Barker Rick: Road User Charges Bill — Second Reading 
Barker Rick: Road User Charges Bill — Second Reading 
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Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I have been quite intrigued by this debate on the Road User Charges Bill. I am probably one of the few people in this House who has driven a heavy truck. I am licensed to drive one and over the years I have grappled with the complexities of the law. Looking at this piece of legislation I have— 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: I thought the member was a bikie. 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: I will come back to that in a moment. One thing truckers do not like like a lot of other groups is paying tax. That is reasonable. Everybody would like to pay less tax rather than more. Truckers know they pay quite a lot of tax. But when I reflect upon that fact as a person who rides a motorbike I know I pay quite a lot of tax as well for riding my bike. 
The point I feel is important here is that the rates charged on trucks reflect the amount of damage they do to the road. The rates should be proportionate. If I reflect on the amount of tax I pay for riding my bike in relation to the excise duty on trucks then I think as a motorcyclist I am worse off. A large 18-wheeler truck carrying a full load I am advised by research I saw from the United States is equivalent to 160000 cars. Well as one riding a motorbike I would say that a car would cause the equivalent of four times the amount of damage done by a motorbike. But I cannot see that truck operators are paying something close to 700000 times the amount of tax I pay for riding my bike. So on one side the argument is that truck operators are not paying enough. 
Having put that aside we then look at the change in the system here. My colleagues have picked up a very good point—that we are changing the system from nominated weights to maximum weights. I drove a truck at one time that had quite a large maximum weight but it had a much lighter nominated weight because I was carrying full loads of polystyrene. The truck was capable of carrying many tonnes because it had a very long tray but it was fully laden with polystyrene. Well there is not much that is lighter than polystyrene. If that truck is going to be taxed at its maximum weight then the operator will be paying substantially more under the new system than under the old system— 
Kris Faafoi 
: Hmm! 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: —and my colleague agrees. We can see that a truck driver who has a load of polystyrene will feel very much aggrieved because the tax is on volume not weight whereas the same truck could be carrying steel of much less volume. Steel is very heavy as is concrete. 
The point made by previous speakers was that we have a trucking fleet that has been bought and paid for around the road-user charges system. People have bought trucks that are able to carry much heavier loads but they have never intended that they carry much heavier loads. They have intended to carry light loads and they have wanted to carry volume. That is efficient and economic because they can therefore buy road-user charges equal to the weight they have nominated. 
Every trucker knows they have to be careful about the weight they nominate because the weight of the load can vary. A truck can be carrying pallets and pallets of goods will have a certain weight but truckers know they have to be careful to take into account the weight of the pallets when they are wet. The pallets are not always dry and the weight of the loaded truck is lighter when the pallets are dry. So truckers are always careful to measure their trucks according to the weight they are likely to carry. Someone might have six tonnes on a truck that is capable of carrying 20 tonnes but under the current regime the truck driver will be charged for 20 tonnes rather than— 
Kris Faafoi 
: It doesn’t matter does it? 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: Well it is going to be much more expensive. 
The issue I have heard my colleagues raise here is the lack of consultation about this legislation. The industry has raised the issue that these charges will not be set by statute; they will be set by officials making recommendations to the Minister who will then simply promulgate them. The question here is what is the fairness or the democracy in that. The trucking industry is deeply suspicious about that process and I think its members have a right to be deeply suspicious. 
Of course the Cabinet rules require that there is consultation but consultation can be done poorly and it can be done well. The Government of the day—National—will most probably say that if it makes regulations the regulations will then have to go to the Regulations Review Committee. But that referral could be quite some considerable time after the regulations have been put into force and people have had to pay. If the Regulations Review Committee decides that the regulations are unfair the committee can then nominate that the regulations be struck down. But that decision has to come back to the House and there will be a vote on it. The vote will be of the parties in this House. Who can imagine that the National Government and its support parties would vote down regulations that their own Ministers had put forward? That is being one’s own judge and jury of one’s own case and I can well understand why the trucking industry is very concerned about this process. I have similar concerns. 
Debate interrupted.