Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I will make a number of points. There are the bills before the chamber and there is also the government's commitment to heavy on-road transport from 1 July 2014 which need to be factored into this discussion. It is the case in relation to fuel but, broadly, on-road use is out and off-road use, including domestic rail, is in.

I am advised that the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has been provided with some advice about the likely impact of a carbon price on a range of transport modes and that the indicative additional cost per tonne per hundred kilometres travelled for rail will be about 4c under a $23 carbon price. So we are not talking about a massive impost.

The government has also made a commitment to bringing heavy on-road transport into the clean energy arrangements from 1 July 2014. That would provide the sort of competitive neutrality that I think the senator is advocating for. The government is a very strong supporter of rail. I would just remind the Senate that the government has injected some $1.2 billion into rail infrastructure through the Australian Rail Track Corporation and a range of projects to improve the reliability and competitiveness of the nation's railway network. This includes expanding the rail corridors connecting the Hunter Valley coalmines to the Port of Newcastle and a range of other projects, some of which are in Queensland. There is the Sydney to Brisbane line and so forth. These were part of the government's previous stimulus package. That is significant support for rail. Again, just in terms of the cost, the advice I have is that it will be about 4c per tonne per 100 kilometres.