Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this cognate debate to speak on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008, the government’s second attempt at amending the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985. The coalition blocked this bill the first time around, earlier in the year, because it had significant concerns. There are also areas of concern in this second attempt. First let me outline what the bill is about and why I have taken an interest in it.

The federal interstate road transport scheme began in 1987 to provide uniform charges and operating conditions for heavy vehicles engaged only in interstate work. Our former Treasurer, Peter Costello, asked the Productivity Commission to investigate the economic costs of freight infrastructure and efficient approaches to transport pricing. The Productivity Commission reported that pricing and regulatory arrangements were hampering the efficient provision and the productive use of road and rail infrastructure, identified a number of cost recovery issues and recommended a process of sequential reforms. This review was endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments in 2007. In February, Commonwealth, state and territory transport ministers agreed to update heavy vehicle registration charges at an Australian Transport Council meeting. The states and territories have already imposed these new charges on heavy vehicles under their registration system, and these amendments will permit the making of regulations to apply new registration charges to the five per cent of heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme, known as FIRS. This accounts for about 21,500 trucks. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 also updates definitions in the Interstate Road Transport Charge Act 1985 and establishes a disallowable charge-setting mechanism based on regulation that will stipulate a table of changes or an annual adjustment process.

The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 also amends the Fuel Tax Act 2006 to implement a road user charge rate of 21c per litre from January next year. This is an increase of 1.36c per litre from the current rate of 19.633c per litre. The government has proposed a four-year, $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package for construction of roadside facilities and electronic monitoring technology trials, dependent on the successful passage of these bills.

Separately, the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 repeals the road transport charges—that is, the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Act 1993, which currently prevents the ACT from setting its own heavy vehicle charges. While I endorse its intention, I am not interested in the ACT component at all but rather in the effects of the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 nationally and in my own state of WA, and specifically in my electorate of Kalgoorlie.

As the House knows, my electorate covers more than two million square kilometres of Western Australia and heavy-vehicle road freight trucking is critical to the many widely dispersed communities and industries within that electorate, which, in recent years, have made a not insignificant contribution to the national economy. We rely on hardworking interstate truckies to go the distance across the Nullarbor and get all manner of products into and out of our state. We have such a reliance on them, as you can well imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker Washer. Without the trucking industry and those owner-operators and employed drivers in the trucking industry, the vast state of Western Australia, including my 2.3 million square kilometres of Western Australia, would grind to a halt. They are the absolute glue that allows us to maintain those communities. And, I might add, they earn a great deal of money for many, many businesses across the state of Western Australia.

We have, of course, a great desire to eventually create an intermodal hub in the goldfields, specifically in Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia, that will allow interstate rail freight coming from east to west to be offloaded in the goldfields and to then travel via road freight north, south and west. When that happens, hopefully quickly with the $3 million that I have obtained for the seed funding for that purpose, distribution of freight in Western Australia will be a little more efficient. You can understand how crucial interstate road transport is to us in WA and indeed all of Australia.

Also close to my heart is the issue of road safety, which goes hand in hand with any kind of road transport. Such is my concern for road transport that I have designed and released over a couple of years now a bumper sticker with a simple warning that says, ‘You don’t have to cause a crash to be killed in one’. The only other one I have designed most recently, by the way, says, ‘Rudd-a-dud-dud’. That is beside the point and another story.

In Western Australia there are more crashes in the metropolitan region than in rural parts of the state, like my electorate of Kalgoorlie. But the number of fatalities in rural WA is consistently higher than in the metropolitan region. The figures I am referring to are total figures, not percentages. More people die on country roads and highways than city ones, and this includes most of our main interstate highway links on the Great Eastern Highway, the Coolgardie to Esperance Highway, then the Eyre Highway and, going north, the North West Coastal Highway and the Great Northern Highway. Trucks mostly use these interstate links and, because they can be on the road at all hours of the day or night, they are right in the front line when it comes to safety.

We are talking about the safety of the truck drivers but this is also about the safety of other road users, and the list of examples is numerous. Holiday-makers are often unfamiliar with the experience of long drives on relatively high-speed roads, mixing it with interstate roadtrains. School buses routinely trundle along our highways and roads adjacent to our country towns. If they are suddenly confronted with wide loads, long loads and heavy loads, there can be a very dangerous interaction. When farmers are on roads moving plant and equipment from paddock to paddock and that is mixed with heavy haulage, it makes for a very dangerous situation.

Heaven forbid that I would impact on the financial viability of our tourism industry, especially self-drive tourists, but it is a very, very frightening experience for the overseas self-guided tourist on our country roads to be confronted with a roadtrain travelling at a hundred kilometres an hour. I have seen some of their reactions. A roadtrain occupies a lot of road width—believe me. The most at-risk species of all is the Japanese cyclist on long, straight roads. They are more and more plentiful in Western Australia. Their survival rate is quite high, but it is an ongoing miracle.

I will briefly raise some figures to illustrate how things are in WA. Anyone who has had the privilege of visiting our beautiful state will know that our roads are long and that sometimes towns and roadhouses are few and far between. In the 10 years to 2004, there were more than 720,000 vehicles recorded in all crashes. About 2.9 per cent of those vehicles were trucks. However, of those vehicles recorded in fatal crashes, 9.2 per cent were trucks. We all know how many things can contribute to vehicle crashes: speed, alcohol consumption, wildlife on the road, bad weather and the condition of the road. Some figures have indicated that fatigue is involved in about 15 per cent of fatal truck crashes and 11 per cent of those involving serious injury in WA. The number of these crashes is higher in rural areas of WA, where as many as 35 per cent of truck crashes are thought to be due to fatigue. Of course, tired drivers are less able to cope with the causes of road crashes: bad roads, weather conditions and traffic conditions.

Nationally, up to 42 per cent of all heavy vehicle crashes may be linked to driver fatigue and up to 30 per cent of fatal heavy vehicle crashes. What does driver fatigue have to do with the interstate road transport charges amendment? The answer is: quite a lot. This bill is all about cost recovery—in other words, the user-pays process. But exactly what are the trucking operators we depend on so much paying for? We know it is about recovering the cost imposed on the road system by the heavy vehicle industry, but if the truckies are paying to use the road then it should be as safe as possible. The Australian Trucking Association Chairman, Trevor Martyn, said this month, ‘Every truck driver and trucking operator knows we need more rest areas because fatigue is a major cause of truck accidents.’ This is why the Trucking Association has scrutinised this bill very carefully and believes the road user charge should be linked to the provision of rest areas. The Trucking Association has asked that any future increases in this charge be linked to construction of the new heavy vehicle rest areas on the AusLink national roads network—our fundamental freight and interstate transport routes. We think it is a great idea.

Australia’s states and territories have recently taken steps to introduce new fatigue management laws requiring truck drivers to take more rest stops. The problem is that there are not enough rest areas for them to stop in. We also have new national guidelines on how many rest areas our roads should have and what they should be like, but none of Australia’s major road freight routes comply with national guidelines on heavy vehicle rest areas and more than half of them have substantial deficiencies in meeting the guidelines. My own state of WA received a particularly bad report. Not only are our rest areas too far apart but less than half the rest stops we do have do not comply with recommended design and layout features.

The Trucking Association believes 900 rest areas are required to meet the national guidelines, but the coalition has been informed that 500 additional rest areas would bring the road network broadly into compliance. So we are shy 400 rest areas, and the government believes that this bill will solve the problem. These national guidelines are there to save lives. We estimate 500 new heavy vehicle rest areas would cost just $300 million over 10 years. That is a small amount compared to the revenue from the road user charge, which may run to more than $2 billion over the same period.

Let us compare these figures to the measly $70 million over four years that the government has offered for its heavy vehicle safety and productivity package—an offensive figure that is meanly dependent on the success of these bills I am now discussing. I dread to think how little each state and territory will benefit from this ungenerous offering. I will highlight a little why this figure is so offensive. We as a nation depend on road freight, as I have already said. In 2006-07, the road transport industry was worth $16.8 billion and employed 232,000 people. The amount of road freight is growing—historically, more than 30 per cent faster than the national economy. By 2020, road freight is expected to be 2.2 times as much as it was in the year 2000, which means at least 50,000 more trucks on the roads. How far do you think Labor’s vague $70 million package over four years will go to support a growing industry already worth $16.8 billion? It is so meagre that it is insulting. The coalition’s $300 million plan for another 500 heavy vehicle rest areas will give Australia’s truckies the rest they need and ensure the roads are safer for all Australians, both now and in the future. Money needs to be spent on making our roads safer, and we want to make darn sure it does get spent.

Let me now briefly address the topic of indexation. We know that in this second attempt the government has removed a link to indexation from the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill, but we are concerned that they have left it to separate regulation to amend the Fuel Tax Act. Fuel indexation is nothing more than a tax by stealth. The coalition know it, and so does the Australian Trucking Association—and neither of us likes it. This is why the coalition have suggested that we completely remove the possibility of indexing from the Fuel Tax Act. The government wants the legislation to allow that the regulations ‘may prescribe a method for indexing the road user charge’. We do not want to prescribe it; we want to proscribe it so that the legislation should actually state that the minister must not apply a method of indexing the road user charge. The government would then need parliament to approve any increases in the road user charge. We think that is a fair and democratic process—and certainly the trucking industry does.

While I am talking about fairness let me bring up the issue of the fair setting of charges. As I mentioned earlier, the road user charge is a form of cost recovery from the trucking industry. Even though this amendment increases the road user charge the truck operators have to pay, the Australian Trucking Association does not oppose the increase. But it would like to know how the new charge was worked out. The National Transport Commission did not provide adequate information or consultation to the trucking industry about the model behind the road user charge.

My fellow members know that we would hate to accuse the government of a lack of transparency, but that is exactly what we are doing. We would like the government to explain itself and provide all the data, methodologies and formulae that were used to determine the road user charge. We also think any proposed rate increases should be subject to public consultation. This will make the road user charge setting process more open, honest, and transparent—and that is fair.

I now come to the last point I would like to talk about today, and that is the absurd state of affairs our interstate truckies have to deal with in regard to differing transport regulations between states and territories. The differences are not just ridiculous; they are contradictory and distracting. I have made the point more than once that safety is a critical issue on our roads, both generally and in particular for the trucking industry we rely on so much. Our truckies need to be thinking about their job when they are behind the wheel, and not worrying about bizarre and frustrating red tape and the different regulations that they have to conform to when they cross borders. There is so much differentiation that it spins the head. If you were travelling, for example from Sydney to Perth, you would cross through four state jurisdictions and you would be subject to four separate regulations such as the frequency of rest stops—with regulations surrounding fatigue and the duration of stops; regulations about how often you have to stop to rest and water stock, if you were carrying stock; and regulations about whether you have to carry a log book. It is an absolute nonsense.

We have all heard the Rudd government talking up its ability to work constructively with state and territory governments, but, nearly a year since this government was elected, we are still waiting for consistent and harmonious national transport regulations. This is why the coalition has flagged an amendment that would require the road user charge to be increased only if substantial harmonisation has been achieved in state and territory transport regulations, including heavy vehicle reform measures. The government has missed a significant opportunity for regulation reform, and our truckies are paying the price.

In conclusion, I reiterate the coalition’s very reasonable concerns about these bills which I have expressed today regarding heavy vehicle rest areas, indexation, fair setting of charges, and the need for regulatory harmonisation between states and territories. I emphasise that the amendments we have flagged are an opportunity for the government to finally share our serious commitment to the heavy vehicle road transport industry and to making that industry safer and more efficient now and into the future.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal 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. I will support the proposed amendments to the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 by the shadow minister, given that I live in and represent an electorate of 21,000 square kilometres that relies very much on the heavy transport industry. It is an electorate that is based on mining, resources, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism, manufacturing and retail. As we all know, over 70 per cent of domestic freight in Australia is delivered by road, and much of that in the heavy transport sector.

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008, which will increase the road user charge from 19.633c per litre to 21.3c per litre, is one that I have concerns about. I want to talk about what these increased charges will mean to a gentleman by the name of Preston Gardiner, who owns a plantation logging transport business in my electorate of Forrest in the south-west of WA. Preston is the owner of one of the businesses that have been so badly affected by the Varanus Island gas explosion on 3 June 2008. It was an explosion which has had far-reaching economic and social consequences—a lot of them in the heavy transport sector, and many of which are continuing to be felt to this day.

Full gas supplies will not be restored until at least December of this year. The WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry has modelled the costs to the WA economy at between $2.4 billion and $6.7 billion. Much of these costs will be felt in my electorate. And for Preston Gardiner, the economic consequences will be exacerbated by the increase in the road user charge contained in this bill. The Varanus Island explosion removed 30 per cent of gas supplied to Western Australia. Between 40 per cent and 45 per cent of all of the gas from Varanus Island is used in my electorate of Forrest in the south-west. And there was, and continues to be, a disproportionate effect on the south-west businesses, which were completely without gas.

Many independent contractors servicing these businesses were put off immediately or in the immediate aftermath. Preston Gardiner was one of those. Preston was pretty much a local bloke. He was born, raised and educated in the Donnybrook area, growing up on an orchard and beef cattle property on Beelerup Road. Preston grew up around trucks and heavy machinery. He helped his family to transport their fruit from the orchard to markets in Perth and pulled wood from the bush for fence posts with his grandfather, who had bulldozers and earthmoving equipment.

In what was a natural progression, Preston completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic, working throughout Western Australia from Port Hedland to Kalgoorlie, putting in long hours and at times driving trucks and heavy vehicles on an interstate run, as well as working as a leading-hand supervisor at a mine site at Cockatoo Island, with part of this time on a fly-in fly-out basis. He started his own mechanical contracting and did contract supervision for a number of earthmoving contractors around the state, travelling extensively. He also bought a house in Donnybrook and married his wife, Melinda. He then became involved in the plantation logging industry through the servicing of the equipment as well as running a civil earthmoving company in Newman, working on the BHP extension and throughout the Pilbara. When his daughter contracted a rare virus, Preston decided to go back to the south-west permanently to be close to his family and not have to work on a fly-in fly-out basis. Back in Donnybrook, he needed to find another venture in addition to his Gardiner Mechanical Services business. He bought a truck that had a pine haulage job contracted to a regional logging company. Preston and Melinda call this trading business Donnybrook Logging Services. Both of the Gardiners’ businesses are in the plantation pine industry—one a subcontract log haulage operation and the other a mechanical repair operation for log-harvesting and transport equipment. His truck was a 1995, 500-horsepower Western Star, a pocket road train with a flat-tow trailer.

For the past 2½ years, the Gardiners employed a total of eight full-time employees. With the local council’s daylight-to-dark curfews and not being allowed on the roads with a road train until daylight, Preston was losing one trip a day. So he looked at other opportunities and efficiencies. Gardiner Mechanical Services was going well and the trucking business was quietly ticking over, but he needed to improve the efficiency of the log haulage by using fold-up, stackable trailers. Preston did his homework and researched the options for six months. He went to Tasmania to look at the logging industry there. In March 2006, Preston took delivery of a new 500-horsepower Western Star prime mover and took the truck to Tasmania to have it specially fitted with an EZ Loader type trailer system. With this combination, when the trailers are empty the dog trailer loads onto the lead trailer, reducing the length of the unit—if you can imagine that in the bush—improving manoeuvrability and access to the bush tracks. This type of stackable combination increases the weight on the prime mover’s drive wheels, which along with accurate onboard weighing systems has less impact on the environment, improves fuel efficiency, is more productive, does less damage to the haul roads and helps to manage the steep country. When the prime mover and trailer combination are working well at full capacity, Preston believes it is the best thing ever for his business. The flat-tow road train increased his turnover by 30 per cent, while costs stayed the same as operating a standard road train.

Both of his log trucks were working to capacity even though operating margins were tight, particularly with constantly increasing fuel costs. The log trucks were carting between 1,000 and 1,500 tonnes of pine and blue gum a week—that is, until 3 June and the explosion at Varanus Island. Within two weeks of that explosion, he was simply told that his services were not required. There was no gas to process the timber he was carting. One of his trucks was parked in the yard, and it has not moved since. It is still sitting in the same spot. His earnings on the second truck have virtually halved. And this bill seeks to increase his road user charges.

What assistance did the Western Australian state Labor government offer Preston Gardiner during or following the gas crisis? The answer is none. What assistance did the federal Labor government offer Preston Gardiner during and since this crisis? The answer is none. There has been absolutely no practical help or assistance in any way whatsoever. He has been on his own, like so many other independent contractors and small to medium businesses in the south-west of Western Australia. They have been left to their own devices during the gas crisis. These same businesses contacted me in absolute desperation because they needed help. They were utterly in the dark; they were not getting any practical assistance or information from government departments or gas suppliers during the crisis.

What is the state of Preston’s business now? His driver has gone on to a job in Karratha and Preston is driving the truck himself. Where was he the day before yesterday? He was up at the crack of dawn, in the bush with his $400,000 road train, which he has to pay off, waiting to load logs to get as many trips as possible done during the daylight hours. If the harvesting contractors are not efficient and prepared for the daily operations, Preston’s business will be the first to lose.

Preston himself is very angry that the new road charges will apply to him. He understands the need to pay his way, but at this time this is just another straw. He is very well aware that this is a tax increase, but he questions whether any of the additional tax will actually be spent in WA. He is also angry at the state of the roads in the south-west of WA—and, believe me, he like most other heavy truck drivers has firsthand experience of the five worst highways in Western Australia, which are in my electorate, as identified by last year’s RAC report. He also wants to know where the truck stops will be built in WA, and particularly in the south-west. Where will they be built and when? There is nothing in this bill that gives him that confidence. Where in the bill are the benchmarks? How many roadside facilities will be built, where will they be and when will they be built? How can operators like Preston Gardiner be sure they will actually get the benefits of these proposed tax increases? Where are the checks and balances? Where are the measures?

Preston says WA truckies believe that they contribute enough and that right at the moment—in his words—they ‘are stretched to the max’. He also commented that, if costs increase any further, freight costs will go through the roof, and basically the transport industry will become unviable. He has constantly sought new contracts; he has not sat around and waited for something to come to him. He has been quoting on every job possible since the explosion at Varanus, hoping there will still be light at the end of the tunnel. He is a doer. The current financial crisis gives him no confidence, and margins are very tight in the transport sector, as we hear constantly.

The Gardiners’ plantation contractor has advised that it does not appear that the subcontractors used to cart pine will be back to work until after January or February 2009. But he is a battler and is always hopeful that more business will come his way. To him and his family, it is a matter of survival. He needs to and is chasing every contract, which means he will have to commit more financially or exit the industry. To set up new equipment will cost between $150,000 to $200,000, with no guarantee of work. He cannot sell the business, because there is nothing to sell at the moment. Yes, he has his equipment, but he has no work for it.

Preston tells me that, before the gas explosion, Gardiner Mechanical Services had $200,000 worth of work booked; after the explosion, there has been a complete downturn. Companies have said they are not carrying out maintenance and they are putting their work on hold. But Preston still has wages and overheads to pay. He still has the commitments, but the work has dried up and he has had to let workers go. Preston went to Centrelink to seek help. There was no help at Centrelink for Preston. He was told that, because he had assets and was a subcontractor, there was no help at all available for him. Where was the crisis-specific support for those affected by the Varanus explosion, particularly those in the transport sector? This bill will increase his road user charge, increasing the tax on his business. This is not the first time the government has attempted to implement this tax increase. There are other subcontractors like Preston Gardiner in my electorate, and they will be affected in the same way. As I have explained, those involved in the forestry sector in the south-west have been suffering significantly since 3 June.

Adding to this is the lack of action from the Labor government on its election promises to the industry. Senator Colbeck has said that, after nearly a year in government, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has nothing to show for the country’s forestry communities. At estimates hearings two days ago, Senator Colbeck asked questions about the progress of all of the government’s election commitments to the forestry sector. Responses to questions show that none of the various forestry funding programs, nearly 12 months into the government’s term, have delivered any funding to the forestry sector. ‘Guidelines to be developed’ was the standard answer, with the ‘preparing forest industries for climate change’ $8 million commitment at draft paper stage. In Senator Colbeck’s words, ‘This can only be described as woeful progress after almost one year in the portfolio by the minister.’ And if this is not sufficient, a report in Tuesday’s West Australian newspaper showed that Perth diesel prices are up to 20c per litre more than diesel prices in the eastern states despite the wholesale price being almost 2c a litre cheaper in WA. Motor Trade Association of WA chief executive, Peter Fitzpatrick, is quoted as saying:

You might expect a 5c difference between unleaded petrol and diesel prices but not 20c ... Motorists are paying too much for diesel in Perth.

I would ask: is this additional cost to motorists and truck drivers in any way a result of additional diesel being used for power generation following the Varanus gas explosion? Is this an additional impost on the transport industry and on truck drivers like Preston Gardiner?

If Preston were fuelling up in the south-west at the moment, he would be paying between $1.66 and $1.75 a litre for his diesel. But the Rudd Labor government still believes that a national Fuelwatch scheme will fix this problem in my electorate. Why is Fuelwatch not working for regional areas? In Western Australia we already have Fuelwatch, yet our transport industry and motorists are paying up to an extra 20c a litre for diesel. No wonder the trucking industry, particularly in Western Australia, is concerned about the way the National Transport Commission develops the road user charge. What data and model was used to develop the charge? Why is this information not available to the trucking industry?

I oppose any move to reintroduce the indexation of fuel excise. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government stated that the road user charge was to be indexed annually to the same road construction formula that was to apply to registration charges. The coalition is concerned that this was an attempt by the Labor government to reintroduce the indexation of fuel excise—and, as I have said, we oppose fuel excise indexation. In fact, when we were in government in 2001, we abolished this Keating government decision. This bill removes the link to indexation and sets the road user charge at 21c a litre. I oppose any attempt by the Labor government to reintroduce indexation by stealth. When elected to office, the government said that it would fix interstate inconsistencies. Where in the transport sector are there nationally consistent transport regulations?

Here is an example. You are a Western Australian truck driver making an irregular trip to the eastern states. Once you get to South Australia, you have to buy a logbook from a police station. If this happens to fall on a weekend, it can be very difficult to find an open, manned police station. The logbook costs approximately $40 and what is written in the logbook is quite ambiguous. The driver then has to work out what time zone he or she is in. Generally you work your time zone on your state of origin. However, if you leave from Queensland and you are a WA driver, how do you work out your times? A solo driver, according to the logbook, can drive for five hours but then has to take a 15-minute break—and fill his logbook out along the way. If this occurs and there are no truck stops available, there is a huge problem. Basically, the driver has to stop wherever possible or take the risk and drive to the nearest truck stop. The driver I spoke to found the best truck stops were in New South Wales and Queensland—certainly not in Western Australia. Very few truck stops are well lit and well serviced. Many are just slight pull-off areas. The total driving time allowed in the logbook is 12 hours in any 24-hour period.

If you are a WA truck driver who is not a regular east-west operator, you fill out the logbook to the best of your ability. The only time you know whether this is correct or not is when you are pulled over by the police and your logbook is checked. One WA truck driver was recently pulled over twice during an interstate trip. Fortunately for him, the New South Wales policeman explained that he had to fill out not only the time he was driving but also the time he was resting over the 24 hour period. Apparently, if this is not done it can be viewed as an offence in some states.

The different physical configuration of trucks can also provide challenges on interstate trips with inconsistent state regulations. For instance, an eight-wheel truck with a 10-wheel dog trailer is quite a common combination in WA. However, it is rarely used or even seen on the eastern seaboard; it is a specific combination suitable for WA. When a truck like this travels interstate, the local police are not really sure which regulation applies to this unit. That causes confusion and frustration for both the police officer and the operator.

I support the shadow minister’s proposed amendments to this bill and I strongly oppose any reintroduction of charges by stealth. The bill should include a transport process and mechanism to apply the road user charge. It should also include a performance guarantee to deliver at least 50 new rest areas each year on the national road network, and I want to see when and where the rest stops will be delivered in Western Australia. The government needs to deliver on nationally consistent transport regulations.

While I am talking on transport I would like to correct the record of the speech I made in the House on Tuesday, 16 September 2008, when I was speaking on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. I stated:

Tim Eaton, of National Trucking, said on Lateline recently: ‘Woolies are bullies.’

On subsequent checking I have established that the program was an episode of Four Corners. Mr Eaton is General Manager, Safety and Environment, for the National Transport Commission. He did not make this statement. It was in fact said before Mr Eaton was interviewed. I apologise to Mr Eaton for any confusion caused.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the electorate I represent, where about four per cent of Australia’s fruit and vegetable growers are on the Atherton Tableland, some 4,000 kilometres away from the markets in Sydney, we have to rely very, very strongly upon the road hauliers and road freighters of Australia. But they have been oppressed by government—and I use the word ‘oppressed’ because I think that is probably the best word to describe what has been happening here. The livestock hauliers came to a decision that they should have a stoppage. It took place, with mixed success: cars were certainly taken off the roads all over Australia because of the stoppage, with a figure of 15 per cent of the trucking operations involved, but I would put that figure in North Queensland, where I am very familiar with the operators, at more like 70 per cent. But whether it was 15 or 70 per cent, they are organising nationally now.

In the 1870s and particularly the 1880s and 1890s in Australia, the working or labouring employee class had to organise themselves to confront their oppressors head-on. In those days the oppressors were the employer class. One in 32 of those who went down the mines never came back up again or died of the dreadful miners phthisis. Today, it is the self-employed class who are being driven to the same sorts of decisions that were taken by the employee class back then. But if they could not get the message to government with that national stoppage, the difference now is that they are organising. In every road trucking centre throughout Australia there will be representatives of the National Road Freighters Association. That body will be formed as a result of the pressure coming from the government. And it will be formed to achieve the same results that were achieved by the then working-class to secure the arbitration commission—if you like, a fairness tribunal—because of what is being done here.

If you say to me that we have a problem with road accidents, with large road trains, B-doubles and semitrailers, firstly, the statistics do not bear that out. Secondly, if you do not carry on rail but on road, then, yes, there is a higher incidence of these sorts of problems. But let me tell you: we do not have the option of going on rail. We have been informed that in the mid-west, between Mount Isa and Townsville, there is no more capacity on the rail, so we cannot carry anything on rail even if we wanted to. In terms of all of our mineral products from the Georgetown and eastern Gulf of Carpentaria area, the port of Karumba has all but collapsed, so we cannot go that way. The railways have informed us that they will not allow us to go down the range to Cairns. And the government has pulled up the railway line to Greenvale. So the only way of getting the product out is a 40-year-old single-lane highway from Georgetown to Charters Towers. I am absolutely amazed that there have been no accidents there—it is by some miracle. Either the country is going to mine and there is going to be great danger on the road, or the country is not going to mine. In my homeland, the Cloncurry-Mount Isa area, we have eight, arguably nine, mines waiting in the wings because they simply cannot get the product out.

We are faced in the road trucking industry with a massive increase in charges. Under this new agreement, for B-double configurations we are going from $8,000 for registration to $14,000. Has anyone’s cost structure been doubled in the last two years? I would hope that not many industries have had cost structures double. But in this industry their cost structures have trebled. Let me be very blunt about this. Who is to blame? The people applying registration increases from $8,000 to $14,000 are to blame. On a semitrailer configuration we are going from about $5,000 to pretty close to $10,000.

We also have to pay for petrol, and petrol has trebled in price for diesel operators over the last three years. Quite frankly, at any time in their 13 years the previous government could have moved to ethanol and moved to a price in the range of 75c to 85c a litre, the same as in the United States and Brazil. But in their wisdom they chose to listen to the big oil companies and the big mining corporations who were opposed to ethanol. The net result of that is that we have suffered a 200 per cent increase on the previous charge for diesel.

On another plane entirely: I once loved driving. Julia Creek was some 700 kilometres from my home town of Charters Towers, and I always used to drive home after meetings. I would drive home very late at night. I loved driving. It was a great experience. It was a freedom thing. I drove millions of kilometres, and I had no accidents whatsoever in that period of time. In fact, in the whole of my life I have had only two accidents. One was when I was very young and I was doing three kilometres an hour and the other one was when I was doing five kilometres an hour—both times someone hit me; I did not hit them. Now it is pure misery to drive. Quite frankly—and I do not know about other people—I spend my time looking for stop signs and slow-down signs and looking over my shoulder to see if police are around and trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. It is just torture to drive. When you do as much driving as I do, you get pulled up on average about once a month for a breathalyser test or something like that. I actually count the number of police cars between Ingham and Charters Towers. It is about 200 kilometres. We average 2.9.

In a short ethanol tour overseas—I had never been overseas before and I probably will not go again—but in my short time touring Vancouver, Minnesota and Sao Paulo I would have seen three police cars, I suppose. We did not have random breath testing in Queensland until Bjelke-Petersen was stabbed in the back. He and I were the two opponents of it, and we were the only teetotallers in our political party. He said, ‘We don’t want to live in a state where police are pulling up people all the time and looking into their cars. That is not the sort of state we want to live in.’ We used to go fishing, camping or out on the ocean to toss in a line—we are not allowed to shoot anymore—but probably most of the recreation that we used to enjoy throughout our lives is now illegal.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know whether there is cause for humour here. I can assure you I did not mean to be humorous.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Nats want to shoot Alby!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see. That is acceptable. No, that is not acceptable. Your interjection is acceptable. The new log books are not available in a lot of our country centres. There is the new and very complicated log book. The truckies I know can fix a very sophisticated piece of machinery. I am always awed by the truckies that I know, because I could not get remotely close to doing the things that they can do with a motor. How they can understand it all is well beyond my understanding. I find that on the whole these people have very much above average intelligence and capabilities, but they are not the sort of people who have spent a lot of time in universities. If you give them complex paperwork to do, that is just not their thing. If they were competent in paperwork, they would not be truckies, I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz. So you are asking a bird dog not to chase birds here. You are asking a person who, because of his talents and strengths, is a truck driver. He keeps one of our biggest industries in Australia going, but you are asking him to be a damned bookkeeper, you are asking him to meet capacities in filling out forms that he simply will not or cannot do.

A lot of the owners, not the drivers, are telling me that, quite literally, you need a lawyer to explain to you certain aspects of the log books—that is, if we can get the log books. Even the most positive person in the transport department, state or federal, would not claim that the new log books are available in every single centre in Queensland; they are not. You can get an exemption—if you can find the local policeman who is probably out in his car picking on some poor beggar for speeding because his boss has told him to. But it is not easy to find the people in these country areas who are authorised to give you an exemption.

There is some naive belief here that you can pass a law or a regulation and every single truckie in Australia will hear about it and understand it. One gentleman got hit the other day. He did not know that he could not use the old log book, that he needed an exemption. He said, ‘Everyone else told me that you could still use the old log books,’ and they said, ‘Yes, you can, but you need an exemption.’ He said, ‘Well, I didn’t know that.’ He got hit with three points and a $600 fine. Now he cannot drive because all his points are gone. He had a previous breach on the log books, an absolutely ridiculous breach that had nothing to do with safety whatsoever. Anyway, he has lost his points and now that he does not have a job he has to employ someone to take his place. He had been working a 65-hour week and now he has to pay someone to do that 65 hours a week. There is no way that he can survive financially.

If you say, ‘Well, we’re making the roads secure,’ yes, but there is a little matter of male suicide rates. Australia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world of men between the ages of 25 and 50, because we are oppressing and torturing people on a continuous basis with overlegislation. For last year and the year before, the three most litigious states on earth—there is a register for this—were California, No. 1; an American Midwest state, No. 2; and Queensland, No. 3. That is a measure of overregulation, overpolicing and overrestrictions on your freedom. It is really a register of the most unfree states on earth. There are more people in jail in California than in the education system, to quote but one example. The year before last, New South Wales forged ahead of Queensland into the No. 2 spot in world. So the next time that people say to me, ‘Isn’t it wonderful to live in a free country?’ I will have to correct them on that. I cannot help but bring in an historical analogy. The father of the English-speaking people was Alfred the Great. Alfred the Great wrote down the first laws in English history. That truly wonderful man—to me the most outstanding man in human history by a long way; he was a lovely person—said of the English race, or the ‘Anglish’ race, as we then were, ‘I want to say that we’re a civilized people.’

Winston Churchill spent a lot of time on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and on Alfred the Great, for which he made a Nobel laureate, I might add. When Alfred the Great wrote down those first laws he said, ‘I have not presumed to put down in writing many laws of my own, for I do not know what would be suitable for those that follow after me.’ That is a humble, simple statement from a humble, simple man. I wish it were tattooed on the arm of every person who walks into this parliament or every person out there in the Public Service who creates these regulations that are driving human beings to suicide. If you are about to lose your business, as this poor truckie is about to do, there is a good chance statistically that, at the same time, you will also lose your family. And, because of the laws in Australia, for seven years you will not be able to really participate economically in our society. If it is a murderer, he is put in jail for 14 years and he is eligible for parole after seven years. These poor beggars will carry that debt for the rest of their lives. They will never be free unless they take bankruptcy.

You really have to be a lawyer to figure out the complexities of the fatigue laws in this bill. You have got so many hours in a two-day period, so many hours in a one day period and so many hours in a week. If you are driving long distances, there is no doubt that you do become fatigued. I would say that irresponsible drivers are not with us very long for a number of reasons; I would be the first to admit that. But anyone who puts a rig on the road with a driver who drives while feeling fatigued is nothing more than a fool and he will not be in the business for very long. It is an absolute certainty that he will not be in the business for very long. You can pass all the laws you like but there will be people who will drive while fatigued, because they were at a party on the weekend or playing football on the weekend or because they were friendly with a young lady or something of that nature. They will be fatigued. They are human beings and it will happen to them. There is nothing in these laws that go into that sort of thing. I refer to Mick Pattel who is heading up the National Road Freighters Association, a very great Australian. He and his family have contributed very greatly to this country over a very long period of time. Clare Mildren, his right-hand man, and all the other major trucking operators throughout Australia, all the big boys in the various industries—in fruit and vegetable hauling, in livestock hauling—are all strongly backing Michael Pattel. I was very surprised because the big boys do not normally take aggressive action but in this case they were coming in very strong behind him.

I said to Mick’s father, because they were driving great distances, ‘How do you work with fatigue?’ Kevin Pattel said: ‘The only way that you can deal with fatigue is to pull your car up and have a sleep, a catnap. Even 20 minutes will take that edge off the fatigue. Don’t try anything else; it simply doesn’t work.’ Throughout Australia that will be the tune to which this industry marches, and all the laws in the world will not stop stupid, irresponsible people from doing stupid, irresponsible things. And all the laws in the world will not make the good people any better. That is not the way human beings work.

In conclusion, I would say: Mr Government, you have increased our charges dramatically and made us non-competitive on the world market with your laws and your charges. You have passed laws that have led us not to have drivers. At my last meeting with Mick Pattel when we were have a quick lunch together, a bloke came over and said: ‘Mick, what can you do for us? I’ve got two of my three trucks stood down because I’ve got no drivers.’ (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank members for participating in the debate. In order to save the time of the House, I will sum up both bills at once but I will deal with them separately. Firstly, I thank the opposition for supporting the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008. The purpose of that bill 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. The bill also allows regulations to be made to specify heavy vehicle charges for application to FIRS vehicles. The FIRS is a registration scheme that covers only about three per cent of Australia’s trucks. The rest are covered by state and territory schemes. All of the states have imposed the new charges since this 1 July this year. It 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.

The determination was agreed to by the Australian Transport Council in February 2008 and was implemented by the states on 1 July 2008. It is self-evident that it is in Australia’s economic interests for registration charges for heavy vehicles which regularly trade across state borders to be consistent. That is why earlier this year we introduced legislation along these lines. It is unfortunate that we have had a period of imbalance in the charges, but unless this legislation is carried there could potentially be a distortion whereby there is an economic incentive to register vehicles under the federal scheme rather than under the respective state and territory schemes. This is common sense. It has taken a little while to get there, but I am pleased that we have got there and I commend the bill to the House.

I now make some comments on the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008. The bill repeals the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Act 1993 as well as making heavy consequential amendments to the Road Transport Reform (Heavy Vehicle Registration) Act 1997 to remove links to the former act. This will allow the ACT government to set its own registration charges consistent with the registration charges adopted for FIRS and in all the other jurisdictions. The bill also amends the Fuel Tax Act 2006 to set the road user charge rate at 21c per litre in line with the 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination. Truck operators do not pay fuel excise in the way that other motorists do. Like all motorists, they pay 38.14c per litre at the bowser for their fuel; however, they receive a fuel tax rebate of 18.51c per litre. The balance, currently set at 19.63c per litre, represents the road user charge. The current charge was established in a determination issued in 2000 and has not changed since then.

Road funding by all levels of government has increased by 33 per cent since that time. This increase is necessary to ensure that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs. The National Transport Commission estimates that in 2007-08 heavy vehicles underpaid their fair share of road costs by $100 million. This bill will give us cost recovery—nothing more and nothing less. It is important to emphasise that this is based upon costs that have already been incurred. So this is a cost recovery of government expenditure which has benefited heavy vehicle road users. Those in the heavy vehicle industry are very clear that they wish to pay their way. It does not index the charge. The bill’s amendments to the Fuel Tax Act establish a mechanism to allow adjustment of the road user charge by regulation. These regulations would be subject to review by the parliament in the normal manner. It is important that that be understood. I am pleased the shadow minister is nodding in agreement at that understanding of the legislation and the way that it works because there has been some confusion in this debate about these issues.

The opposition’s proposed amendment redefines a range of new restrictions on how it is adjusted, including a number of provisions that they have asked for: that an average of 50 heavy vehicle rest areas be constructed each year on the AusLink national network; that Infrastructure Australia certifies that the rest area construction has or will have occurred by the time the new road user charges are due to take effect; that the transport minister releases the proposed determination package, including the calculation mechanism for a 60-day period of public consultation and has regard to the outcomes of this process; and that road expenditure used in the determination must be verified by auditors-general of the respective jurisdictions.

The government does not need legislation to commit to rest stops. The government identified rest stops as an important issue for the industry and moved to act. We were asked for two changes before I went to the Australian Transport Council for determination. The requests were, firstly, a delay until 1 January 2009—the government agreed to that—and, secondly, funding for a heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. The government responded positively to that also. The government has already committed in the passage of this bill to a $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package which will provide heavy vehicle rest stops to the industry over the forward estimates. We amended the AusLink bill to allow specific funding for rest stops. It has never happened before. For 12 years under the previous government it did not happen, just as, from what we can find from a survey of Hansard, transport ministers in the previous government never once mentioned rest stops in this House.

We have put heavy vehicle rest stops on the political agenda of this parliament. And to proceed with our commitment we require this legislation to be carried. I have already written to industry seeking their views as to where the rest stops should be. Those submissions have been provided. All we need for this process to commence is the passage of this bill, which will facilitate their funding. However, it is bad policy to link adjustment of the charge in the future to the construction of an arbitrary number of rest stops alone. Governments expend resources on all manner of road construction and maintenance projects, not just rest stops. How do you define what a rest stop is? A rest stop can be something that costs very little money or it can be a full-scale rest stop with showers and toilet blocks and space for a large number of trucks. Whilst I do not question the need for rest stop issues to be addressed, the opposition’s amendment, in the way that it is framed, is simply impractical and I have indicated also to the Australian Trucking Association that the framing of their suggestions is impractical.

It also does not understand what Infrastructure Australia is for. I call upon the opposition to consult the Infrastructure Australia legislation. Infrastructure Australia is there to deal with nationally significant infrastructure. The board of Infrastructure Australia is not there to go and examine and audit the construction of heavy vehicle rest stops. That is not what the advisory council was established for, and they should know that that is the case. IA’s purpose is to give high-level strategic advice to the government on its infrastructure agenda. It is made up of eminent business people and public sector officials with significant public policy experience. There are other bodies better placed to count rest stops; namely, the actual jurisdiction-based heavy vehicle regulators.

In relation to the adjustment of the charge, the government gives a commitment that any adjustment to the charge should be preceded by a transparent process so that industry has confidence in what it is paying and how it has been calculated. What better and more transparent process for adjustment can there be than scrutiny by this parliament? The opposition leader says that he supports the principle of cost recovery but not automatic indexation. This bill delivers cost recovery and nothing more. Truck operators will continue to get a rebate, meaning they pay only 21c per litre. If the opposition is satisfied with the decision of the government not to include indexation provisions within the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill but instead to allow adjustment to be made by regulation, what then is the issue with adjustments to the Fuel Tax Act?

We listened to what the opposition argued when a different version of this instrument was put to the parliament earlier this year and we have attempted to accommodate any reasonable points that have been made. The shadow minister spoke extensively about the variations in fatigue laws, loading limits and network access regimes that exist between the state jurisdictions and described how these variations are a impediment to an efficient industry. He then claimed this bill should be used to force the states to adopt uniform laws. The Rudd government certainly agrees with the shadow minister that these variations are a problem for industry. In fact, governments have agreed with that proposition since 1991 when the National Road Transport Commission was established by the Hawke government. That is why the Rudd government is pursuing this through COAG and the ATC, which will be meeting again in two weeks time for the fourth time since February, making sure that we keep the pressure on to get this reform agenda through. A national jurisdiction for heavy vehicles so that there would be one set of laws would be a substantial improvement and should enjoy the bipartisan support of this House.

But the problem is that the opposition amendment does not impact on state funding at all. It only impacts on Commonwealth funding. So there is no pressure on the states in this legislation if it is not carried. It will just mean less Commonwealth revenue and therefore less money to be able to spend on issues such as road safety and rest stops. It does not give the Commonwealth any bargaining power over the states to adopt uniform laws. The government does not support the amendments because they are unnecessary and they will not deliver the benefits to the industry that the Leader of the National Party claims that they will.

These bills modernise charges for registration and road user charges applicable to the heavy vehicle industry. It is important that the House acknowledge that this is a proposition that began under the previous government. In a speech given in June 2007 entitled ‘The coalition’s transport reform agenda’, the then federal Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Leader of the Nationals 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.

That was their policy when they were the government. We are implementing that, taking forward in this legislation the determination that was asked for by the Howard government. However, the new charges—our proposal—will be fairer both to those in the industry and to the wider community. Importantly, the new charges deliver the requirement of the Council of Australian Governments for full and ongoing cost recovery. The new charges will encourage state and territory governments to facilitate access to the road network for higher productivity heavy vehicles, thereby gaining a substantial benefit to the economy. This, in turn, would make better use of the nation’s infrastructure. This is a key element of the Rudd government’s plan to raise productivity, fight inflation and maintain economic growth. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.