Australian Federal Member of Parliament, Nola Marino MP, has used a speech in the Australian Parliament to Challenge the government over planned increases to road charges via the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 2008(*).

Representing the Regional seat of Forrest in the South West of Western Australia, Ms Marino claims that the new bill will enable heavy vehicle registration charges to be applied to trucks registered under the Australian government’s Federal Interstate Registration Scheme.  The MP concerned that both the heavy vehicle registration fees and the diesel fuel excise will be increased under the proposals.

The increases it is said are to arise from the application of an annual road cost adjustment formula, a formula that will result in charges higher than the Consumer Price Index.  Ms Marino has said that the increase in charges will most likely effect highly productive multi-combination vehicles such as B-doubles and B-triples, tractor trailers that carry much of the time-sensitive foodstuff freight in Western Australia, where great distances are travelled to regional and remote towns.

Ms Marino believes that the imposts posed by the increased charges threaten to slow improvement in the road freight sector’s in productivity and in environmental performance by discouraging trucking operators from converting from semi-trailers to the multi-combination, a circumstance that will result in even more trucks on already congested roads, remaining concerned that the government will drastically reduce road funding around Australia and therefore reduce road safety.

Ms Marino says the B-doubles and B-triples, the bigger, longer, higher mass carriers, have proven to be the safer and more productive combination and that the federal government needs to encourage the use of these combinations rather that dissuading existing and future operators of these types of vehicles.

Source: Parliament of Australia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.