Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor wants to increase taxes on the nation's truckies to pay for road maintenance. This is despite cancelling, cutting and delaying road infrastructure projects in the October budget and failing to approve a single project under the north Australian roads program over their 10 months in office. Federal Labor's proposal to impose a 10 per cent increase in fuel taxes in registration charges on the nation's truckies will cost the sector in the vicinity of $2.6 billion over three years and add to inflationary pressures.

Everything we make in this country, all the goods we buy that have come to the shops, all travel on a truck, whether it originates on a farm or a factory or enters the country via a port. I repeat: everything comes on the back of a truck, from a jar of Vegemite to a wind turbine. Our truckies keep this country running, and they get food on the table and goods into our shopping centres. With more than 197,000 people employed in the industry, Labor's reckless truckie tax proposal puts drivers' jobs and livelihoods at risk. It will also add to the cost-of-living pressures, as the cost of what we buy at the supermarkets will go up further. I stand by our truck drivers and call on the Labor government to scrap its plans to increase truck taxes by up to 10 per cent.