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

Earlier this year—I cannot recall the exact time—I spoke in this parliament about the extent of the carnage on our roads, which I again raise today in speaking in support of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 is one of two bills to implement the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination, which sets a new road user charge and new registration charges for heavy vehicles in Australia as agreed by Australian transport ministers back in February 2008. The determination recovers from the heavy vehicle users in that industry its share of Commonwealth and state and territory government road infrastructure costs. The second bill, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No.2) 2008, will amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It too was agreed to by Australian transport ministers at their meeting in February this year. Regrettably, in talking on these bills I do need to remind the House of the extent of the carnage on the roads that we experience each year. In the year to April 2008, 275 people died in heavy vehicle accidents throughout this county. Of all the road deaths that occur in this country, one in five involves heavy vehicles. Over the same period, the number of deaths in articulated heavy vehicle and rigid vehicle incidents increased by almost 12 per cent when compared to last year. These are astounding figures.

In 2004-05, 5,350 people who worked in the transport industry suffered serious injuries. This equates with the rate of about 31 serious accidents per day. In 2005-06, 2.8 per cent of the workforce in this industry suffered serious work related injuries. Apart from the pain, suffering, loss and grief, there is also an economic cost to these accidents. If you go through and look at the figures for last year, you can see that for each one of the road deaths that occurred there was an economic cost of $1.7 million. These figures are deplorable, but what is worse is the suffering, pain, hurt and grieving that the carnage produces. That will take a long while to be alleviated for the families—as a matter of fact, it probably never will be.

As I said, the prevention of road fatalities and serious injuries has been at the forefront of the Rudd government’s $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. Under this $70 million package, the government will fund bridge-strengthening projects and upgrade the linkages between the existing AusLink freight routes, enabling access to those roads by more productive heavy vehicles. It will also trial black-box technologies that electronically monitor a driver’s hours and the speed et cetera of a vehicle. In respect of that, I had the opportunity, not all that long ago, to talk to Lindsay Fox. He was telling me that he was absolutely committed to this form of technology being introduced, not simply to work out where his trucks were going at any particular time but, because the safety of his drivers is paramount, to ensure that issues such as management of fatigue and proper adherence to road regulations were being maintained. That technology is very much at the forefront of his mind as a critical safety measure.

The other aspect of this $70 million plan, which I have spoken about previously, is the construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops on our highways. Again, facilities to pull these vehicles over and ensure that the appropriate rest breaks are taken so that people are not driving with fatigue are a critical aspect of our road transport infrastructure. The passage of these bills will make this safety package possible by introducing a fairer heavy vehicle charge which will ensure that all heavy vehicles pay their way for the impacts that they have on our roads.

Heavy vehicles operate right across Australia, moving freight through every state and territory. They are responsible for moving 1.7 billion tonnes of freight, which represents some 70 per cent of the total tonnages carried by all transport modes in this country. Of the 365,000 heavy vehicles operating on Australia’s roads, a fair proportion of those actually pass through my electorate of Werriwa. As you would be only too well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, running right through the middle of my electorate is the Hume Highway. The Hume Highway is the main interstate corridor between Sydney and Melbourne and carries some 20 million tonnes of freight every year.

For some time I lobbied the minister responsible for roads in the former government, trying to make a case for the widening of that freeway. Far too often the freeway is blocked during peak hour traffic and it also causes freight congestion around our intermodal terminals at Minto and Ingleburn. It is a vital piece of infrastructure upgrade—one that the opposition, while they were in government, could not agree to. Fortunately, on taking office the Rudd government committed to widening that piece of road infrastructure, agreeing to fund it through AusLink 2. The government committed to 80 per cent of the road project, which I understand is valued at around $140 million. That will be a significant net contribution to infrastructure in my electorate of Werriwa. It will not only allow residents to access one part of my electorate from another without facing the difficulty of road congestion—parents will be able to get kids to and from schools—but, probably more importantly, allow for commercial operations to run more seamlessly through our intermodal terminals, where rail freight can be unloaded and placed on the Hume Highway for distribution to various towns and cities between Sydney and Melbourne. I must say that this is a top priority for my community, as we have currently 80,000 truck movements per day, including 6,000 heavy trucks. This figure is expected to grow by some two to three per cent over the next 20 years. Therefore, it is a significant issue in my electorate.

Improving road safety, quite frankly, is the single biggest thing, I think, that we should be addressing here today. The only real way to address road safety is to address the issue of road conditions and road infrastructure itself. Investment in these pieces of infrastructure, we say, is critical, and therefore road safety involves the individual and shared responsibilities not only of the operators of heavy vehicles but also of those responsible for ensuring that these roads are in a condition which is as safe as possible not only for the heavy vehicles but for all the associated road users who come into conjunction with these roads while they are being used for transport and freight between one location and another.

A range of measures have been adopted in recent decades in an effort to mitigate road trauma, with some considerable success. The latest initiative is the National Road Safety Strategy and related plans, which were approved by the ministerial council in February of this year. They provide a framework for coordinating the road safety initiatives of Australian state, territory and local governments as well as the major organisations with road safety responsibilities. The aim is to reduce our road fatality rate by some 40 per cent by the end of the decade. However, the government must play its role in formulating and reviewing these road safety practices. A key to that is for users of heavy vehicles and the heavy vehicle industry itself to pay their fair share of upgrading the road infrastructure to provide for safety and more sound operating conditions for all transport operators in that industry. A little earlier I said that I had the opportunity to have a discussion with Lindsay Fox. I know how much he stresses safety in his industry, but I also know how critical it is that he, his organisation and all the other heavy truck based organisations out there play a role in servicing the needs of our community by providing freight both inwards and outwards at appropriate times to ensure that our local communities operate reasonably. In 2007 the then Minister for Transport and Regional Development, Mark Vaile, put reform of the heavy vehicle charges on the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments. He said:

The National Transport Commission (NTC) 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.

What that did in bringing this to COAG was to put fairly and squarely on the national agenda the full recovery of costs associated with road infrastructure from the heavy vehicle industry. Currently the amount of money raised does not cover anywhere near the cost of providing the infrastructure necessary for the heavy vehicle industry. Recovery of the expenditure is achieved through a combination of fixed registration charges which are collected by the states and territories and a road user charge collected by the Australian government.

The heavy vehicle charges have not changed since 2001, when it was determined that the charges would recover past expenditure from the heavy vehicle sector, which subsequently lowered registration fees for some larger trucks, effectively cross-subsidising them from other road users. This overhaul of the heavy vehicle charges is urgently needed to construct and maintain the infrastructure necessary, as I indicated, for the proper functioning of the heavy vehicle industry itself. In fact, the National Transport Commission estimated that the underrecovery of transport charges is currently in the order of $100 million per annum, which is a pretty sizeable chunk of infrastructure missing from the Commonwealth and state governments and also from local governments that take responsibility for facilitating the use of roadways for many of the heavy vehicles in this particular industry.

In 2007 the National Transport Commission was asked by the Australian transport ministers, who were directed by COAG as part of the overall transport reform package, to prepare a new heavy vehicle charge determination to deliver revised charges for introduction during this year. In undertaking the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination, the National Transport Commission determined that the current rate of the Commonwealth’s road user charge of 19.63c per litre was insufficient to recover the infrastructure costs caused by heavy vehicles and proposed changes to truck registration charges imposed by the states to end the cross-subsidisation of larger truck operators by smaller truck operators. If not addressed, the underrecovery of heavy vehicle charges provides a strong disincentive for states and territories to invest in road infrastructure. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 will allow an increase in the road user charge of 1.37c. That will take it from 19.63c per litre to 21c per litre. It will come into effect from 1 January 2009 and, as I mentioned earlier, was agreed to by all Australian transport ministers in their February meeting this year.

As I noted at the opening of this speech, the purpose of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No.2) 2008 is to amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s voluntary Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. I understand that 97 per cent of trucks are registered under state based schemes and have already implemented these charges, which have applied from 1 July this year. This bill will allow regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges to apply under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It will enable the implementation of the registration charge elements of the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination, which revises the national charges for heavy vehicles and trailers. The implementation of the determination is part of the national road transport reform agenda and will go a long way to fully recovering the costs for the provision of the road network for the use of the heavy vehicle industry and will contribute to nationally consistent heavy vehicle registration charges being placed throughout the country.

This is a necessary piece of legislation. It is absolutely critical for the efficient operation of our heavy vehicle industry, which plays such a critical role in our modern economy. The industry has at its forefront the delivery of appropriate safety. It is also, regrettably, an industry which has shared the awful experience of many. As I say, one in five deaths that occur on Australian roads at this stage involves heavy transport vehicles. We need to address that. It is not just for the heavy transport industry to address. This is also good for the rest of the community who are road users as well. I commend the bills to the House. (Time expired)

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have risen in this House many times to support the trucking industry. It is no secret that I am an advocate for all issues that will benefit truck drivers across Australia, who do such a sensational job in supporting and underpinning our everyday lives. Many of them go unnoticed for that. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 are very significant for that industry. From the outset, I will follow the lead of the representative industries for the trucking industry in order for us to get the best outcome over time to benefit those sensational truck drivers and their families across Australia.

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No.2) 2008 deals with the implementation of the registration charge elements of the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination. This revises the national charges for heavy vehicles and trailers for application to heavy vehicles registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. It is my understanding that there is no objection to that bill by the trucking industry at this time. The fact is that there is a need for a consistency of registration. Some people will find that difficult, but I understand that the vast majority of the trucking industry is now paying the new charges. The three separate charging systems are causing some cross-border anomalies. It is probably a sensible thing to do, although I have fought this in the past. Truck registration going through the roof was not something that I wanted to see happen for the owner-drivers of Australia. I recall, when we were first discussing this whilst I was in government in a debate on the National Transport Commission, that I opposed it vigorously because it meant that registration costs would go extraordinarily high for some users, particularly in South Australia. I certainly was not advocating new costs for owner-drivers. However, I can see now that there are anomalies. It is currently cheaper to register a three-axle rigid truck in New South Wales than in the ACT, but it is cheaper to register a B-double in the ACT than in New South Wales.  In itself, that poses some problems.

Could I just talk about the bill in depth. The Rudd government has said it will supplement the determination with a $70 million, four-year heavy vehicle safety and productivity package that will fund the construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities to assist truck drivers rest, trials of black box technologies that electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed and bridge-strengthening projects and upgrades to link existing AusLink freight routes. I quote from an ATA press release:

The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) is calling on federal politicians to deliver 900 extra truck rest areas on major highways by 2019, under the industry’s plan to amend the Government’s new heavy vehicle charges legislation.

The ATA goes on to say:

The legislation would increase the effective fuel tax paid by trucking operators – the road user charge – from 19.633 to 21 cents per litre, and would give the Government the ability to index this rate in the future. The legislation would also introduce new registration charges for the 21,500 trucks with Federal Interstate Registration Scheme (FIRS) number plates.

The chairman has said that the ATA’s plan would be to tie future increases in the road user charge to the construction of truck rest areas on the AusLink national network. I absolutely agree that there is a need to have many truck stops right along every highway in Australia. As the ATA’s press release states:

A recent independent audit found there isn’t a single major highway in Australia that meets the national rest area guidelines. Our estimate is that the AusLink National Network needs an additional 900 rest areas to bring it up to the mark.

The ATA calls for those rest areas to be in urban areas, such as near the intersections of the M7 and the M4 in Sydney, through to gravel parking bays in remote areas. The ATA discusses the issues of heavy trucks and says:

… on average, at least 90 additional heavy vehicle rest areas per year have been constructed on the AusLink National Network since the last road user charge determination was issued …

That is clearly still not enough. I repeat that the ATA has proposed that 900 extra rest areas should be delivered across the AusLink national network, and I guess that is a realistic plan. The most important thing is that the truck owner-drivers and owner-operators see the benefits when their road taxes are increased.

The previous legislation also included an annual adjustment component, which was to be based on a road expenditure formula. The problem with this proposal was that the formula was very expensive for our truckies. The costs associated with road construction and maintenance, such as steel, concrete and asphalt—all of the inputs that go into building roads—have skyrocketed, and we certainly understand that. The automatic adjustment component locked in an annual increase well above the CPI. That is unacceptable and I am pleased that the opposition is steadfast in that belief. The opposition and the shadow minister responsible, Warren Truss, recognised that the pressures that the heavy freight sector was operating under were extreme. Over the last few months, the daily life of the average Australian has got tougher and it has certainly got tougher for owner-drivers and transport industry operators, with rising fuel costs and other costs that must be factored into running a business. These stresses fall particularly hard on those who do the job of getting our essentials to market, helping our lives to operate smoothly.

The ATA have called for quite significant improvements in this whole process. They do not want the government to automatically index the road user charge by an annual adjustment formula. They would like the government to adopt an open and transparent system for periodically setting the road user charge and they would like to see a link between future increases in the road user charge and the construction of an estimated extra 900 truck rest areas on the AusLink national network by 2019.

The industry themselves vigorously oppose indexation and refer to it as a stealth tax on the trucking industry. They strongly oppose the plan to index the road user charge, because it would be based on a weighted percentage change in road construction and maintenance expenditure and it would be a proxy for increases in the size of the heavy vehicle fleet and vehicle kilometres travelled. The industry believe that the formula in the government’s plan would increase the road user charge by more than seven per cent per year without any consultation with the industry or parliamentary scrutiny. That is why they describe this as a stealth tax, and I can certainly understand that. They are calling for an open and transparent system for setting the road user charge, not indexation. In support of the industry and the job that the ATA does on behalf of the industry, I certainly support the amendments moved by the opposition to fix this indexation.

Four national highways run through my electorate of Riverina: the Hume Highway, the Sturt Highway, the Olympic Highway and the Newell Highway. In September last year statistics showed that about 7,000 vehicles and, in particular, 4,500 heavy vehicles travelled over the Sheehan Bridge at Gundagai on a daily basis. As a result of an AusLink project by the previous government, we are now seeing the duplication of that bridge. More than 6,000 heavy vehicles use the Hume Highway around Tarcutta on a daily basis. So there is quite a significant traffic movement across the Riverina electorate and there is a need to ensure that safety is paramount for those drivers, who are doing such a sensational job in distributing goods across Australia. In fact, we have information from the RTA website that shows that most of the general traffic movements on the other three Riverina highways are of significant heavy vehicle value. The Olympic Way had an annual average daily traffic of 3,040 vehicles in just one very small area. I found statistics which showed that the Sturt Highway at Collingullie had an average daily traffic of 2,782 heavy vehicles in 2006, and that figure would no doubt have increased since then.

It is a significant issue for us to ensure that we act in the best interests of the Trucking Association, the owner-drivers and certainly their families right across the nation, who are entitled to know that their husbands or wives—there are women who are driving trucks now, which is sensational to see—or family members going out to work have the best possible chance of returning home to them safely and not being involved or, worse still, killed in a heavy vehicle accident.

In Tarcutta in my electorate is a remembrance wall. It is staggering to see the numbers of drivers who have been killed while delivering goods across Australia in their everyday vocation. When you stop at the Tarcutta memorial you cannot believe it could be possible that so many of those drivers did not make it home safely to their families. Each year there is a memorial service. People come from right across Australia to mourn their loved ones or friends who have lost their lives to enable the Australian economy to keep functioning.

We talk about our economic downturn at the moment and every eye is on the television watching the stock markets; every eye is on the day-to-day performance of finances in the Australian market and the international market. It would be sensational if there were as much concern and consideration and as many eyes focused every day on ensuring that those people who transport every good across this nation were able to do so in the safest possible way and were given the opportunity to return home safely to their families. It would be a wonderful thing if all of those eyes in Australia that are watching those markets now had the same interest for truck drivers particularly.

These two bills are significant for the industry. I welcomed the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Anthony Albanese, to the Riverina for a visit just recently to inspect the progress of the work on the duplication at Kyeamba Hill. I was most impressed with the minister’s commitment to ensure that the road networks across Australia were going to be the safest and the best that he could possibly manage whilst he was responsible for this portfolio. He was very positive about the work on the Hume Highway. I thank him for that. You learn something about road construction every day, and it was good to accompany the minister. I thank him for including me in his visit to the Riverina and for allowing me to accompany him to this site project. It is very important to me. I have always been a great advocate for road safety in the industry and that will certainly not diminish. I stand here today to urge the minister to implement the ATA’s recommendations in full, thereby increasing the benefits to the trucking industry.

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

I rise today to speak in support of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. These bills will help to strengthen the government’s commitment to road safety and the improvement of local roads, particularly for heavy vehicles. It fits well with our AusLink 2 legislation when it comes to safety. The legislation also ensures that the heavy vehicle industry will contribute its fair share of infrastructure costs incurred by governments in building and maintaining the roads that they drive on.

The purpose of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 is to amend the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985, which imposes registration charges for heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s voluntary registration scheme. 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 registered under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme, otherwise known as FIRS. The determination was agreed to by the Australian Transport Council on 29 February 2008 and was implemented by the states on 1 July 2008. The implementation of the determination is part of the national road transport reform agenda, as agreed under the intergovernmental 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 costs of provision of the road network for the heavy vehicle industry.

In the second reading speech of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, he stated that this bill will help restore uniformity of heavy vehicle registration charges throughout Australia and enable nationally agreed new heavy vehicle registration charges to be applied to heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s voluntary FIRS system. Operators have the choice to register their heavy vehicles under FIRS or under state and territory legislation. At present, FIRS registration represents approximately three per cent of the total heavy vehicle registrations in Australia.

We look at the economic arguments for this bill, of course—and I am going to talk about my electorate of Forde more specifically in a minute—but it is really directly related to safety. It is more than just an academic argument when we are talking about safety and our road users. Certainly the previous speaker spoke about her electorate and the concerns and the terrible cost of carnage on our roads.

National consistency in heavy vehicle charges and regulations is essential for our national economy. At present there are approximately 365,000 heavy vehicles operating in the country. It is important that the industry has certainty and is able to operate nationally without red tape or confronting issues at state borders. I have had a number of representations from industry groups who rely on heavy vehicle transportation who expressed frustration at the red-tape barriers that occur at the Queensland and New South Wales border where my electorate sits. As a government, we talk about red-tape reduction, our cooperative federalism model and efficiencies, and this certainly applies to this piece of legislation, which is about bringing in enough revenue to provide better and safer roads throughout the country.

In the current economic climate it is necessary to ensure that we reduce the burden of unnecessary red tape, particularly for heavy road users and the businesses that depend on heavy vehicle transportation when travelling through different states and territories. This is important for rural areas where industry relies on this transportation or in some cases where rail infrastructure is poor or nonexistent. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I know the situation in your own electorate, which is quite a large and diverse electorate, is not unlike some smaller parts of my electorate where we simply have either no infrastructure or decent infrastructure. The road infrastructure in my electorate, which by default forms an integral part in a very important link across the border into New South Wales on the Mount Lindesay Highway, is very poor. For a whole range of reasons there is congestion and bottle-necking on the route across the border to the Gold Coast. A lot more transport facilities are being provided and so there is a lot more traffic coming across that area.

It is important, of course, that good planning allows for the connection with other transport and logistics infrastructure. I have spoken a number of times in this House about my own electorate of Forde and the area of Bromelton, which has just been announced as a development at the state level. It is of major interest to the Queensland state government and to the rest of this country. It will be, by the time all the development has occurred, probably the largest industrial development in the country and the largest intermodal port. It will be an inland port which will service not only South-East Queensland but also northern New South Wales and beyond. I have also referred in this House to the notion of the great south-west, where we look at the congestion and the confusion of transport logistics across the border. Proper planning and infrastructure—certainly the road linking with the rail—will make a huge difference to Bromelton and have great economic importance for the state. Of course, we cannot do this without a proper charging and funding regime that will support this sort of rollout. At the moment, the major logistics routes receive a certain level of funding—never adequate—but when you look at some regions, like my own electorate and that inland link across the New South Wales border, you will find that this is a major concern. Previously I have mentioned as a benchmark one little area that is just near the border, Duck Creek Road. While it is a dirt road that runs up the mountain and will never carry large transport trucks, Duck Creek Road is probably typical of the lack of provision of funding for roads. But take that model and put it towards our major transport routes: if we do not have adequate funding or proper infrastructure it certainly has a major bearing on the safety of people who use our highways.

The member for Werriwa talked about the 270 road deaths that have so far been directly attributed to heavy vehicle accidents. I take the point of the previous member of the opposition who spoke about the level of carnage on the roads. It is not an academic argument; we have to take every step to fix the problem and to make our roads much safer. We have all said it and we understand it very well: one road death is one too many. If we look at the increasing amount of logistical movements and the number of trucks that are involved in those particular incidents we must take immediate action. This bill goes some way, at least, to helping those who are using these corridors and infrastructure and getting them to participate in funding the changes.

I spoke about Bromelton and the need to have that interconnectivity and safe road infrastructure for the cross-border area from Beaudesert in my electorate across the border ranges into New South Wales to areas like Kyogle. I have also mentioned the notion of the great south-west, which is about looking regionally at providing proper infrastructure for transport movement. This can be based on the levies and charges provided through this particular industry. I know the argument is about potentially more taxes and charges, but we need an understanding of the need for safety and that it has to be funded. The productivity increase alone that comes from saving people’s lives—and the economic value we can put on that—and simply the number of road incidents that occur mean that it is very important that this bill proceeds.

I have also mentioned the Summerland Way, which is another area of interest and a major transport corridor that has been well underfunded. I know that both the member for Page and the member for Richmond share similar concerns, given that the Summerland Way—part of the great south-west—is integral to our region. With the growth of Bromelton we will see much more discussion in this House about the impacts and why we need to support the road infrastructure in that area. It is interesting that productivity is related to the level of road deaths. In fact, one in five road deaths are attributed to heavy vehicles, with up to 31 accidents a day. They say that 2.8 per cent have suffered serious work injuries as a result of incidents with trucking and road accidents.

I have spoken before in this House about the Mount Lindsay Highway, which is the main spine through the electorate of Forde, connecting the areas of Park Ridge, Jimboomba and Beaudesert. It has been described by many people, including me in this House, as essentially a goat track. It is only a two-lane carriageway but it carries an enormous amount of traffic travelling towards the Border Ranges and towards the Summerland Way. It is with great concern that we look at reports from the RACQ, the Royal Automotive Club of Queensland, that rate the lack of safety on our roads. The reports have a scale of 1 to 5, from less safe to safe. The Mount Lindsay Highway, a major piece of road infrastructure in my electorate, only rates at 2. The reports also rate the level of safety, and this highway has a zero for safety because of the number of roads and intersections that make their way onto it.

Linked with road issues are not only the lack of infrastructure and safety issues but also the provision of all the other services, particularly transport services, that we lack in that region. The constituents of Forde for a long time have argued, complained, spoken about and asked for good transport connection in the region. As I have said on other occasions, we need to put this together and say that transport is important, that the logistics movement is important and that the way we fund those things is important.

Putting dollars back into the road system will also allow the communities in Forde to be better served by not only the safety of those roads but also the other services that can be provided along those road corridors. At the moment we lack any decent public transport through the Forde region. To a large degree that comes down to safety. We do not have rest stops for trucks, which means we do not have any areas that are set aside for safely picking people up along that stretch. If you are a couple working, unless you have two vehicles you simply cannot get in and out of the Forde electorate. We essentially have no transport.

The township of Beaudesert is serviced by many other small towns around it, but it is the only provincial town outside of Brisbane that does not have a four-lane highway, a bus service or a train service. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I know you are nodding your head because of the lack of services in your region. We would all love to have the benefits of such infrastructure but, given that the seat of Forde starts only 30 kilometres south of the capital city of Brisbane, it is clear that something is missing from this particular region. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.