm like Scott’s Transport in Mount Gambier would have at least 600 trucks, there are many small business owner-drivers in the electorate struggling to cover the costs of diesel, which daily gets closer to $2 a litre, as well as the expenses involved in increased registration charges along with higher maintenance costs of their vehicles.

Given that transport and in particular heavy vehicle transport is of immense importance in my electorate, I have taken a very keen interest in the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 before us today. If the Labor government is so keen on bringing forward bills which aim to increase the road user charge by 1.3c a litre and raise charges for vehicles under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme then it is essential that any benefits of those charges be returned to the industry and its hardworking operators.

Fatigue is a significant issue for drivers in South Australia and indeed for all of Australia. We have vast wide-open spaces and fatigue is particularly relevant for those travelling long distances in our rural road environment. It is estimated that heavy vehicle driver fatigue is estimated to cause about 30 fatal crashes, 150 serious crashes and 3,200 minor accidents a year. The provision of rest opportunities for drivers through heavy vehicle rest areas is therefore paramount in addressing fatigue related crashes.

Historically, rest areas in South Australia have been subject to greater criticism by road users and representative groups. Criticisms of rest areas in South Australia include their poor quality compared with other states both visually and functionally, and I can certainly attest to that; that many of them are poorly maintained, with particular issues being rubbish and damaged facilities; a lack of toilets—many rest areas have used toilet paper and human waste present because there is a lack of toilets, and that is not a very nice thing for anyone; and, in many cases, the use of those rest areas for stacking aggregate for building future roads. It seems to have been a convenient place for local government but mostly, I think, state government to deposit all that aggregate, which of course takes space away from those rest areas. A further criticism is the lack of truck-friendly rest areas. Many rest areas are prohibited to trucks for whatever reason, although historically used by the industry. Another criticism is the inappropriate size of rest areas. Many of them, because they were built some time ago, do not have the required capacity for the number of trucks and B-doubles in my area. At some rest areas, it is necessary for road trains to turn across traffic to access the rest area, which is contrary to regulations for these vehicles. So there are still many complaints about the rest areas around South Australia.

Fatigue is not the only reason that drivers break up long-distance trips; they also need rest stops, toilet stops and time to consume the food they have with them. Unfortunately, there is also a growing trend for tourist travellers, with a large percentage of new caravans and all motorhomes being self-contained, to camp for free in rest areas, and that is not what they were designed for. Whilst I support tourism, especially in my electorate—we welcome everyone; we have a green light at all the borders to encourage people to come into the electorate—we should encourage caravan and campervan drivers to plan their journeys to take advantage of the available opportunities in towns and commercial facilities. They need to do this so as not to impact on the ability of heavy vehicle drivers to continue to utilise the rest area facilities for genuine fatigue management reasons at any hour of the day or night.

In June of this year, the Rann Labor government identified a number of locations in my home state of South Australia where the demand for rest stops is high. These included the South Eastern Freeway; Dukes Highway, between Tintinara and Bordertown; the Sturt Highway, between Waikerie and the Victorian border; and the Sturt Highway, between Truro and Gawler. All of these come within the electorate of Barker. Others out of the electorate were Port Wakefield Road, between Port Wakefield and Gepps Cross, and approaches to Port Augusta.

In August 2008 the Australian Trucking Association called for heavy vehicle rest areas on key interstate routes to be given the highest funding priority, which makes sense in a lot of ways. In its submission to the government, the ATA provided a list of 18 priority locations where new or expanded rest areas are needed right now across Australia. Confusingly, there was only one specified in South Australia and it was not in my electorate. It is a mystery to me why the critical areas identified by the state Labor government just months earlier were not included. However, I am pleased to note the South Australian Road Transport Association is submitting an additional list of rest areas in South Australia to the Australian government for its consideration. I trust this list, whenever it is submitted, will include areas identified in the electorate of Barker and that attention to these areas will not be delayed in any way for not being on the recent list.

Monday, 29 September 2008 saw the introduction of the new fatigue laws in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The new fatigue laws require truck drivers to take more breaks, including seven hours of continuous rest every 24 hours, and to drive fewer hours each day. I remember that one of my neighbours used to do a regular trip to Perth, non-stop, which took him 25 hours. I do not think we should ever encourage that sort of practice. So we have new fatigue laws requiring truck drivers to stop for rest breaks more often, but there simply are not enough places for them to stop. It is all well and good to have these laws in place but, if they have nowhere to stop, what is the point? It is putting the cart before the horse. These new laws to reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue will only work if there are enough rest areas for drivers to stop. They cannot just park on the shoulder of a major highway and go to sleep for seven hours; it is unsafe and it is likely they would not be able to sleep anyway because of the passing traffic.

The Australian Trucking Association’s recent audit concluded that none of Australia’s major highways have enough rest areas to meet the national guidelines. I will repeat that: none of Australia’s major highways have enough rest areas to meet the national guidelines. The ATA said in their media release of 22 August 2008 that thousands of new rest areas are needed across the country, including on state roads. Specifically, they called for 900 new truck stops to be built by the year 2019 on the AusLink network and they have given their support to the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill before us today in return for a commitment from the Rudd Labor government.

The lack of places for heavy vehicles to stop is not unique to South Australia, and the Australian Transport Association says thousands more are needed to address the severe shortage of truck stops around Australia. They call for capacity upgrades to the existing rest areas, given the rest areas just are not big enough to cope with the larger number of trucks that will need to stop at each place.

The amendments to the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill proposed by the coalition today are necessary to ensure that the heavy vehicle industry benefits from the higher charges being imposed on trucking companies and owner-drivers. Labor should not be free to index the excise at will. They have certainly got form in that: the Hawke government had an automatic excise increase in line with the CPI. What Labor are proposing here is a road user charge that is actually greater than the CPI, and they should not be allowed to do that without further parliamentary scrutiny and negotiation. If these amendments do not succeed, the Rudd Labor government will have given itself yet another stealth tax lacking in scrutiny and consultation and with no need to justify why the increase is necessary. Our proposed amendments would require the government to adopt an open and transparent system for setting the road user charge, instead of indexation.

A few weeks ago in this place I spoke out about the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government’s stated intention to link the passage of AusLink legislation to the release of funds for rest areas. While he ultimately did not reflect that in the legislation, it nonetheless revealed that we do not have a minister with the safety of Australia’s heavy vehicle drivers in mind. Holding the safety of drivers to ransom at a time when there are not enough rest areas for truck drivers on Australia’s major highways reflects the level to which this government will stoop.

Lack of rest areas means that drivers are forced to press on when they are fatigued—a serious threat to road safety. Just last week the Chief Executive of the Australian Trucking Association, a former member of this House, Stuart St Clair, provided details of a report by the government research agency Austroads. It has audited the rest areas along 12,700 kilometres of Australia’s major freight routes against the national guidelines for rest area facilities. The report concluded that none of Australia’s major highways fully meet the national guidelines, which require a major rest area every 100 kilometres, a minor rest area every 50 kilometres and a small truck parking bay every 30 kilometres. We are certainly nowhere near that.

It is with reluctance that I support bills which impose higher charges on the Australian transport industry, but I do support these bills because of the assurance of the industry bodies, such as the Australian Trucking Association, that the industry will wear the charge in return for a commitment to a specified number of rest areas. I support them because it would be unfair to impose tough penalties under the new fatigue laws on truck drivers who have to keep driving because there is not a rest area nearby where they can stop safely. I give notice to the government that I will be watching them very closely on this commitment. I expect to see evidence in the form of many more rest areas as I travel throughout my electorate.

My electorate is bigger than Tasmania. I do a lot of travelling. Every day that I have been in my electorate since I was elected I have averaged over 300 kilometres. Because of the size of my electorate that is the amount of travelling that I have to do to service my constituents. It is not unusual to have a 500- or 600-kilometre round trip in one day, because of the size of the electorate. This is not something I complain about; it is just a fact of life. I do see a lot of our roads and get to know every turn, corner, bump and hole.

I used to regularly ring up the former minister and say, ‘We need to do a bit of work on this road’—the Dukes Highway or the Sturt Highway—‘We need to fix this up.’ In time we did get those patches filled. That was not just as a result of my complaints, as I am sure other people made the same sorts of complaints. Like most members of parliament, when the road is in your electorate you believe it is your road and you take responsibility for that road and what happens on it.

I commend this legislation to the parliament and wish it well in the future. I hope we can get some support for the amendments that we propose. They are only about transparency and commitment, and that is all we are after.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 are keystones of the Rudd government’s commitment to positive reform of the road transport industry. They will tidy up outdated modes of collecting national heavy vehicle charges and address imbalances that exist in the current system. The intention is to produce a consistent nationwide structure for the recovery of costs from the industry for maintaining Australia’s critical interstate road network. Industry and all Australian governments have been pursuing vigorous reform in order to improve efficiency and safety within this vital industry. Long-term national reform is always challenging, and the challenge of committing to high-priority national transport market reforms is crucial to Australia’s transport infrastructure.

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill implement the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination. The effect of the two bills is to create a uniform set of charges for the entire Australian road transport industry. A new road user charge and new vehicle registration charges for heavy vehicles will be established throughout Australia. As part of this initiative the Rudd government is supplementing the determination with a $70 million four-year Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Package. This legislation is the culmination of a series of interactions between industry, the Australian Transport Council, the National Transport Commission, the Council of Australian Governments, the previous coalition government and the Rudd Labor government.

This legislation will have a significant and positive impact on my seat of Corangamite and the major transport route that crosses the electorate—the Princes Highway. This major arterial road runs through Geelong into my electorate and across the width of Corangamite and heads towards Warrnambool. The Princes Highway is a conduit for agribusiness products from south-west Victoria and south-east South Australia to the export gateways of Portland, Geelong and Melbourne. The highway runs through the fastest-growing dairy production area in Australia, which accounts for 21 per cent of national milk production and has annual exports now exceeding $1 billion. A large proportion of logging trucks from the Otway plantations transport wood for timber and woodchipping along the Princes Highway to the ports of Geelong and Portland.

The aluminium smelting company Alcoa, which has plants in Geelong and Portland, uses this route. Potatoes and grain from south-west Victoria also travel along the Princes Highway to market and consumer destinations. Traffic along this corridor is expected to increase by between 25 per cent and 66 per cent over the next seven years. Whilst this road is vital to primary industry, it is also vital to the tourism sector. The route also provides access to the Otway Range and provides alternative access to the Great Ocean Road and coastal communities.

I understand fully the implications of the road transport industry for my electorate and it has been a main focus of my tenure as a federal member. During last year’s election I campaigned heavily on having this vital road, the Princes Highway, upgraded as part of Australia’s infrastructure demands, particularly by having it duplicated. This year, the Victorian government matched our election commitment of $110 million to duplicate the Princes Highway, and I can report that planning is progressing well on this important and vital piece of infrastructure for my electorate. This government is also assisting the heavy vehicle industry along busy transport corridors such as the Princes Highway through a $70 million supplementation to the heavy vehicle safety and productivity package.

A lot of work and commitment has gone into this important reform and the Rudd government has consulted with industry and state and territory governments to determine the best combination of projects for the use of this $70 million package. From the numbers on the Princes Highway, it is understandable that the road carries a dangerous and high-volume mix of heavy vehicles, commuter vehicles and tourism traffic. As part of the heavy vehicle safety and productivity package, there will be construction of more rest stops along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities to assist truck drivers in implementing rest.

This package will also include trials of black box technologies that will electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed. This is a positive development in road safety standards for this very important industry. Serious injury and fatalities not only are devastating to those involved and their families but represent a huge financial burden on the federal government, estimated to be $1.7 million per fatality and $406,000 per serious injury. The commencement of trials with black boxes will also assist businesses in monitoring logistics as they will provide data that can be used to streamline routes and enhance productivity in this important industry. Other components of the package include bridge-strengthening projects and upgrades to linkages between existing AusLink freight routes, enabling access to those roads and making heavy vehicles more productive.

There will be a significant increase in road freight in the future, and this legislation aims to reform existing legislation whilst providing a positive assistance package for the industry that it will most affect. Currently, heavy vehicle charges are based on the pay-as-you-go principle of cost recovery, which has been the status quo since 1992. This is a measure by which heavy vehicles pay for a share of the recovery of road spending. Over the years, costs allocated to heavy vehicles were set by determinations made by the National Transport Commission. The determinations were tied to the consumer price index, which failed to accommodate increases in government road expenditure greater than the cost of general inflation. The adjustment was also based on changes in road expenditure, reflecting an assumption about the level of heavy vehicle fleet growth.

On top of the fact that the current legislation is obviously due for reconsideration, there have also been significant changes to the dynamics of this important industry. For example, in 2000 the charges for B-double trailers were capped. At the time, B-doubles were a new class of vehicle and their numbers on Australian roads were quite small. Their charges were capped to prevent substitution by less safe road trains. Since 2000, there has been a 220 per cent increase in the number of B-doubles on Australia’s roads to 8,339 vehicles. B-doubles are increasingly used on urban arterial roads and into ports, whilst road trains operate the long-haul routes in remote and outback areas. The acceptance of B-doubles onto metropolitan and regional freight routes and having road trains keep to remote areas means that substitution of road trains for B-doubles is no longer a significant risk. Therefore, due to the maintenance of the 2000 rate cap, B-doubles and heavy vehicles are heavily subsidised by carriers operating smaller vehicles. There is a clear argument here for providing funding for safety and productivity purposes and for reforming a growth industry that is inhibited by the lack of recent reform to keep pace with that growth.

This legislation is a culmination of a number of initiatives and determinations by both industry and government over the past few years. Successive governments at Commonwealth, state and territory levels have supported the principle of cost recovery from the heavy vehicle industry for its fair share of road construction and maintenance costs incurred by government through the collection of heavy vehicle charges. The Australian Transport Council rejected the third determination and requested a review into heavy vehicle charges because it was perceived it would overcollect $170 million from the industry.

In October 2006, the National Transport Commission was directed by the Australian Transport Council to develop a new heavy vehicle charges determination. Subsequently, the Council of Australian Governments meeting in April 2007 endorsed the need for a new charges determination. At their meeting on 10 February 2006, the Council of Australian Governments requested the Productivity Commission to develop proposals for the efficient pricing of road and rail freight infrastructure through consistent and competitively-neutral pricing regimes. The report was to be conducted in a manner that maximised net benefits to the community, in particular rural, regional and remote Australia. The Productivity Commission report concluded that the estimates of the National Transport Commission of heavy vehicle costs were conservative by international standards and at the lower end of various attribution methodologies. In effect, the report found the industry was not paying its way. In response to the outcome of the Productivity Commission report, the Council of Australian Governments required the Australian Transport Council to devise a new charges determination for implementation on 1 July 2008. The new determination was framed to fully recover infrastructure costs from the heavy vehicle industry, to end cross-subsidisation between heavy vehicle classes and to index charges to ensure costs continued to be recovered. The level of proposed recovery is $1.95 billion, which is an increase on the currently recovered $1.78 billion but still a shortfall of around $170 million.

The determination of the Australian Transport Council was unanimously agreed to by the transport ministers at their meeting in February 2008 for implementation on 1 July 2008. The revised heavy vehicle registration rates have already been implemented by all states, with the Northern Territory currently introducing the new national charges into their parliament. The Commonwealth, however, is yet to introduce new registration charges for Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles.

In March the Senate rejected bills to implement the new charges in the ACT and for Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles. The failure of the Senate to pass these important pieces of legislation means inconsistencies remain in charges between the states and territories. The heavy vehicles registered in the ACT under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme represent just three per cent of the heavy vehicles in Australia, and the registration revenue from those vehicles is returned to the states and territories in full. The new charges were implemented by all states on 1 July 2008 and will ensure that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of the costs of providing the road network and for the damage that they cause to those roads, and the Australian Transport Council endorses the principle of cost recovery. The new charges will result in a decrease in the registration charges of one-quarter of the fleet. For 69 per cent of the fleet there will be an increase of no greater than 10 per cent and there will be significant increases for the remaining six per cent of the heavy vehicle fleet. However, the majority of these vehicles are heavy truck trailers and multicombination vehicles that are currently subsidised by smaller vehicles. As you can see, this has resulted in a rebalancing of heavy vehicle charges, with some registration costs falling and others increasing.

Throughout the development of this legislation, there was extensive consultation with key industry stakeholders. The National Transport Commission conducted discussions with industry representative groups such as the Australian Trucking Association and the National Farmers Federation. After amendments were made, key industry stakeholders were further consulted about subsequent changes. Australia’s freight transport industry needs more cooperation, leadership and a sense of urgency to maximise Australia’s international economic competitiveness.

For the sake of playing politics, the opposition is withholding this important piece of road transport reform legislation from three per cent of the industry, as these policies have already been adopted by all of the states. Legislation needs to be passed in the spring sitting to allow the new rate of the road user charge to come into effect on 1 January 2009, as agreed to by all Australian transport ministers at their February 2008 meeting. This government is committed to providing the industry with support during the changeover period, with an investment of $70 million in crucial road transport infrastructure. It is in the best interests of the industry and all of the governments of Australia that we have a fair, balanced system of recovering the costs of maintaining the national road system from the industries that are causing the most damage to it. In the past, some sectors within the industry have benefited from other sectors, and that is being rectified by these important legislative changes.

There are some important aspects that the opposition will need to consider when this legislation goes back to the Senate, such as that the ongoing under-recovery of heavy vehicle charges provides a strong disincentive for states and territories to allow wider access to their road networks for high-productivity vehicles. The effect will be that any further expansion of high-mass-limit networks will be put at risk, as will the ability of the heavy vehicle industry to innovate and develop new, safer and more productive vehicles to take advantage of these networks. This is important legislation that is providing better infrastructure and improved services to the road transport industry and the opposition is simply playing politics by attempting to block it. This legislation is designed to make better use of the nation’s infrastructure and to readdress the balance between pay as you go and removing cross-subsidies between different classes of vehicles. The Rudd government’s plans to raise productivity, fight inflation and maintain economic growth is dependent on legislation such as this. I commend the bills to the House.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is important legislation, and the opposition has good grounds to oppose certain aspects of it. It is about time that the government ceased justifying bad legislation by the simple act of accusing somebody else of taking a political position. Overall, the fundamental of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 is that all truck owners will pay an additional 1.36c a litre in what is actually an excise, otherwise known as a road user charge. They of course will, if they are able, pass that on to the consumers who reside in many parts of my electorate and certainly the bulk of the area of Western Australia, where in fact there is no rail service. It is very notable in Western Australia that there has been a very proactive approach to the trucking industry in terms of truck configurations because the government in that state, be it Liberal or Labor, has had no reason to protect an inefficient, union dominated rail system, which of course is most evident in New South Wales, where they are still trying to make railway lines work where they will not. I note now that the unions have just convinced the new Premier to hand back the ferries. I bet being run entirely by the government will make them work on time!

Personally, I have never been able to understand why governments who quite properly wish to provide services to the community have to own the shop to deliver the service, when in fact they can contract it out to the private sector, guarantee better service and of course reduce the cost to the taxpayer—whom I always thought was our prime responsibility in this place, not some union heavy who is getting worried about his superannuation. The reality is it is people for whom we have a responsibility and it is people who will pay. Working families, as we were once reminded, will pay this 1.36c.

Some of the other legislation is of a routine nature. For instance, it harmonises the type of registration fee—that is, the licence fee that the average motorist knows and understands—that is levied against transport vehicles in the states and is revenue that the states retain. Not all of them bother to spend it on roads, I might add. But the circumstances of the ‘road user’ charge, which was a Howard government initiative, involved a decision to try and identify the contribution that the trucking industry should pay for roads. Roads are typically built for motorists because they have got more votes than truckies. And it is a reality that some of the huge expense incurred by governments today is in accommodating the clutter that occurs in our capital cities because of motor cars, with the odd truck interposed. So the first issue therefore is: how should trucks pay?

The railways are constantly complaining that they provide their own ‘road’, but often that is not the case anymore. We have hedge companies and investment funds these days that buy the railway line as such and then rent it out to various other companies, such as Pacific National, just to think of one name, and Queensland Rail in Western Australia which operates the rolling stock. So that complaint is often not substantiated. But, to return to the pure economics of this, they put the argument that truckies do not pay enough and that is why they are so competitive. Of course, that competition flows through to the consumer.

The reality is that a figure, of around 18.5c a litre, was arrived at as a significant and properly calculated charge on the trucking industry for every litre of fuel they use—and the bigger the truck the more fuel they use, so that is quite a sensible approach—for their share of use of the roads. The proposal that is coming forward today in this legislation is that that road user charge should be increased. I might add that the mechanism by which this charge was levied was to say to the truckies: ‘You pay full tote, including full excise’—36c a litre, or thereabouts—‘when you purchase your fuel. You then write in at the end of each month and submit a claim for a rebate of that amount less the 18.5c.’ That is going to be increased and they will get a lesser rebate. That will cause quite significant difficulties when you consider that there are trucks on the road that burn virtually a litre of fuel in a couple of minutes.

The question we have is whether this charge should be levied when the government have indicated they want the money for a specific purpose: they intend to hypothecate it to the construction of road stops. The shadow minister for transport pointed out what these so-called road stops are for. They are not service stations. They are a clearing on the side of the road, sometimes with a few basic amenities, where a truck driver can stop his vehicle primarily to meet his rest requirements. Truckies are no longer considered to be able to drive until they drop. In fact, the law provides that they should have adequate rest periods. There is nothing wrong with that idea. But the fact of life is that east of the Western Australia-South Australia-Northern Territory border, proof of how they take those stops is kept in a logbook. Western Australian authorities have always understood that that is joke because there is no proper surveillance. Nobody sits on your shoulder while you fill in your logbook, and there are special signals transferred between truckies to let you know that down the road there is a checking point, so you stop your truck and fill in your details—and it is always pure and perfect. But it is a waste of time because it is not an adequate means of surveillance.

As a truck owner I used to get new trucks installed with a speedo—it was not all that expensive—that recorded what the truck was actually doing. They were quite a simple device. They had little circular graphs in them that could tell you whether the truck was stationary, whether—from my perspective—the bloke had stopped and kept the engine running to keep the air conditioner on, whether he had ripped off with the prime mover to meet his girlfriend. I could find out all that from those little circular graphs, and how far the driver drove before he took a compulsory rest. That was done mechanically. But we do not have that; we have these logbooks and we employ an army of policemen to stop people and fine them.

I have had within my family a personal experience that gave me some embarrassment in this place because my son drove across the South Australian border, as many truckies do, without a logbook because they do not have them in WA. You cannot buy them in WA. There is no sign on the road as you cross the Nullarbor saying ‘You are entering logbook territory’ and he did not know. But I tell you what: because he was making a one-off trip and was inexperienced in long-term driving—something that I knew better—I insisted he take a co-driver. And if that is not the best way to manage being tired or going to sleep, they were also driving two on, two off. But that did not matter to the South Australian police; they just wanted the money. When I complained about it I got covered all around Australia as ‘getting my son off a speeding fine’. I would not let him off a speeding fine. A certain person said to me, ‘My son got caught for drunk driving and I didn’t help him.’ And I said, ‘My son has never got caught for drunk driving.’ There is a difference.

Nevertheless, evidence was brought forward by the shadow minister. Another farmer who was known to me got fined $1,000 inside South Australia because the truck he was driving with a number of kids’ polocrosse ponies on board happened to have the extension tray behind the axle longer than is approved in South Australia. But of course the vehicle had been licensed and properly measured and checked in Western Australia. It cost him $1,000 taking some kids to a polocrosse meeting. That is just revenue-raising and for no good reason. This is what this legislation is supposed to be about, but it is not.

The shadow minister gave example after example of the differential from state to state in how many hours you can drive. You are either fatigued or you are not. How can fatigue be different in New South Wales? How can fatigue be an issue driving around the city of Sydney, where you get plenty of rests because you are in traffic jams engineered by one Neville Wran when he sold off all the freeway reserves in that city? I am waiting for Paint Your Wagon evidence when all of Sydney collapses in on its tunnels. Why? Because Neville Wran sold off all the freeway reserves that previous forward-thinking members of parliament on both sides had accumulated—just as Don Dunstan sold off all the reserves that previous governments had put together for water reservoirs. What is the problem in South Australia today? They cannot find a drink.

These are the sorts of circumstances that this legislation should be addressing. In my representations to the committee, I put the point, which is not part of the conditions that will apply, that the government should only get the 1.36c, which they are going to pass on to the consumers, after they have cleaned up the mess. This is another no-blame game. I love the no-blame game. What it has materialised as is: the states do not blame Kevin Rudd and he does not blame them. But we are not achieving anything. We would concede the 1.36c in this House if we knew that those costs could be saved by truckies by the simple act of a more efficient and understandable service through legislation. But it is still a dog’s breakfast and we are constantly told, particularly by New South Wales, that they, as the lowest common denominator, should set the rules.

The member for Oxley had a shot at me. In the education legislation debate the other day, I complained that we are now overtrained and that someone who drove a truck in my electorate three months a year lost his licence because he was not a regular truck driver. It so happened that he had other seasonal work that fitted with his lifestyle and his need to make a living. He lost his licence, and it was going to cost him $2,000. He had been driving for about 30 years. As I said, the next thing is that we will be licensing people to ride a push bike and taking their licence if they have not ridden one for two or three months. You do not forget those skills.

The member for Oxley said, ‘It’s more complex now.’ When I was driving trucks, there were not any automatic transmissions. Some of these trucks today drive like cars. Yes, they are typically longer, and I want to talk about that. Again, we have this mishmash of regulation, with a significant constriction on vehicle configuration in New South Wales, which is arguably supposed to save the community from being run over or something. But the reality is that in Western Australia over the years—and I was fortunate to be involved in achieving the upgrade of standards—we have had two trailer configurations driving around the city. I well remember the debate. We used to have to stop 30 kilometres out of town to break up our truck in case we ran over someone. That added $100 to the cost of your trip. Interestingly, when it was brought in after a trial, I heard a woman on the radio saying, ‘This is a scam; there has been no trial.’ What she was really saying was that she had not noticed any of those bigger rigs that now run around Perth.

But let us look at safety on the road. A three-trailer truck can be speed limited to 80 kilometres an hour and make a profit. Take one trailer off, and it has to do 100 kilometres an hour to make a profit. I put to you the difficulties for a motorist in making the passing manoeuvre in those two circumstances. So it is silly to argue that bigger truck configurations have any problems—other than that they save people money.

This legislation does not do anything about getting the states to deliver on configurations. It does not deliver anything about where these truck stops should be. They are a good idea, but the fact of life is that they are not a good idea when they are at different spacings and, of course, nonexistent for a long time yet. But, again, the log book process is a joke as a means of controlling when people take these rest breaks. It should be scrubbed out everywhere and replaced, if it is deemed necessary, with another type of equipment.

The member for Corangamite said that this is all about politics, but I do not know if he has ever been in the cab of a truck. The member for Oxley said that you have to relearn. I think it was four or five years before I got back into a truck. It happened to be an eight-wheel Volvo with a full semitrailer and a dog trailer, and I loaded it up with super and drove it for a couple of hundred miles. I got over some pretty significant hills and never missed a gear change. Do not tell me that people from hardworking families should be put out of work because they do not drive a truck every day of the week. That is stupid. But that is where we are—and let me admit: we brought in that silly arrangement. We conspired with the National Transport Commission that I would sack tomorrow, because all they want to do is to raise more money against the people I represent—and, I might add, some on the other side of this House also have constituents who do not have a railway service. Of course it is the trucks that keep the railway services honest. All of those matters have to be considered, and the opposition has every practical right to bring the government to account again.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.

Government Members:

Government members—No!

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It is allowable under the standing orders.