Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. This bill demonstrates the Rudd government’s commitment to road safety and local road infrastructure. It is a disappointing sign that those opposite have chosen to push road safety onto the back seat without a safety belt. This bill is about road safety. In my home state of Western Australia there were 236 road deaths in 2007. This was up from 201 in 2006 and 163 in 2005. In Western Australia in 2007 there were 15 deaths from crashes involving articulated trucks, up from 11 in 2006. Heavy rigid truck accidents accounted for 10 deaths in 2007 and nine in 2006. That is 25 deaths last year involving heavy vehicles—25 too many.

Let me explain what this means. If you do not support this bill you are voting for more road crashes, more deaths, more misery, more pain, more sadness and more injury. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008, rejected in the other place, would have enabled the 2007 heavy vehicles charge determination to be written into law. Australians have had road user charges since 1995, with bipartisan support from successive governments and six different Labor and Nationals ministers. Laurie Brereton first introduced road user charges in 1995. At the National Trade and Investment Outlook Conference in December of that year, the then minister for transport stated that the road user charges scheme would be ‘an achievement in government-to-government cooperation and would keep Australia at the cutting edge of the global road transport industry.’ John Sharp, Mark Vaile, John Anderson and even the current member for Wide Bay supported these charges when the coalition were in government. In April last year, at an Australian Trucking Association conference in Cairns, the then minister Mark Vaile stated:

Whilst investing in transport infrastructure is critical to meeting our future freight task, it is also important that pricing signals are right in relation to accessing transport infrastructure.

He went on to say that there is:

… a need to update the data used in the current heavy vehicle charges determination and to update the charging system methodology.

That is what we are trying to do here today. Mark Vaile also said:

The trucking industry should recognise … that the Australian government has massively increased its investment in the nation’s transport infrastructure in recent years.

This will have a flow-on effect. As a result the cost recovery principle of heavy vehicle charging, better roads mean greater efficiency and higher charges.

How quickly have members opposite abandoned 13 years of bipartisan support? Members opposite, including the member for Wide Bay, have put $70 million worth of road safety and productivity measures at risk. They have put the lives of our truckies at risk. They have put the lives of passengers in cars and buses at risk. They have put whatever skerrick of integrity they had left at risk. The Australian government has long had a role in funding nationally significant transport infrastructure, and it is unacceptable that members opposite would jeopardise that for petty and opportunistic political purposes.

Section 96 of the Australian Constitution allows the Australian government to allocate funding to any state or territory in line with any terms or conditions it considers appropriate. This section has been used to allocate federal funding to states and territories for the purpose of road construction and maintenance since the 1920s. Over the years, funding has been made available to states and territories as well as local governments in a number of different forms. This has occurred in tied and untied grants, which have included block grants, matching grants, and full funding with deep Australian government involvement.

The Australian government has delivered its road programs since the 1920s via specific road-funding legislation, with each act generally lasting between three and five years. Prior to the mid-1980s, Australian government road funding legislation generally referred to a total funding level to be made available over the period of a particular road act. This effectively provided for a multi-year road program. Following the introduction of the Australian land transport act of 1985 and subsequent legislation, Australian government road funding has tended to be determined largely on an annual basis.

In November of 1997, the Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and Microeconomic Reform concluded an inquiry into federal road funding. It did that at the request of the former government, the Howard government. The committee had been asked to review the Commonwealth’s role in road funding, to assess the adequacy and the extent of the national highway—the major connecting route between our capital cities and major regional centres—and to assess the level of funding required to adequately fulfil the Commonwealth’s role. The committee was also asked to:

Assess the scope to supplement Government funding through innovative arrangements for private sector involvement in the provision and maintenance of roads infrastructure and the scope for pricing of road services to reflect full resource costs.

That was the request that the Howard government made of that inquiry—to reflect full resource costs. The resulting report was called Planning not patching: an inquiry into federal road funding. The report found that:

It is essential that the Commonwealth take a leadership role in developing and publishing a national strategic plan for Australia’s transport network.

It went on to say that:

The Commonwealth role in road funding should focus on achieving national objectives. The committee has identified the need for the Commonwealth to continue to be involved in developing a national road system which is defined in this report as comprising the national highway system and roads of national importance.

In developing the plan, the report recommended that all three levels of government and the community need to participate to ensure success. As the inquiry revealed, Australia’s road system needs to be strategically planned.

The need for an integrated, strategic national transport plan was also raised in several other key reports, including 1998’s Tracking Australia, 1999’s Revitalising rail, and 2000’s Time running out. The reports all called for the Australian government to take a lead role in facilitating a national, coordinated approach to transport infrastructure planning and investment. For example, the first recommendation of the Tracking Australia report was:

… that the Commonwealth assume the leadership role and consult widely in developing an integrated national transport strategic plan …

These reports argued that a national approach would improve investment decisions and transport overall.

In May 2002, the Australian government announced its plan to create a new national land transport policy to be known as AusLink. Under AusLink, separate Australian government funding for road and rail programs would be pooled into a single flexible program. In November of that year, the Australian government released a green paper, AusLink: towards the national land transport plan. It was widely distributed and discussed, and it generated over 500 written submissions. The Australian government followed up with a white paper, AusLink: building our national transport future, in June 2004. I am sure members opposite remember that document. It culminated in the proclamation of the AusLink (National Land Transport) Act 2005 on 28 July 2005. AusLink was the first national land transport plan since Federation, and it was a good plan. The objective of the act was and still is:

… to assist national and regional economic and social development by the provision of Commonwealth funding aimed at improving the performance of land transport infrastructure.

The 2005 act provided for a single funding regime within a five-year rolling plan for the nation’s land transport network. It targeted Australian government funding to national priorities that deliver high levels of national benefit. All of that is good. I am not one to belittle the efforts of those opposite. This was good legislation, put together by serious people.

Now let us look at the history of heavy vehicle charges. Integral to Australia’s land transport network are the heavy vehicle charges introduced in the mid-1990s. The first heavy vehicle duty charges determination was implemented across Australia between July 1995 and October 1996. It sought to recover heavy vehicles’ share of road construction and maintenance costs. In effect, heavy vehicle charges cover the cost of fixing the damage that heavy vehicles do to our roads through two components: a basic fuel based charge, now referred to as a road user charge, and an annual registration charge.

In 2007 the Productivity Commission conducted an inquiry into road and rail freight infrastructure pricing. The report was released on 13 April 2007, and it confirmed that it was unlikely that heavy vehicle charges were sufficient to cover heavy vehicles’ share of road costs. The commission determined that this under-recovery was due to a significant and disproportionate increase in Commonwealth, state and territory road expenditure—around 33 per cent—since the last time the road user charges were set. It also said that there had been a significant increase in the number of B-doubles, which currently do not pay their way. It also said that there had been an erosion of the road user charge, which remained unchanged for the eight-year duration of the second determination. The former government simply refused to address the issue. In addition to the under-recovery, the Productivity Commission found that the charges applied to some classes of heavy vehicle were set in order to subsidise the costs of other—mainly larger, heavier—vehicles. What happened to the importance of pricing signals being sent and received?

In order to address the funding deficiency, in April 2007 the Council of Australian Governments, COAG, led by the former Prime Minister, John Howard, asked that a new road user charge determination be developed. This determination was to ensure that heavy vehicle charges deliver and continue to deliver full recovery of heavy vehicles’ share of road construction and maintenance costs, in aggregate, as well as remove the cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

The recommended charges would address under-recovery, create a more even playing field between road and rail and stop smaller trucks from paying too much while the largest trucks pay too little. While the heavy vehicle industry raise some concerns about particular aspects of the methodology used to calculate the costs to be recovered from heavy vehicle operators, they are on record as supporting the principle that heavy vehicles should pay their way.

COAG’s request had bipartisan support. In a speech given in June 2007, entitled ‘The coalition government’s transport reform agenda’, the then federal Minister for Transport and Regional Development 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.

Those are the words of the Leader of the National Party.

In July of last year, the NTC released a draft regulatory impact statement. This outlined a range of options for heavy vehicle charges. A comprehensive public consultation on the draft regulatory impact statement then followed. Industry and government stakeholders and other interested parties were invited to make written submissions and participate in public focus group sessions, held all over the country. Twenty-two written submissions were received, and focus groups were held in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Darwin. Michael Deegan, the then chairman of the National Transport Commission, said in the final statement’s foreword:

Australia must maintain a world-class road and rail transport network to service the growing freight task, to reduce road trauma, and to ensure Australian businesses can compete cost-effectively in the global marketplace. The trucking industry has long supported the principle of paying its way. The NTC’s recommendations will ensure that this happens, and continues to do so between determinations.

This is a report commissioned by, for and to the former federal government, endorsed by the Leader of the National Party and then minister for roads. That report went on to say:

The Productivity Commission’s Road and Rail Infrastructure Pricing Inquiry, and the direction outlined by heads of government on 13 April 2007, clearly set out an agenda for pricing reform to unlock more productivity from the road network.

The report also said:

… the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination … will be the ‘building block’ for pricing reform. It will sustain the revenue base needed for governments to invest in better and safer roads, including the infrastructure upgrades needed for improved heavy vehicle access.

All states and the Northern Territory have now implemented their new heavy vehicle registration charges. The ACT has yet to implement the new charges, as the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Repeal Bill was rejected in the other place by those opposite. Only at the federal level have these new charges not been implemented. The other place blocked bills to give effect to new heavy vehicle registration charges for federal interstate registration scheme vehicles and heavy vehicles registered in the ACT in March 2008. The other place also disallowed a legislative instrument declaring a new rate of the heavy vehicle road user charge from 1 January 2009. It is disappointing to see the safety of Australian road users hindered by politics.

The purpose of this amendment bill that we are debating today is threefold. The first is to ensure funding of all projects in the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity program from 1 January 2009. The second is to allow for the continuation of the Roads to Recovery program beyond 30 June 2009. Everyone loves the Roads to Recovery program. It is a good program. It works well. Local governments like it. And we in this place can be proud of the process that built the Roads to Recovery program. The third purpose is to allow better management of the Roads to Recovery funding list, which sets out all funding recipients in Australia and the amount that they receive, and which is currently not able to be amended except in very limited circumstances.

This bill amends the definition of a ‘road’ to include heavy vehicle facilities such as rest stops, parking bays and decoupling facilities. We have heard that many times in this debate. This will enable the government to provide funding for these facilities under our $70 million Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity package. According to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government’s monthly road deaths series reports, more than 200 people are killed in road crashes involving heavy trucks every year. They represent 15 to 20 per cent of all road deaths. I am sure members remember the tragic crash at Kerang in Victoria which caused the deaths of 11 people when a truck smashed into a passenger train. Not all accidents receive such press coverage, but all accidents result in some degree of misery and pain for families.

Most of the people killed in crashes involving an articulated truck are occupants of the other vehicle—64 per cent. One in five people killed are truck occupants—mostly the drivers. Since 1989, single vehicle crashes have accounted for around 15 per cent of deaths in articulated truck crashes. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s statistics show that more than 800 serious injuries occur in road crashes involving heavy trucks or buses each year. This represents three per cent of all road crash serious injuries. Over the last decade, from 1998 to 2007, deaths from crashes involving articulated trucks decreased by four per cent, despite a 25 per cent increase in vehicle kilometres travelled by articulated trucks. In the same period, the number of all road crash deaths decreased by eight per cent, while total vehicle kilometres travelled grew by 17 per cent.

The minister has been consulting extensively with the states and territories and with stakeholders, such as the Australian Trucking Association, the Australian Livestock Transport Association, the Australian Transport Workers Union and NatRoad, to identify the most urgently needed works. The facilities that will be delivered under the $70 million Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity package will improve road safety and provide a better deal for truckies. It has been said before in this place: everything in Australia is delivered on the back of a truck. Our prosperity depends upon our trucks and our truckies. Governments need to ensure that international best practice is implemented to foster this productivity.

Local governments are key stakeholders in our national transport network. The Australian government first provided tied funding to local governments in 1974-75. This continued until 1990-91. Since 1991-92, funding to local governments for local roads has been untied and provided as a component of the Australian government’s financial assistance grants. The Roads to Recovery program began on 1 January 2001 and is additional to the untied financial assistance grants funding provided to councils. The Roads to Recovery program provides Australian government funding direct to local governments for both rural and urban roads in all parts of Australia. It is a good program, and local government likes it. It works. The program was implemented by the former government because much local road infrastructure in Australia was about to reach the end of its useful life and replacement was beyond the capacity of councils. It is a good program and it should be supported. This legislation creates measures that will ensure that good programs continue, road safety is enhanced and, most importantly, a vital principle of price signals being sent to truck users, truck owners and transport infrastructure operators is adhered to. The term ‘parliamentary opposition’ does not automatically imply obstructionism. It is disappointing that members opposite cannot differentiate between these two terms. I commend the bill to the House.

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