Beaumont Carol: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5490] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chair. I rise to make a very brief intervention on the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. We support the specific changes provided for in Part 2 to enable notice to be given of a road-user charges increase and put the expiry of pre-purchased road-user charges at 1 month after that. I acknowledge that this measure is a consequence of the work of the Hon Annette King and the inquiry that she set up. My colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor outlined a bit of the history of that so I will not relitigate it. This measure is a fair solution so we agree on it. 
I will continue with the theme I was speaking on a little earlier about the environment. The reason for the road-user charges as we know is so that truck operators can contribute to the costs they place on our road network. We have had to have increases in the charges because truck operators were not paying their fair share up to the previous increases. But one of the areas of concern we have is about the very real prospect of heavier trucks being allowed on our roads. The Rail and Maritime Transport Union made some very well-informed remarks about that which I think are important to note while we are considering road-user charges. There is a range of reasons why allowing heavier trucks on our roads would be a problem. There are of course public safety issues related to slow trucks being on our roads. There is also the fact that the size increase we are talking about would make a significant difference to the difficulties on our roads not only in terms of road safety but also in terms of the damage done to our roads and it is unreasonable to expect other road users to pay for those additional costs. 
There is also talk of replacing road-user charges—the matter we are talking about here—with a flat diesel tax which would exacerbate the already un-level playing field between road transport rail transport and coastal shipping. In fact it would be another subsidy to the road transport industry. In this document before me Minister Joyce has been called the “Minister of Road Transport” and I think that is quite appropriate when we see some of the changes that were announced recently such as changing the funding balance by shifting money out of public transport and into roads whereas of course the previous Labour Government was very much committed to having a balanced transport policy. As others have mentioned that policy was about a multimodal transport provision. 
I think the lack of that vision by the Minister of Transport and by the Government is very important when we consider the impact on our environment. We have options regarding the movement of freight. We can move freight by means of coastal shipping. We can move freight by rail. The use of larger and larger trucks is not necessarily best for the environment; in fact we know it is worse for the environment. 
I want to go back to what I was saying. I was part-way through giving an important list of backtracking by the Government in the area of the environment and was saying we are indeed moving in the wrong direction. Members who were present at the time will recall that I was talking about the fact that the Government has used every possible excuse to delay the setting of a carbon pollution reduction target. It has scrapped the Fast Forward Fund and the research and development tax credits that would have funded agriculture’s transition to lower-polluting technologies. The Government repealed the biofuels obligation failed to come up with any sustainability-related stimulus measures and has generally dragged its heels. 
I conclude by saying of course we support the very sensible changes in this bill but we will continue to hold this Government to account for its lack of leadership in the area of the environment.