Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is crazy, thank you, Senator Scullion. It does not make sense. It just highlights the hypocrisy of the Labor government. They say one thing and expect us to believe it and then they do another. They are hoping that the people of Australia will not notice that what they say is not what they do. But they will notice, because it is not right, it is not fair and it is not on.

Then we come to the Australian Transport Council. Under these bills the Commonwealth actually loses its discretion to dissent from the ministerial council. What it means is that in its own right it is not able to apply charges that should apply to Commonwealth registered vehicles if they choose to do so. I understand that the decisions of the group that make up the Australian Transport Council are often not by consensus. So the federal government could be held to a decision with which they do not agree and have no mechanism to dissent from and apply a different charge to their Commonwealth registered vehicles. What does that do? First, it reduces competition, because there is no ability then for any competition out there within the charges, and it is absolutely locked up tight. Again, the Commonwealth would be bound by a decision that it may well not agree with. This might be about ending the blame game, but obviously the current Labor government is just giving a free kick to the Labor states—including, as my very good colleague here, Senator Boswell, said, about $170 million in taxes to the states. I bet they are delighted about that, because there is no requirement on where that funding should go—there is none. There will be no check and balance about where it is going to go. It is a windfall in tax for the state governments; it is a slamming of working families through the trucking industry through this bill.

I think Labor senators on the other side should be hiding, not speaking on this bill. I note that Senator Sterle, who I know has a very, very longstanding and genuine interest in the trucking industry, is not even in the chamber. He has not spoken. I wonder why that might be, colleagues. Because he knows and he understands how important the trucking industry is to this nation. It is often the backbone of this nation.