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

Where is Senator Sterle, I wonder. Thank you, Senator Ronaldson, for that interjection. For those of you who did not know, 75 per cent of the freight task, which is going to double in this nation by 2020, currently goes on trucks. We would like that to be different; we would like to see a lot more go on rail—and thank you very much to the ALP government for slashing $65 million from the Parkes to Cootamundra railway line. That was not very helpful either, in terms of getting freight off the roads. We see here the absolute targeting of an industry. If anything it needs assistance to streamline, to be better and to find ways to get the trucks off the roads. But, no, we are seeing an increase in the registration and indexation being brought back.

What is also interesting is the lack of understanding from the Labor government about the effect this is going to have on local communities. Real people living in real communities are going to feel the effects of this. Do you know what is going to happen? The charges the Labor government are imposing will be passed on to working families and people living in communities—and even more so to those people who live out in the bush and have the added burden of tyranny of distance. They live great distances from major cities and they cop extra costs anyway. Now we see these extra costs going onto the trucking industry. Guess where they are going to go? As I said, to those working families and those local communities.

Interestingly, this came up not very long ago. I was travelling up on the New South Wales North Coast, where I am duty senator. I had a range of discussions with people up there about the impact of rising costs and what was going to happen in the future. Which brings me to the fact that running up to the election the Labor government said they were going to bring those costs down—they were going to bring down the cost of petrol and it looked like they were going to bring down the cost of food. What has happened? Exactly the opposite, because these charges will be passed on to people in those local communities—local homes and local businesses—and they are going to have to wear the costs. I notice that the Labor members for Richmond and Page last night both blindly supported these ALP bills. On one hand they are up there in their electorates, saying, ‘We’re such a great government; we’re going to address the cost of living,’ and on the other hand, in the very next breath they are supporting bills that are going to increase costs for their working families. That is not right. It is not on. These bills—the charges themselves and those flow-on effects into the community—will do nothing but hurt this country.

I do not comprehend how the Labor government can think these bills are in any way, shape or form a positive change to the laws of this country, because they are going to hurt an industry that is the very backbone of this country. They are going to hurt the families that operate those businesses and drive those trucks. These families, including working families in all of our communities, are going to bear the brunt of these increased costs. For those reasons, the opposition will be opposing the bills.