Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Our transport industry is a very, very important part of Australia’s internal trade and of what makes us such a great nation. The fact that we can have trucks and carrying vehicles moving freely throughout the country helps our economic position and helps many of the small business men who are involved in the trucking industry. These bills before the parliament today are of fairly great significance to Australia’s economy. The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008 and the associated bill, the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008, are the matters in discussion today.

The first bill, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008, permits 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, which I will refer to hereafter as FIRS. These new charges were agreed by the Commonwealth, state and territory ministers at the Australian Transport Council in February this year. The states and territories have already implemented the charge schedule on heavy vehicles under their registration systems. That means that 95 per cent of Australia’s heavy-vehicle fleet is already operating under the revised registration schedule. The first bill, the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2008, updates some of the definitions contained in the original act, establishes a disallowable charge-setting mechanism based on regulation and stipulates a table of charges or an annual adjustment process.

The FIRS provides an alternative to state based registration for heavy vehicles weighing more than 4.5 tonnes and is designed to provide uniform charges and operating conditions for heavy vehicles that carry interstate goods exclusively. Currently, slightly more than 21,000 heavy vehicles in Australia are registered under the FIRS. In the case of the ACT, locally registered trucks are subject to the Road Transport Charges (ACT) Act. That act applies charges that are calculated on the same basis as the trucks registered under the FIRS. In the ACT, there are some 2,550-odd trucks that are locally registered, of which 91 per cent are rigid. This means that the majority of the ACT-registered truck owners would see their registration fees go down if the ACT were able to apply the new charges agreed by the Transport Council. Moreover, in spite of limited application to the FIRS for Australia’s heavy-vehicle fleet, the coalition does recognise that the scheme not only promotes regulatory consistency solely involved in interstate operations but also provides some competition and discipline in the heavy-vehicle industry. In the other chamber, the shadow minister for trade, transport, regional development and local government, Mr Truss, spoke at some length about this bill and indicated as I now do that the coalition will not be opposing the first of these two bills.

The second bill, the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill, does two things. It appeals the Road Transport Charges (ACT) Act so that the ACT may set its own heavy-vehicle charges. We believe that the ACT should be free to make such decisions, and we support that element of the legislation. The second part of the bill, though, relates to a different issue, and amends the Fuel Tax Act 2006 to implement a road user charge at the rate of 21c a litre from 1 January 2009. The road user charge is levied on the basis that the costs arising from the industry’s use of the road system should be recovered. Both the trucking industry and the coalition accept this in principle, but what is important is that the amount being levied is seen to be fair and that it is spent on roads.

Motorists and the trucking industry currently pay 38.14c in tax for every litre of fuel they purchase; however, the trucking industry may claim a partial rebate under the Fuel Tax Act. This act sets for the heavy vehicle sector a road user charge which is intended to cover the costs attributable to the industry’s use of the road system. Trucking operators receive through the tax system a rebate of the difference between the fuel tax they pay at the pump and the road user charge. The road user charge is currently 19.633c per litre; the rebate is, therefore, 18.510c per litre. Should the road user charge be set at 21c a litre, the rebate will only be 17.143c per litre. This increase is the result of a decision by the Australian transport ministers earlier this year to support the National Transport Commission’s fourth heavy vehicle charges determination, a set of charges levied upon the heavy vehicle industry based on the principle of cost recovery for the roads.

The government has also attempted to implement this tax increase before. Senators may recall that in March this year, when introducing the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government flagged the intention of the government to implement a new heavy vehicle determination and increase the road use charge from 1 January 2009. He also stated 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 Rudd government to reintroduce indexation of the fuel excise. You will recall that, after years of Labor government indexation of fuel prices—it was introduced by Mr Keating—the indexation was abolished by the coalition in 2001. Our opposition on this matter has not changed; we remain opposed to fuel excise indexation on fuel. That is why, with regard to that road user charge, the opposition here disallowed the regulation made under the Fuel Tax Act in May of this year.

In this bill, the government has removed the link to indexation. The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill 2008 would repeal the relevant section of the Fuel Tax Act and add a new subsection which would set the road user charge at 21c per litre and enable the government to make regulations at other times that may be prescribed. This would be a disallowable instrument. We acknowledge that the government has made this change and we think it is quite a constructive improvement. Industry, however, remains concerned about the manner in which the National Transport Commission develops the road user charge. Its consultation process appears flawed and it refused to disclose to the trucking industry much of the data and the model it used to develop the charge. The coalition is concerned that the government has also linked these bills to the implementation of its announcement of a $70 million, four-year, heavy vehicle safety and productivity package.

We call upon the government to stop this tactic of blackmail, which seems to be much in vogue by the government these days. In the education bill we just dealt with, the government used what were effectively bully-boy blackmail tactics. It seems to be the case for this heavy vehicle safety and productivity package as well. To threaten to block the $70 million package, inadequate though we think that is, should these bills not be passed, is pretty grubby politics and harms the safety of those who work on our roads. It suggests that the government is more interested in collecting taxes than in industry productivity and safety. Governments collect huge revenues from taxes on motorists and the transport industry. More of that money should be allocated for roads. New tax increases are not in themselves required.

There are no performance benchmarks in the package. There is nothing, for example, that stipulates how many roadside facilities will be built. How can truck operators be sure that they will get the benefits being traded for these increases in the road user charges? Likewise, the government does not link the new charges to the obligations of the states to deliver their promises to harmonise transport regulation. It is unknown what the government is doing about the appalling failure of the states to implement cross-border changes to the rules which so impede the development of an efficient, cost-effective national road system. Labor said when it was elected to office that, because there would then be wall-to-wall Labor governments around Australia, they would fix these interstate inconsistencies and state differences. In transport reform, the Rudd government has failed dismally, and it is not allowing another opportunity to deliver these reforms at this time. These are key weaknesses of the bill before us in that they do not address the fundamental problems of regulation reform.

Because of that, the coalition will be moving a number of amendments relating to confirming that under no circumstances can the government consider an indexation element to the increases in the road charge in the future. We are agreeing with the increase from, effectively, 19-odd cents to 21-odd cents, because we believe that that additional money can be put to very good effect. Unfortunately, the bill does not carry through and say that, so we are going to be moving amendments to address those issues. At this stage I do not want to take too much time of the Senate in this debate on the second reading speech. Suffice it to say that, as I mentioned earlier, we want to ensure that indexation is never a possibility. We then want to ensure that the additional money recovered goes to at least an average of 50 additional heavy vehicle rest areas per year for the next four years. We want to make sure that the rest areas are appropriately constructed.

We want to link these increases as well to substantial harmonisation in state and territory transport regulations. I know some of my colleagues will be mentioning some of the huge inconsistencies there are between the different states at the present time which cause a lot of difficulty for the transport industry. We also want to ensure that, when the government does consider increasing the excise in the years ahead—and it will not be able to do that by indexation; we are determined to put a stop to that—there is proper and appropriate public consultation. Our amendments will deal with how that consultation should proceed, and we want to make sure that the transport minister has regard to those submissions when considering the issue. I will, of course, speak in more detail about that during the committee stage of the bill.

Before I conclude I want to mention briefly another issue which will play havoc with the Australian road transport industry, as well as with all of those ordinary Australians who travel interstate in the course of either their business or, perhaps more importantly, their holidays. That is the stupid proposal being put forward by the Bligh Labor government in Queensland to ensure that a new system is put in place so that New South Welshmen and other Australians cannot temporarily receive the benefit of Queensland’s lower fuel prices—because Queensland, you might recall, has never had a fuel tax. That is something for which we can give thanks to the Bjelke-Petersen and Chalk governments and other Liberal-National Party governments in past years in Queensland. It has been followed by the Labor government. There is no fuel tax in Queensland, so our fuel should be eight cents a litre cheaper than that of others. And that has been the case for some time.

As you can imagine, as you get closer to the border, New South Welshmen slip over the border to fill up in Queensland because they can get cheaper fuel there. To address that, the New South Wales government had sort of a series of incremental fuel taxes as you went to closer to the Queensland border, so that New South Welshmen and businesses up in the north of New South Wales would not be unfairly disadvantaged—so that they would not have a competitive disadvantage when competing with Queenslanders in that South-East Queensland, north-east New South Wales section of our country.

The current Labor government in New South Wales is just appalling. Everyone knows just how hopelessly incompetent that Labor government has been with its financial management—even more so than the Rudd Labor government is demonstrating that it is at the current time. That is accepted by all sides of this chamber at the present time. But without thinking of what it would do to businesses and people in the north of the state, they have just cut out all of those incremental increases. That means that businesses and people in northern New South Wales will be competitively disadvantaged compared to those of us who live in Queensland and have a cheaper rate of petrol. That clearly was not thought through by the New South Wales Labor government and is just another example of their complete mismanagement of their economy—typical of all Labor governments.

What is the Queensland government going to do to stop those horrible New South Welshmen slipping across the border and getting our cheaper petrol? We are all going to get a bar code on our licences so that, when we Queenslanders go in to fill up with fuel, we will swipe our cards and, if we have the right bar code—providing we have remembered to bring our licence with us, and a lot of us do not travel with our licences—we get our petrol at the cheaper price. But, if we are New South Welshmen, if we are truck drivers coming through delivering goods to Queensland, if we happen to have forgotten our licence or if we work for someone who has company vehicles and we do not leave our licence there, then we will have to pay the dearer price of petrol. And I understand, from the Queensland position, you will not be able to get a refund at all.

But the real problem is this new system being introduced by yet another Labor government—this time the Queensland Labor government—which will mean an enormous impost on independent fuel sellers. We have heard all the fine speeches during that debacle of a Fuelwatch program put up by the federal Labor government about how we want to promote competition. This proposal by the Queensland Labor government will stifle competition. Sure, the majors, the big fellows, the chains will be able to afford the $40,000 that I understand it is going to cost every service station to put in this card-swipe thing, but the independents, the little people, will simply not be able to afford the $40,000. They will therefore go out of business, and that will mean less competition in the fuel business in Queensland.

There is going to be more about that. There is an election coming up in Queensland. The Labor government cannot work out whether they want to bring it in before the budget—they have got to do something because their budget is also in diabolical trouble—or whether they will leave it until after the election and hope that they scrape back in. So there will be a lot more about that. But I warn the Senate now that this is going to have an enormous impact on interstate trade. There will be privacy conditions that will be of federal relevance. There will be many issues that will need to be addressed by parliament, and I just want to alert the Senate to that impending bungle and stupidity from the Queensland Labor government at this early stage.