Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 is an important piece of legislation. It certainly demonstrates the government’s commitment to road safety and to the infrastructure of our local roads. It is very important to my electorate of Werriwa. As I know you appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, my electorate straddles one of the most important road transport corridors in the country, and that is the Hume Highway. The Hume Highway sees about 365,000 heavy vehicle movements per year. That accounts for about 20 million tonnes of freight. I saw the statistics that were produced in the lead-up to the widening of the F5. They showed that in my electorate there were 6,000 truck movements per day. That indicates the amount of reliance that we have on heavy road transport, which remains a vital element in the economic wellbeing of our communities.

Heavy vehicle road transport accounts for 1.7 billion tonnes of freight per annum. That means that 70 per cent of total domestic freight is moved by road. Therefore, it is only appropriate that we as a government see that every effort is made to ensure that our roads are not only efficient and effective but, very importantly, safe. Reliance on road transport, regrettably, as indicated by all the various statistics I have seen, results in a road carnage figure which is obviously devastating for those personally affected but, with respect, is also devastating to the community as a whole. This is the case particularly when you appreciate that one in five road fatalities involves heavy vehicles. Speed and fatigue are significant factors which contribute to that. They are factors which this bill sets out to do something about.

Road safety is an obligation for all road users. It is certainly a responsibility that is shared between state, territory and local governments. But the federal government’s responsibility is to provide leadership in, and resources for, the proper and efficient use of our road transport infrastructure. That is what this bill does. The government’s leadership, quite frankly, is evident in this bill. The bill demonstrates an ongoing commitment to road safety and to local road infrastructure.

The bill will enable funding for heavy vehicle safety. It will continue the Roads to Recovery program. It will allow better management of the Roads to Recovery funding list. It will also enable the funding of state governments while the most appropriate local government to be affected is being determined. So it will not hold money back while those bureaucratic assessments are being made; it will actually do something about ensuring that our roads are as safe and effective as possible in being the conduit by which heavy vehicles deliver their product to market.

The amendments in the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 will enable the funding of projects, including the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program, from 1 July 2009. The bill will allow the continuation of the Roads to Recovery program for a further five years, extending beyond June 2009. It will allow for the better management of the Roads to Recovery funding list, which sets out all the funding recipients in Australia and the amounts they receive. That is currently not able to be amended except, as I understand it, in very, very limited circumstances.

I will deal with the safety aspects of this bill. As I said, safety is very much at the forefront of this legislation. The bill will amend the definition of ‘roads’ contained in the act so that it will include heavy vehicle safety facilities. Some might think that that is just a semantic gesture, but this will enable the funding arrangements to be made so that investments can be made in the establishment of heavy vehicle rest areas; truck parking and decoupling areas, particularly in the outer suburban and regional areas; and new technology for vehicles’ electrical systems so that the performance of drivers can be validated to ensure that drivers are not driving excessive hours and that they are observing legislated rest periods. Those are very much fundamental things in improving truck safety.

I should indicate that for some time now I have been visiting a truck stop. I started visiting that truck stop probably because of issues about Work Choices in the lead-up to the last election. I regularly go down to Uncle Leo’s truck stop at the crossroads in Casula. It is a practice I have developed. I just listen to these drivers. Most of these drivers, by and large, are owner-drivers. They talk to me about what they have to do to make their times. One of the things that I did not appreciate until last year is the amount of down time a number of the transport operators have. The need to have rest areas or decoupling areas is just so critical.

I was talking to one driver who had been at Uncle Leo’s truck stop for 14 hours. He had haulage that was going to one of our main distribution points in the outer metropolitan area of Sydney, but he was waiting for a slot time. Where I came from, I dealt regularly with slot times. We had them in the aviation industry. By and large, that is how we regulated when planes arrived and departed. This driver explained to me that he had been waiting 14 hours for a slot time. His vehicle—his rig and the contents of it—was at this truck stop waiting for a time that he could unload. He was not getting paid. As he put it to me, ‘I am a mobile storage facility.’ He was simply going to be there until he could get his slot time so he could unload. This fellow was from Brisbane—he had nothing to do with my electorate to that extent—and he was simply waiting for a period when he could go and unload. In terms of the economics of that, he was not getting paid; he would have to wait for his slot. On other occasions at the same truck stop, I have heard drivers haggling and negotiating over the telephone for passage back to Brisbane. They are trying to get a load to go back. I have been with one driver there who settled on the fuel costs on a return load back to his home port of Brisbane.

The picture I am trying to paint is that, in the heavy vehicle transport industry, it is more than possible that people will, where necessary, cut corners. They will certainly push the envelope. They will certainly do what they see as necessary to make a quid, which unfortunately leads to speeding and perseverance despite fatigue. That might be their own personal business, but doing it on our roads is an issue for the community generally. That is why this piece of legislation is very important: it puts that very much in the forefront. It recognises the competitive issues within this industry and it aims to help regulate those issues in a safe and effective way.

I have got a lot of time for these owner-drivers out there. I appreciate the amount of work they have to put in to make a quid, to look after their families, to pay the mortgage and to pay the repayments on their vehicles, but when you hear their personal stories, as I have, it gives you a new appreciation. There is a large amount of pressure on drivers in the heavy haulage industry, and one in five road fatalities in this country involves a heavy vehicle. That should be of concern to all of us. That is why this legislation is so essential.

I have heard the view of the shadow minister and the Leader of the National Party. It is true that this piece of legislation has the intention of ensuring that the heavy vehicle industry pays its fair share. You are probably at the sharper end of this than I am, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, coming from a rural background, but I know from my local councils of Liverpool, Campbelltown and, to some extent, Camden the amount of money that is required for road maintenance. Heavy vehicles contribute largely to the deterioration of some of the local roads, as vehicles are using those roads to get to ports, marketplaces or other transport hubs. I do not think that it is improper to ensure that people pay their fair share for that. I do not think it is proper to think that our local government organisations are going to foot the bill. What we are trying to do in this piece of legislation is ensure that there is proper balance—the sort of balance that Minister Truss, as he was at that stage, was talking about when he gave a speech on 28 June 2007 entitled ‘The coalition government’s transport reform agenda’. In that speech he 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 I emphasise ‘in total’—

and will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

When you hear a speech like that, you think that means they are going to come in and at least make an attempt at a fairer system by having the heavy vehicles industry pay a fair share for road damage. I sat through the last speech and, probably like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I came to the conclusion that that is not what the minister—now the shadow minister—was effectively saying. There must be that balance, and we are working hard to establish that.

The very effective Roads to Recovery program is due to run out on 30 June. It ensures that local governments are not left high and dry in having to maintain road infrastructure to accommodate damage and deterioration of local roads. This bill will ensure that Roads to Recovery will be extended a further five years through to June 2014. Additionally, the bill will facilitate Labor’s increase in funding from $300 million per year to $350 million per year. That is an increase of $250 million over five years. The Labor government’s total commitment to fixing local road transport issues will increase to $1.75 billion over the life of the Roads to Recovery program. That is certainly a major commitment to the infrastructure requirements of not only the heavy vehicle industry but also local governments, who often find it difficult to maintain roads to accommodate heavy vehicles travelling in their constituencies.

This bill deals with AusLink, and I want to put on the record the commitment that the Rudd Labor government delivered to the people of south-west Sydney. A $140-million project has been initiated to widen the F5 freeway. Of that, the Rudd Labor government has already committed $112 million, and the remainder of the funding will be found by the state government. That is effectively an 80-20 arrangement. Tenders for the project were called only two weeks ago, notwithstanding the member for Macarthur’s view that it was in never-never land. I assure him—and this could help when he visits his electorate from his home in Mosman—this project is going ahead.

I congratulate Campbelltown City Council and the mayor, Aaron Rule, who, with due respect to them, went to great lengths in lobbying both major parties in the lead-up to the last election to get the funding commitments necessary to proceed with this significant upgrade of road infrastructure. The upgrade involves a two-lane section of road about 10 kilometres long between Ingleburn and Narellan. It will be upgraded to four lanes between Campbelltown and Ingleburn and to three lanes each way between Narellan Road and Campbelltown Road. That is a significant net adjustment to the area.

It is very significant because it is what we need to be doing—that is, building these pieces of infrastructure—not simply to make it easier for people to move from point A to point B around my electorate, although it will do that as well, but also to help open up commercial land or employment-generating land so that we can establish industries that will have access to both road and transport facilities, including the M5, the F5 and the M7. It will also allow the proper development of intermodal terminals, which will facilitate the establishment of south-west Sydney as an inland port.

That is what we argued in the lead-up to the election. However, believe it or not, the member for Macarthur took the view—for which he was pilloried by the electorate—and ran the argument that the airspace on top of the Hume Highway is not owned by the Commonwealth but by the state government. Therefore, we could build it and the air would be a state government responsibility. If members do not believe me, I am happy to produce newspaper articles about that. That is the way the member for Macarthur treated the people of south-west Sydney. He had the audacity to say that the F5 freeway argument almost cost him his seat. Granted, his margin went from 11.2 per cent down to 0.7 per cent, but I think that was the result of things other than ridiculous comments like that. It might have been a result of the general servicing of the area. With respect, if members show disdain like that for the people of south-west Sydney perhaps they should not enjoy even a 0.7 per cent margin. As I have said to him previously, at least this government is building a road to make it easier for him to travel occasionally from his home in Mosman to his electorate of Macarthur. I am glad the member has joined us, because he might want to attest to what I have just said.

This project is so fundamental to south-west Sydney that it had to become a bargaining tool. Doing something fair and right should not have been a bargaining issue; it should have been committed to. (Time expired)

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