Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the Water Amendment Bill 2008 and I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speeches incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

EDUCATION LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2008

The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 makes amendments to the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000, the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Act 2005 and the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004 consequential on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. The bill also makes a technical amendment to correct an incorrect cross-reference.

The bill repeals the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000 which appropriated funding for government and non-government schools for the 2001 to 2004 funding period. As such, this Act is no longer required.

While many of the amendments in the bill are technical or consequential amendments, a particularly important component of the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is contained at item 6 of Schedule 1 which continues the operation of the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000.

In the first sitting week of this Parliament, the Rudd Government apologised to Indigenous Australians for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on our fellow Australians. At the time, the Prime Minister made the point that this is not the end of the Government’s commitment, but the start. If Australia is to be truly reconciled there must first be an acknowledgement of past wrongs, but this must be followed up with actions to close the gaps between Indigenous and other Australians.

By putting in place appropriations for another four years under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 the Australian Government can continue working with a range of stakeholders to develop and implement innovative measures to close the gaps. The Act provides an excellent vehicle to action good ideas. Indeed, in a truly bipartisan way, the Act maintains commitments to initiatives introduced by the opposition including the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program and the Sporting Chance program. We have also built our own election commitments into the Act including funding an expansion of intensive literacy and numeracy programs for Indigenous students, professional development support to assist teachers to develop Individual Learning Plans for their Indigenous students, an additional 200 teachers in the Northern Territory and the provision of three new boarding college facilities for Indigenous secondary school students in the Northern Territory.

The Act will appropriate more than $0.5 billion between 2009 and 2012 for Commonwealth lead initiatives and partnerships aimed at achieving better educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians. In addition, a further $109 million is estimated to be spent over the next four years augmenting ABSTUDY entitlements through the Away from Base for ‘mixed-mode’ delivery program assisting Indigenous students access tertiary education.

As a transitional provision until other elements of our intergovernmental financial relations reforms are introduced in 2009, the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 appropriates over $160 million across 2009 to 2012 to assure preschool and training providers that the Australian Government recognises that Indigenous students need extra assistance if the gaps are to be closed. These appropriations will eventually be phased into the new early childhood and training arrangements. New arrangements for non-government schools are captured through the Schools Assistance Bill whilst new arrangements for Government schools will be provided for in the proposed State Finances Bill.

The Australian Government is working with States and Territories, through the Council of Australian Governments, to develop a shared set of aspirations and policy directions which will provide the basis for our school funding arrangements and our reform initiatives over the coming years.

The new framework will connect educational investment in schools, teachers and families with a new commitment to transparency. This will involve strengthened reporting systems, against ambitious and clear performance targets including goals to halve the literacy and numeracy gaps within a decade and to halve the gaps in the Year 12 or equivalent attainment rate by 2020.

In 2006 gaps between the achievement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students against literacy and numeracy benchmarks ranged from 13% for Year 3 reading to 32% for Year 7 numeracy. The $779 million to be appropriated under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 through this bill is only one part of an Education Revolution being initiated by this Government. Social inclusion and closing the gaps will be central to the billions of dollars collectively invested in schools and school communities by the Australian Government in partnership with school systems, parents and other stakeholders.

Closing the gaps can be achieved by working together to reveal those approaches that are making a difference for Indigenous students and by effectively implementing those approaches through our partnerships. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 can make an important contribution to closing the gaps between the education outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

SCHOOLS ASSISTANCE BILL 2008

To best meet the challenges of the future, Australia needs a school system which delivers excellent outcomes for all students and which connects educational outcomes with opportunity for all students to achieve their full potential. This system must be high-quality, transparent, well-funded and it must focus on the needs of individual students.

The Education Revolution has at its core a commitment to a school system that enables all students to acquire the skills and knowledge that they need to participate effectively in society and the globalised economy. To support this goal, it is critical that we move forward from the historical focus on the public/private divide, to a deeper debate about how we improve the fundamental quality of school education.

We need an ambitious national strategy to improve our schools, driven by the twin goals of excellence and equity. Social disadvantage continues to be highly significant in determining the life chances of too many children. Disadvantage should not be destiny. In raising educational outcomes across the board, we need to ensure that areas of disadvantage are targeted and receive the support they need, regardless of sector.

The impact of disadvantage is not restricted to any one sector, and nor should our response be restricted. There are schools that struggle with limited resources trying to serve disadvantaged communities in both the government and non-government sector. The future of Australian schooling will require resources to be targeted to the areas where they will have maximum impact on educational outcomes.

The Australian Government is working with States and Territories, through the Council of Australian Governments, to develop a shared set of aspirations and policy directions which will provide the basis for our school funding arrangements and our reform initiatives over the coming years.

The new framework will connect educational investment in schools, teachers and families with a new commitment to transparency. This will involve strengthened reporting systems, against ambitious and clear performance targets. It will be guided by our overriding objective of creating a schooling system in which every school can deliver a high quality education that is responsive to the needs of individual students. New ‘National Partnership’ payments will encourage further improvements in the priority areas.

The non-government school sector is a vital part of this national reform agenda. The Government recognises that schools need certainty and stability.

Funding for non-government schools will be appropriated under the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. The funding arrangements for the non-government schools sector for 2009 to 2012 will remain largely the same as those currently in place so as to deliver on the Government’s 2007 election commitment that no school will lose a dollar.

This will also allow time for the arrangements between States and non-government schools to be put in place to ensure that in future funding arrangements, the States will be able to take a lead role in delivering improved outcomes across the entire schools system.

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 will appropriate funding of an estimated $28 billion for the non-government school sector for the years 2009 to 2012. This bill will maintain the current SES funding and indexation arrangements to ensure that total recurrent funding for schools over 2009 to 2012 will not fall below 2008 levels.

There will be additional funding for all non-government schools where 80 per cent or more of the students are Indigenous and for non-government schools in remote and very remote areas where 50 per cent or more of the students are Indigenous.

Strategic recurrent assistance for schools with Indigenous enrolments, previously funded under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000, will also be appropriated under this bill.

The incorporation of a number of schools funding elements for Indigenous students into a single, streamlined Supplementary Assistance element will reduce reporting and red tape for schools and provide increased flexibility for schools to put in place long-term approaches that have proven successful.

The provisions of the bill, including the provision of maximum recurrent funding to schools with a high proportion of Indigenous students and the Indigenous Funding Guarantee, provide a real opportunity to close the gap in educational outcomes for Indigenous students.

The bill continues to provide for targeted funding for teaching of languages other than English, English for new arrivals to Australia, literacy and numeracy and students with special learning needs and for students in country areas.

A central element of the bill and funding arrangements for 2009 to 2012 is a simpler, but strengthened and better focussed performance information and reporting framework for non-government schools. These requirements for non-government schools will be consistent with the conditions required of the states and territories under the National Education Agreement covering government schools.

Information and reporting requirements in the bill focus strongly on five requirements central to good reporting to parents, the community and government - national testing, national reports on the outcomes of schooling, provision of individual school information, reports to parents and publication of school information. This is in contrast to the legislation for the previous four year funding period that imposed over twenty requirements spanning a range of policy areas, necessitating a high level of regulation, monitoring and red tape on systems and schools.

This bill will ensure certainty of funding for non-government schools from 2009 to 2012, it gives additional support for schools servicing Indigenous students and provides a framework for ensuring a high quality, consistent and accountable school sector across Australia.

INTERSTATE ROAD TRANSPORT CHARGE AMENDMENT BILL 2008

The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 enables nationally agreed new Heavy Vehicle registration charges to be applied to heavy vehicles registered under the Australian Government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme (FIRS).

The new charges are set out in the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination, which was unanimously endorsed by Commonwealth, State and Territory Transport Ministers at the Australian Transport Council meeting in Canberra of 29 February 2008.

The new heavy vehicle charges are one component of the Rudd Labor Government’s broader heavy vehicle productivity and safety agenda.

The bill will ensure that Federal Interstate Registration Scheme charges are consistent with state and territory registration charges as of 1 July 2008.

National consistency in heavy vehicle regulation is important for our nation.

Heavy vehicles operate right across our country transporting freight across state and territory jurisdictions.

There are approximately 365,000 Heavy Vehicles operating in Australia. Industry needs to be certain that it can operate nationally, without excessive red tape or confronting access issues at state borders.

In 2006 Heavy Vehicles moved a total of 1.69 billion tonnes of freight, representing 70% of the total domestic tonnes carried by all transport modes.

Successive Governments at both Commonwealth and State and Territory levels have supported the principle of cost recovery from the heavy vehicle industry for road construction and maintenance costs incurred through the collection of Heavy Vehicle Charges.

In a speech given on 28 June 2007 entitled The Coalition Government’s Transport Reform Agenda, the Member for Lyne, then Federal Transport Minister 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.”

Recovery of road expenditure under the nationally agreed heavy vehicle charges is achieved through a combination of a fixed registration charge, collected by the states and territories and a road user charge collected by the Australian Government. This bill deals only with the registration charges.

The most recent heavy vehicle charge determination was introduced in 2001. It established charges to recover past expenditure from the heavy vehicle sector, that at the same time, lowered registration fees for some larger trucks, effectively cross subsidising them.

Registration charges were indexed while fuel charges were not.

As a result of this, the amount of money raised does not recover the cost of providing infrastructure for heavy vehicles.

This was confirmed in the December 2006 Productivity Commission Report into Road and Rail Infrastructure Pricing.

The National Transport Commission estimates that the current under - recovery is in excess of $100 million per annum.

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.

That determination was to deliver revised charges for introduction in 2008, which fully recovered the heavy vehicle industry’s share of aggregate government road expenditure, to index those arrangements so as to not lead to further under recovery, and to remove cross subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

During 2007, the National Transport Commission undertook a comprehensive consultation process which informed its final recommendations.

A six week consultation process on the draft Regulatory Impact Statement was undertaken. This process involved written submissions, provision of industry briefings and a series of focus group consultations with industry, trade unions, state and territory governments, peak industry associations and freight customers.

As a result of these consultations, the National Transport Commission made a number of changes to its recommendations, which were discussed with industry and jurisdictions.

The Determination proposed by the National Transport Commission recommended a new set of registration charges which rebalance the relative contribution of different heavy vehicle classes.

These new charges will result in larger trucks, the B doubles and road trains, paying more in registration charges. To assist the industry adjust, these increases will be phased in over three years.

They will also result in a reduction in charges for smaller trucks.

No longer will owners of smaller trucks have to subsidise the B doubles and road trains.

These changes better align charges to the impacts of those vehicles on our roads.

The Determination also increases the Road User Charge from 19.633 cents per litre to 21cents per litre, indexed annually.

After consulting with the industry, the Government has decided to delay the increase in the Road User charge until 1 January 2009.

As I outlined earlier, this charge is not part of the bill before the House, but a separate Declaration under the Fuel Tax Act 2006.

The Rudd Government has decided to supplement the Determination with a $70 million, four year Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Package that will fund:

• Trials of technologies that electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed;
• The construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops and de-coupling areas along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities to assist truck drivers rest ; and
• Bridge strengthening projects and upgrades to linkages between existing Auslink freight routes enabling access to those roads to more productive heavy vehicles.

The Government will consult with industry and state and territory Governments to determine the best combination of projects for the use of the $70 million package.

Since taking carriage of an issue that we inherited from the previous Government, the Government has been carefully listening to the views of the industry.

Our decision to implement the $70 million safety and productivity package, and to delay the implementation of the Road User Charge until 1 January 2009 were taken after consultations with industry.

On 29 February, Stuart St Clair from the Australian Trucking Association said:

“The trucking industry and working families will benefit from the Australian Government’s decision to delay increasing the fuel tax paid by trucking operators…”

“Minister Albanese has listened to the industry and delivered a strong result for trucking operators and Australian Families…”

The heavy vehicle industry needs to pay it’s fair share of road construction and maintenance costs.

It is also important that the very largest trucks pay their full share and that they are no longer subsidised by smaller trucks.

The new charges will be fairer to both those in the industry and to the wider community. Importantly, the new charges deliver the Council of Australian Governments’ requirement for full and ongoing cost recovery.

The new charges will encourage state and territory Governments to facilitate access to the road network to higher productivity heavy vehicles.

This, in turn, would make better use of the nation’s infrastructure - a key element of the Rudd Labor Government’s plan to raise productivity, fight inflation and maintain economic growth.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

ROAD CHARGES LEGISLATION REPEAL AND AMENDMENT BILL 2008

The purpose of the Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill is to restore uniformity to heavy vehicle registration charges in Australia and to update the heavy vehicle road user charge to ensure the Australian heavy vehicle fleet pays its way for its share of road infrastructure costs incurred by Governments.

It is one of two bills to implement the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination, which sets a new road user charge and new heavy vehicle registration charges for heavy vehicles throughout Australia. The Determination was unanimously agreed by transport ministers at the Australian Transport Council meeting in February 2008.

Recovery of road expenditure associated with the heavy vehicle industry is achieved through a combination of a fixed registration charge, collected by the states and territories, and a road user charge collected by the Commonwealth through the Fuel Tax Act 2006.

The bill repeals the Road Transport Charges (Australian Capital Territory) Act 1993 as well as making consequential amendments to the Road Transport Reform (Heavy Vehicle Registration) Act 1997 to remove links to the former Act.

The bill also amends the Fuel Tax Act 2006 to set the road user charge rate at 21 cents per litre, in line with the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination. Amendments to the Fuel Tax Act will also establish a mechanism to allow adjustment of the road user charge by regulation. These regulations would be subject to review by this Parliament in the normal manner.

This bill does not deal with changes to registration charges under the Federal Interstate Registration Scheme. These changes are dealt with in the accompanying Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008 No. 2.

There are approximately 365,000 Heavy Vehicles operating in Australia.

Successive Governments at Commonwealth, State & Territory levels have supported the principle of ‘cost recovery’ from the heavy vehicle industry for its fair share of road construction and maintenance costs incurred by Government through the collection of Heavy Vehicle Charges.

In April 2007, the Council of Australian Governments required the Australian Transport Council to devise a new charges determination for implementation on 1 July 2008 that fully recovers infrastructure costs from the heavy vehicle industry, ends cross-subsidisation between heavy vehicle classes and indexes charges to ensure costs continued to be recovered.

The House should note that, in a speech given on 28 June 2007 entitled The Coalition Government’s Transport Reform Agenda, the then Federal Transport Minister 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.”

In developing the 2007 Heavy Vehicle Charges Determination, the National Transport Commission proposed a revised road user charge and amended registration charges that remove cross subsidies between the smallest heavy vehicles in the fleet and the larger trucking combinations.  These changes would address a $100 million under-recovery of heavy vehicles share of road construction and maintenance expenditure

After consulting with industry, the Government decided to delay the increase in the road user charge until 1 January 2009.

The revised heavy vehicle charges bring a new level of fairness to the recovery of road construction and maintenance costs from heavy vehicles. These revised charges remove the unfair registration charge cross subsidies that see operators of small heavy vehicles subsidising the road construction and maintenance costs attributed to the largest heavy vehicles.

It is unreasonable to expect operators of small heavy vehicles to subsidise the road costs of the largest heavy vehicles. Those opposing measures to implement revised national heavy vehicle charges are condemning operators of small heavy vehicles to a continued and unfair burden.

Instead, by ensuring that heavy vehicles pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs, we are ensuring that the tax payer is not left to foot the bill of the damage and wear and tear that heavy vehicles do to our roads. And neither is the ACT.

All states have now implemented the revised heavy vehicle registration rates, with the Northern Territory currently introducing the new national charges into their Parliament.

The Commonwealth, however, is yet to introduce new registration charges for Federal Interstate Registration Scheme vehicles. This is despite the fact that these vehicles represent just three per cent of heavy vehicles and that registration revenue from these vehicles is returned to states and territories in full.

The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill will also repeal legislation that is currently preventing the ACT government setting its own heavy vehicle registration charges.

A key element of the Inter-Governmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Road, Rail and Intermodal Transport entered into between the Commonwealth of Australia and the States and Territories requires that the Commonwealth ‘repeal any road transport legislation that has been enacted by the Commonwealth for the ACT as soon as practicable’.

Repealing the Act will enable the ACT to implement the revised heavy vehicles charges determination within their legislative framework in the same manner as the other States and Territories have already done. This will bring Australia closer to uniform national heavy vehicle registration charges.

The Road Charges Legislation Repeal and Amendment Bill also amends the Fuel Tax Act 2006 to increase in the road user charge from 19.633 cents per litre to 21 cents per litre.

I would like to take this opportunity to clearly explain that this measure does not re-introduce indexation of the fuel excise tax.

Truck operators to do not pay fuel excise the way the rest of Australian motorists do. Like all motorists they pay 38.14 cents per litre at the bowser for their fuel however, they receive a fuel tax rebate of 18.51 cents per litre. The balance (19.63 cents per litre) represents the road user charge. This is not a tax – instead it is a mechanism to recover costs from the industry for its share of road infrastructure costs.

Nor does this bill implement indexation of the road user charge.

The 2007 heavy vehicle charges determination included recommendations for a mechanism to allow automatic adjustments to the road user charge to minimise the impact of possible future price shocks that have accompanied heavy vehicle determinations to date.

The bill allows the government to implement a mechanism to adjust the road user charge by regulations. These regulations are not protected from disallowance. Should the government of the day decide to declare regulations to adjust the road user charge, the Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise these regulations at the time.

The increase in the road user charge proposed by this bill ensures that heavy vehicles over 4.5 tonnes pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs. No more and no less.

If heavy vehicles don’t pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs, these costs must be met by the rest of the community.

In addition, ongoing under recovery of heavy vehicle charges provides a strong disincentive for states and territories to allow wider access to their road networks for high productivity vehicles.

This puts at significant risk any further expansion of high mass limits networks and the ability of the heavy vehicle industry to innovate and develop new, safer and more productive vehicles to take advantage of these networks

The Rudd Government maintains its commitment to supplement the Determination with a $70 million, four year Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Package that will fund:

• the construction of more heavy vehicle rest stops along our highways and on the outskirts of our major cities to assist truck drivers rest ; and
• trials of black box technologies that electronically monitor a truck driver’s work hours and vehicle speed.
• bridge strengthening projects and upgrades to linkages between existing Auslink freight routes;

The Government has consulted with industry and state and territory Governments to determine the best combination of projects for the use of the $70 million package.

That package can only be funded through from the passage of this bill and the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill (No 2) 2008.

In closing, I would urge those opposed to these measures to take a moment to seriously consider the impact on the 25 per cent of those heavy vehicle operators who stand to benefit from reduced registration charges as a result of the introduction of revised heavy vehicle charges.

These operators will no longer have to subsidise the road construction and maintenance costs of the biggest heavy vehicles.

And let’s not forget that operators of the biggest heavy vehicles stand to gain from revised charges too. By ensuring that they pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs, states and territories are far more likely to open up their networks to these higher mass vehicles because they will be assured that they will recover the costs of the damage that these vehicles will do to these new networks.

The new charges will encourage state and territory Governments to facilitate access to the road network to higher productivity heavy vehicles.

This, in turn, would make better use of the nation’s infrastructure - a key element of the Rudd Labor Government’s plan to raise productivity, fight inflation and maintain economic growth.

I commend the bill to the House.

TEMPORARY RESIDENTS’ SUPERANNUATION LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2008

The Temporary Residents’ Superannuation Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 implements the Government’s measure to help reduce the number of lost accounts and unclaimed mon