Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 and related bill. The bills enable a nationally agreed new heavy vehicle registration charge to be applied to heavy vehicles registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. These bills are the result of deliberations by COAG, the Council of Australian Governments, and were unanimously endorsed by all ministers at the Australian Transport Council meeting on 29 February 2008.

The Rudd government take economic reform very seriously and the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 is a very important part of our ongoing plans to build a modern and prosperous Australia into the future. The Council of Australian Governments deliberated on this bill—and the issues facing the transport industry—and unanimously endorsed it. The bill forms part of a three-pronged strategy to improve fairness in the distribution of funding in relation to heavy vehicle use in our transport industry. Those three prongs are the heavy vehicle registration charge, a slight increase in the road user charge and a $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package. So this bill forms part of an overall plan—and that is what we are about. We are about planning and building a stronger Australia and a stronger economy into the future.

I come from the electorate of Leichhardt. I am a proud citizen of Cairns and have a rural and country background. This evening I have heard members of the National Party banging on about their representation of rural and regional Australia. They are a dying breed in Queensland in terms of federal politics and the reality is that they are dying because they do not effectively represent rural and regional Australia. I am a proud member of the Australian Labor Party and I am working very hard to ensure that rural and regional Queensland are represented. We understand how important road transport is to Australia. It is particularly important to my local community of Cairns and my electorate of Leichhardt. Cairns, up there in tropical North Queensland, is a long way from Brisbane, from Sydney, from Melbourne and from other capital cities. We depend on the Bruce Highway. We depend on heavy vehicles to bring in the basics, whether it is food or basic materials such as nappies and medications. For the common things that everyday working families need we rely on the road transport system and the road transport network to deliver, and we understand how very important it is that we continue to build and support a strong economy and make sure the road transport network and heavy vehicles are actually operating effectively within this country.

Not only does the system bring in goods, though; we also export a lot of goods. I have heard the National Party members today talk about representing rural Australia. I am proudly from a country background and I know that a lot of bananas and a lot of mangoes come out of North Queensland. Heavy vehicles take them out. The road transport system is a very important part of dealing with that and ensuring that we support those local industries and those local communities.

The National Transport Commission estimated that, under the current system, there is an under-recovery of the cost of providing infrastructure to heavy vehicles in excess of $100 million per annum. So it was estimated not by the Labor Party, the National Party or the Liberal Party but by the National Transport Commission that, under the current system, we get an under-recovery of $100 million per annum. So there is need for reform, and we recognise that. The system unfairly places a heavier burden of cost recovery on small trucks at the expense of large vehicles. Effectively, small trucks are cross-subsidising the impact of large trucks on the road network.

In April 2007, the Council of Australian Governments directed that, as part of an overall transport reform package, Australian transport ministers should require the National Transport Commission to prepare a new heavy vehicle determination. In its determination, the National Transport Commission recommended a new set of registration charges that rebalance the relative contributions of the different heavy vehicle classes. This is a fairer system of allocating the cost of heavy vehicle transport—and it is no wonder that we are getting a fairer system under a Rudd Labor government.

See this speech in context