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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-05-31 Daily Xml
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Bills

Statutes Amendment (Heavy Vehicle Registration Fees) Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (15:57): I rise to speak briefly in support of the Statutes Amendment (Heavy Vehicles Registration Fees) Bill. The Heavy Vehicle National Law, which came into operation in 2014, established the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, Australia's first national independent regulator for all vehicles over 4.5 tonnes gross vehicle mass.

Through the amendment bill before us today, South Australia joins other states and territories, with the exception of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, as a participant in the national heavy vehicle regulation regime. This will help to ensure that South Australia is meeting the requirements under the legislative regime for heavy vehicles and it aids in reducing inconsistencies between jurisdictions for heavy vehicle operators by cutting red tape, an unnecessary burden in day-to-day business operations.

The long-term goal of the Heavy Vehicle National Law is to establish a uniform national heavy vehicle system. There are, however, some regulations that remain the same, including inspections, driver licensing, all matters related to the carriage of dangerous goods and heavy vehicle registration, which is still the responsibility of the relevant state and territory authorities. Unfortunately, the registration chapter of the national laws is yet to commence. Therefore, heavy vehicle fees must still be dealt with in this place.

Through these amendments before us today, the bill is facilitating an industry-sourced funding model, meaning that the regulator is funded by the revenue collected from heavy vehicle registration fees. South Australia and other relevant participating jurisdictions have agreed that the regulatory revenue collected as part of their registration fees will be transferred to the regulator fund to meet each jurisdiction's share of the operating budget of the regulator, which will assist the regulator to carry out their important duties. I commend the Statutes Amendment (Heavy Vehicles Registration Fees) Bill to the house.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:59): As previous speakers have indicated, the opposition supports the bill. It is not a controversial bill and is part of what is happening around the nation. I indicate that I am the lead speaker. The bill amends the Highways Act 2006 and the Motor Vehicles Act 1959, with amendments to assist South Australia to meet its agreed obligations as a participating jurisdiction under the February 2014 Heavy Vehicle National Law (South Australia) Act 2013, which contains the national law as a schedule. The bill provides for the creation of a National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (known as the Regulator).

The national legislative regime for heavy vehicles deals with trucks over 4.5 tonnes in gross vehicle mass. Because the registration chapter of the national law has not yet commenced, heavy vehicle rego is still under state legislation. However, participating jurisdictions' registration fees are governed by a model law approved by the national Transport Infrastructure Council made up of state and territory ministers.

Vehicle registration charges are now calculated on the basis of both road user charge and regulatory charge components. SA, along with other participating states, has agreed that the regulatory revenue collected as part of the registration be transferred to the regulator fund—this was previously paid by the SA registrar to the Highways Fund—providing the regulator with industry-based funding to resource its duties.

Amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act clarify that deductions from concessional registration charges for people living in remote areas and primary producers will be taken from the roads component and not the regulatory component of the fees provided to the regulator's fund. The bill is, in effect, a stopgap measure to pay for the NHVR until all arrangements are completed. Registration fees will not increase but, instead, a portion will be handed over to the NHVR instead of going to the Highways Fund from which SA's share would be paid to the NHVR separately.

We are seeing a focus on more transport and more freight happening around the nation, and particularly South Australia, being where it is—right in the middle of the east and the west—we see a lot of both rail and heavy vehicle traffic coming into South Australia, and there is no doubt that we will continue to see that increase. This was the reason why earlier this year the Leader of the Opposition and I, as well as the South Australian Liberal team, announced our Globe Link promise—that is, if elected in 2018, a Liberal government will develop an alternative corridor for heavy freight called Globe Link. Globe Link will boost the South Australian economy with the creation of jobs in construction, transport and, of course, beyond that, exports.

After 15 years of a Labor government, our share of the national export market has dropped, from about 7.5 per cent to around about 4 per cent, costing valuable jobs and export income. There is no doubt that when you look at employment figures from around the nation you can see that South Australia lags well and truly behind when it comes to the creation of new jobs. Last month alone, we saw a massive spike in South Australia's unemployment level, and I think that we are now running close on 30 months of having the nation's highest unemployment, either on a trend or seasonally adjusted level or a combination of both.

There simply has not been a focus on growing the economy here in South Australia. Our Globe Link program, which will enable goods to get to market more quickly, will take heavy vehicles—many of the heavy vehicles that travel in our suburbs—out of the suburbs, particularly for those who are living in the seat of Elder, through Westbourne Park, through Kingswood; for example, those who are living in Plympton and around the seat of Badcoe and those who are living around South Road. The government's plan, Labor's plan, is to turn Cross Road into a major truck thoroughfare, seeing more and more trucks heading through the suburbs of Adelaide, more and more trucks down Portrush Road and right through the suburbs of Adelaide.

Globe Link will shift the rail line out of the suburbs, bypass the Adelaide Hills and link up with the northern part of the track for it either to continue on to the west or, alternatively, hook into the northern suburbs where the bulk of our trade and freight activity happens in South Australia. It will remove all those freight trains out of Adelaide and Cross Road will no longer be the problem that it is, with 14 or 15 trains now close to two kilometres long holding up traffic at any time of the day or night.

It is particularly frustrating for those who are caught in that situation at peak hour because cars are pulled back from the intersection, or stopped, heading both west beyond Goodwood Road and east beyond Unley Road. It takes quite some time for that to clear once the train does pass. That will be a thing of the past for those who rely on South Road to move from east to west. Of course, it will take away the necessity for heavy vehicles to use Cross Road to get into the north-south corridor on South Road. We know how important transport is to our economy. We know how important it is to get goods to market quickly.

We know the enormous growth potential just north of us as the middle class continues to grow throughout China and South-East Asia when more and more people want to spend their discretionary money on the quality, healthy food we produce in South Australia. The trick, of course, is to get it to those markets quickly and to get it to those markets fresh. With the private sector taking up the option of a freight-only airport around Monarto, which is part of the Globe Link plan, we will have a situation where crayfish can leave in the morning and be served on restaurant tables in Shanghai and Hong Kong that evening. It will be an extraordinary feat for our food producers.

I commend the bill to the house and look forward to more work being done so that we can continue to service those who service us so well—those in the transport industry—so that they can continue to do their job safely and effectively for the benefit of their businesses and the economy. I want to finish by saying how disappointed I was to hear the member for Kaurna continuing to support the TWU's call for safe rates, which we know have been an absolute disaster for small business people throughout South Australia.

We have a situation where the only motivation for the Labor Party to introduce this in the first place was to force contractors who have their own businesses, who have taken out mortgages on their trucks against their houses, to get out of the trucking business and work for a big company that is unionised so that they are then forced to be union members. This is all about building the width and breadth of the base of the pyramid of politics that we see in operation in a Labor Party through unions, such as the shoppies union and the TWU.

Of course, it is no coincidence that the TWU and the shoppies union are in cahoots when it comes to who they put into the parliament in their delegates to the national conference or the state conferences for preselection. It is certainly no shift of ideology that we saw Russell Wortley, the flag waver of the left, now a flag waver of the right—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am not sure if this is actually pertinent to what we are supposed to be speaking about.

Mr PISONI: It's not?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think we need to draw you back to the nub of the bill.

Mr PISONI: A former union official of the Transport Workers Union?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think we need to draw you back to the nub of the bill.

Mr PISONI: Certainly. In that case, I conclude my remarks.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (16:09): I rise to speak to the Statutes Amendment (Heavy Vehicles Registration Fees) Bill 2017 and recognise its importance, given the enormous freight task that goes on across my electorate, across this state and across the nation each and every day.

The bill amends the Highways Act 1926 and the Motor Vehicles Act 1959 with amendments to assist South Australia to meet its agreed obligations as a participating jurisdiction under the February 2014 Heavy Vehicle National Law (South Australia) Act, which contains the national law as a schedule. Of course, we all remember that debate, which the opposition supported at the time. It is all part of the harmonisation process of transport, particularly heavy vehicles, across the country, although my recollection is that Western Australia did not jump on board at that time and may still not have. I am not sure about that, but they have decided for a time at least to go their own way.

There is no doubt that there has been increased regulation as a result of the harmonisation, but in essence the legislative regime, the national scheme or regime, deals with heavy vehicles over 4.5 tonnes in gross vehicle mass—so any truck, anything above a farm ute comes under this regulation. Because the registration chapter of the national law has not as yet commenced, heavy vehicle registration is still under state legislation. However, participating jurisdictions' registration fees are governed by model law approved by the national Transport and Infrastructure Council.

Vehicle registration charges are now calculated on the basis of both road user charge and regulatory charge components. South Australia, along with other participating states, has agreed that the regulatory revenue collected as part of registration be transferred to the regulator fund, previously paid by the South Australian registrar into the Highways Fund, providing the regulator with industry-based funding to resource its duties. There is likely to be plenty of funding there.

Amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act clarify that deductions from concessional registration charges for people living in remote areas and primary producers will be taken from the roads component and not the regulatory component of the fees provided to the regulator's fund. The bill is in effect a stopgap measure to pay for the NHVR until all arrangements are completed. Registration fees will not increase (which is pleasing to hear, and I will touch on that in a moment), but instead a portion will be handed to the NHVR, instead of going to the Highways Fund, from which the South Australian share would be paid to the NHVR separately anyway.

All that sounds rather complicated, but in essence it is part of the harmonisation process and makes an attempt to simplify the transport industry across the nation. As I mentioned earlier, the freight task undertaken by heavy vehicles—by trucks, road trains and B-doubles—across my electorate, this state and nationally each and every day is extraordinary. I do not know the tonnage, and I do not know whether anybody has ever stopped to calculate it, but without doubt this nation would grind to a halt if it were not for the task that our heavy vehicles undertake.

Truck registration is very expensive, tens of thousands of dollars, and I hear constantly from freight line operators, and even small business operators who might operate one or two trucks or a road train if it is a farmer, about the cost of registering heavy vehicles. In many cases, it is difficult for them to justify, and the government is well aware that trucks are a necessary part of these businesses, and most certainly they are compelled to pay if they want to stay on the road and stay in business. I hope that the government does not view vehicle registration simply as a cash cow, but it has become prohibitively expensive for many freight operators.

As to my own electorate, it would be remiss of me if I did not mention the freight duties that are undertaken there. Given that the Minister for Transport is here and leading the government's debate in this chamber, I will mention once again the Tod Highway on Eyre Peninsula in the electorate of Flinders and what a vital freight route that is in the west of the state and how much we appreciated the money expended on shoulder sealing over the last financial year and look forward to an ongoing program.

I have been lobbying for an upgrade to the Tod Highway for the whole time I have been in this place and will continue to do so until I have seen completed a shoulder-sealing operation in between Kyancutta and Karkoo—a distance of about 110 kilometres, I believe. Without doubt, I firmly believe and will say always that a wider road is a safer road. Particularly in these days of bigger, heavier and faster transport operations, a good, solid, wide and safe road for those to operate on is of paramount importance.

The other thing I will touch on quickly regarding local issues is the importance of gazetting local roads for road train operation. Slowly but surely, the department is winding the approvals out for even some minor roads to be available for road train and B-double access, but I believe it cannot happen quickly enough. Particularly now, when farmers are sowing yet another crop across this state and on Eyre Peninsula, we desperately need broad access for road trains to handle the freight task. With those few comments, I commend the bill and look forward to its swift passage.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (16:15): Can I thank the member for Flinders as well as the other contributors for their contributions on this bill. It may not appear to the house to be the most substantial bill that we have considered in recent times, but it is an important bill nonetheless. It represents the latest stage of what has been a period of very significant reform when it comes to the regulation of heavy vehicle transport in Australia.

This period of reform has been underway, as I said, for several years, most notably of course with the establishment of a National Heavy Vehicle Regulator. Australian jurisdictions have progressively passed over to that national regulator a series of roles, powers and responsibilities when it comes to administering heavy vehicle access to our road network and increasingly also playing a role in monitoring and enforcement. As several speakers have mentioned already today, that process continues as we speak.

In recent days, I have participated in the latest six-monthly transport ministers' meeting, which was on the Gold Coast. We considered a further range of changes that will see those participating jurisdictions pass some of the responsibilities they currently carry out with respect to this industry over to the national regulator. But I do pick up on some of the things that have been said today, in that the transfers of those responsibilities are not yet complete and not all jurisdictions have agreed to participate.

Western Australia, of course, is the most notable. Their rationale is that they have had the capacity over the last 10 years, as they have gone through a period of extraordinary economic growth and have been in receipt of extraordinary numbers of extra billions of revenue into their state budget, to quite substantially reduce registration and other charges that are levied upon the heavy vehicle industry in Western Australia. They see, for mainly that reason, little benefit in moving the regulation of the Western Australian industry into the national scheme. Western Australia, as is its wont over the economic cycle, goes through stages. They go from being extremely prosperous through their mining activities to being nothing but rent seekers, which is of course what they are at the moment.

I remember, when I first started as a mere adviser to a state treasurer, that there would be a coalition of smaller states that would meet before each treasurers' conference. Treasurers such as South Australia's Treasurer; the Western Australian treasurer, Eric Ripper, and other treasurers in smaller jurisdictions like the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory would have to get together the night before treasurers' conferences and try to plot how they would go about stopping the rapacious states of New South Wales and Victoria trying to cleave additional GST revenues away from smaller states like Western Australia and South Australia and protect their revenue bases against those other states' avaricious inclinations.

Of course, Western Australia distanced itself from those discussions when it was in receipt of extraordinary mining revenues. They then claimed that they were not getting their fair share and that, just like New South Wales, they should get more. They seem to be drifting back once again. It is extraordinary that those sorts of ebbs and flows of economic growth and prosperity affect Western Australia like that. As I have explained to some small extent, that has influenced their decision not to participate in this, which is a great shame because we are already seeing the benefits of moving to national regulation.

That includes, as the member for Flinders said, the increasing trend—perhaps not increasing fast enough—of gazetting more and more routes for higher capacity and higher productivity vehicles, not just in South Australia but principally across borders as well for those highways that stretch across borders like most of them do. That is a great benefit to the transport industry, moving from smaller vehicles like semitrailers to B-doubles, or B-doubles to road trains, etc. There are significant increases in productivity, and having a nationally efficient system—and some would debate whether we are there yet—is extremely important.

I am pleased that in more recent years South Australia has been leading the charge on improving heavy vehicle access to South Australian roads, principally in regional areas, by giving greater access to those higher productivity vehicles. It has taken, I think, a terrific effort of leadership by government agencies, including the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, the Department of Primary Industries and also the regional development minister, to drive a process where together we speak with those people who rely on the heavy transport industry across South Australia and see what benefits they would like delivered to them.

We are delivering those benefits. In our first tranche of efforts, through what we call the 90-day project, we are delivering a modern transport system for the agricultural industry. We have delivered over $50 million of benefits a year to that industry simply by improving the access to the roads that we give them. I am also pleased to say that, rather than just doing that, we are also increasing the amount of money we spend on regional roads. Certainly, I think it is becoming better and better understood amongst South Australians that, as a state, we went through a process, particularly during the 20-year period following World War II, of either building new roads or sealing what had been unsealed roads, particularly in regional areas.

We did that according to the standards of the day, and then for the next 30 or 40 years we did not keep up with the maintenance, let alone improvement, of those roads to more contemporary standards, particularly the standards of vehicles that were increasingly being produced in the heavy vehicle industry. That has led to us having parts of our regional road network in a state which we would say is not good enough for regular travel, let alone for more productive uses such as the uses of the heavy vehicle industry.

But I am very pleased that, a couple of budgets ago, we kicked in an extra $110 million for shoulder sealing, road rehabilitation and pavement upgrades, and those are making their presence felt across South Australia. The member for Flinders quite rightly raises the Tod Highway, which basically heads north-south from the Eyre Highway, apart from one infamous stretch of curves where the road has been very narrow. It has seen the beginning of some upgrades, and we have more upgrades to go in that area. That is the sort of effort that we need to bring to the remainder of the arterial road network in regional areas.

While we have spent significant amounts of money, particularly on the Dukes Highway upgrade, the Sturt Highway upgrade, and certainly in the last 15 years the condition of the Lincoln Highway has increased significantly, as well as other upgrades in different areas in the South-East, the Mid North, the Far West and Eyre Peninsula, better connecting these efforts will be increasingly important. That is why increasing our spending on these regional roads is really important.

I say that not to detract from the comments the member for MacKillop made to the house a little earlier today, when he bemoaned the loss of the situation. I am not sure if this is correct, so I will just quote what he advised the house, but he said that he can remember those good old days, back when the now Liberal opposition occupied the government benches and they had a Liberal transport minister, when they reformed heavy vehicle registrations and the then transport minister of the day said to some of her Liberal colleagues, 'Well, this is going to result in a revenue windfall.' I find that extraordinary. Surely, if you are going to do that, you try to do it on some sort of cost neutral basis rather than shoving the government hand into the pocket of private industry in regional areas.

Notwithstanding that claim by the member for MacKillop, he then said that the then minister for transport came up with a scheme whereby those windfall revenues could be put into fixing up roads in the areas that Liberal MPs represented. I know I am younger, and perhaps I do not wear the rose-coloured glasses when I look back on that period of the state's history of things like gerrymanders and pork-barrelling, and maybe that is a different view that I hold compared with, say, that of the member for MacKillop.

However, when it comes to road investment, rather than bemoaning that the current Labor government might have stopped that somewhat dubious practice and diverted those funds into blackspot funding, which I would argue is probably a good thing for the community rather than saying what the member for MacKillop said in bemoaning that it was an extraordinary and wasteful diversion of resources, I would have thought that it would be a good thing. Then again, I recognise that I stand opposite the member for MacKillop not only physically in this chamber but probably ideologically as well.

I have to say that I think it is with some regret that we will be farewelling the member for MacKillop from this parliament as he looks to hang up his hat in 2018 after a 21-year period of service. I for one will miss those little pearls of wisdom.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are not misleading the house, are you?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: In fact, I am at risk of misleading the house by saying I will miss those pearls of wisdom, Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are reminded then.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, thank you for guiding me back to the substance of the bill at hand. I am pleased to say that, rather than just leave our efforts in additional road funding at things like creating a State Black Spot program and increasing road maintenance funding in regional areas, we have also secured record amounts of funding, particularly in the last three years, for major road upgrades in metropolitan Adelaide, which will deliver vast benefits to the freight industry and the heavy vehicle transport industry.

The member for Little Para mentioned the Northern Connector project, which of course can be supplemented with the Torrens to Torrens project, which sees over 50,000 vehicles using that section of South Road, which will now be taken underneath the intersections of Torrens Road, Port Road and Grange Road. That has been a priority of this government principally for the reason that there is such a benefit to the freight industry for that part of the north-south corridor, part of South Road at the northern end of the corridor, where trucking movements tend to be higher.

We recognise that, when we are looking at investing vast sums of money in our road network, we should be seeking to maximise the benefit we can deliver to the community. When we have sections of road that take not only a very high number of vehicles but a significant proportion of heavy vehicles, then those projects become even more important. That project in particular, for the benefit of both heavy vehicles and light vehicles, had an extremely strong cost-benefit ratio of approximately 2.4, if I remember off the top of my head. It is important with these road projects that we do push forward those that can make a positive contribution to the state economy, let alone to the transport network, which incorporates those parts of these roads which are to be upgraded.

That is why we went to the last state election promising to do Torrens to Torrens. The Liberal opposition said that they would cancel that project and instead prioritise Darlington. What we were able to do was not only obviate that choice by delivering both but we negotiated effectively to secure the Northern Connector project as well, and these three projects will see extraordinary benefits to the heavy vehicle industry. In contrast, we have seen one of the most bland, disinterested effusions on behalf of the Liberal Party's policy for what they call Globe Link.

The 'um' and 'ah' riddled, softly spoken, slump-shouldered, unenthusiastic contribution from the member for Unley, trying to promote the policy says it all. In fact, the number of people in the chamber to hear the contribution could have been counted on one hand, which would be an exponentially greater number of people than have come out in support of that policy. We have not only had the South Australian Freight Council, the independent board which provides advice to the community and to government on what freight priority should be in South Australia, slate this plan but we have had local government directly affected by this project, the Coorong council, slate the plan as well.

When the opposition was grasping around for advocates for this, they tried to leach themselves onto the owner and developer of the Toowoomba airport, erroneously claiming that it was a great model for their freight-only airport, which they considered to be a central plank for their Globe Link proposal. What did the owner of the Toowoomba airport say? That freight-only airports will not work because his airport was not a freight-only airport: it was a freight and passenger airport. They had not even done the most fundamental and basic research about their plan.

I mentioned earlier the strong cost-benefit analysis we were able to do for our South Road upgrades and, in particular, the Torrens to Torrens project. I can contrast that with the work that has already been done and published and out in the public arena about their plan, which shows that just the proposed rail connection itself was uneconomic and did not stack up. The cost-benefit ratio was less than one, which means that expenditure on that project withdraws benefits from the economy. It does not replace them, it does not get to one for one and it does not provide additional benefits: it actually withdraws benefits from the South Australian economy.

The claim by the member for Unley that Globe Link is some economic shot in the arm, that there will be some nirvana of jobs from it, is patently false, and in fact the opposite of his claims is accurate. It will be an economic detractor from South Australia, which is the last thing we need at the moment as this state experiences economic conditions that are softer than we would like to see. You do not even need to take my word for it. The fact that none of the regional MPs from the Liberal Party who contributed to debate on the bill mentioned this policy shows how little support for it there is internally, let alone how little support for it there is amongst the community of South Australia.

They say that this will set up some enormous contest within metropolitan Adelaide, a battle of political ideologies about which transport upgrade is more important. Not only do we know that they are uncosted, uneconomic, unendorsed or disendorsed policies that have no advocates out in the community but we know what they are based on: it is a desperate attempt to fend off the growing spread of orange in the Adelaide Hills.

The polling that has been done for the Nick Xenophon team, now called SA-Best, is extremely strong. In fact, based on the last federal election polling numbers, we would see a swathe of seats in the Adelaide Hills lost to Nick Xenophon. Even those extraordinary performers, the most prominent seats of the Liberal Party—and I am thinking of the member for Kavel, despite all his hard work—those seats and others like Heysen are at extreme risk of being lost. This policy is designed to appeal to a few thousand people who might live either side of a particular rail line to try to shore up the Liberal Party's political support in that area.

There is then the erroneous claim by the member for Unley that this new plan, which they claim the Labor government has, will see trucks for the first time diverted down Cross Road. Well, it is not our plan. It is a plan that has been endorsed and indeed released by the federal Coalition government. The 10-year strategy for the upgrade of the north-south corridor in South Australia's metropolitan area was a plan developed between the state and federal Coalition governments, released by a Coalition minister and spruiked by a Coalition minister. This is nothing new.

But let's assume that the Liberal Party is successful in prosecuting its case for this dreadful policy they have cobbled together to fend off Senator Xenophon and his political support in the Adelaide Hills. What will that mean? It will mean that we will not get the remaining South Road upgrades. Those people the Liberal Party is desperately trying to woo in seats like Elder and Badcoe will be denied the sorts of benefits to their local transport networks that people in other electorates, such as Adelaide, Croydon, West Torrens, Cheltenham, Port Adelaide, Lee and Colton, are all experiencing from the upgrade of South Road—but a mere hour more.

That is the choice we will be presenting: either we have a poorly thought-out, unresearched, uncosted, uneconomic policy put forward by the Liberal government, or we have a strategy, developed and endorsed between state Labor and federal Coalition governments that is part funded and already under delivery in the upgrade of the north-south corridor. Ironically, their policy ignores the statistics, which are available, that up to 85 per cent of heavy vehicles circulating around metropolitan Adelaide that come down the South Eastern Freeway must pick up or drop off in the metropolitan area. They have no choice but to use the South Eastern Freeway and the arterial road network in metropolitan Adelaide.

They propose a multibillion-dollar road upgrade for approximately 15 per cent of the trucks that travel past Tailem Bend. If you wanted a clearer example of why this policy they have put forward is uneconomic, there it is. It is crystal clear why this project will never fly—it will never stack up. The rail does not stack up, the airport does not stack up and the road does not stack up. Of course, if trucks were not to use other roads in the arterial area, they would continue thundering through the electorates of Dunstan and Hartley, as they currently do.

What will the members for Dunstan and Hartley tell their constituents? That a genius idea that a couple of 20-something staffers came up with in the Leader of the Opposition's office is going to cost their communities ever more thundering truck movements past their schools, their community clubs and their retirement homes in those electorates. Of course, that is not what the Labor government will be offering South Australians.

As I mentioned earlier, this is an important bill that will see the revenue that we currently collect from heavy vehicle registration fees, which is currently hypothecated into the Highways Fund, paid to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator in a manner that is not currently provided for in legislation. This change to the bill will enable us to do that.

There was a comment earlier from either the member for Unley or the member for Mount Gambier about making sure that these national bodies are spending these funds wisely and that they are not ramping up the amount of money they are spending on administration and, as a result, unfairly charging the heavy vehicle industry high registration fees that otherwise could not be justified. I am pleased to say that I raised this very matter at the last transport ministers' meeting.

It is time that South Australia, along with the federal government and the other states, had a thorough and detailed look at how all the transport agencies across the federal sphere are using the money that they are funded by jurisdictions and by the federal government. That is a body of work that South Australia will be leading, along with the federal minister, Paul Fletcher.

I look forward to trying to identify opportunities for efficiencies and maybe even returning some dividend to the heavy vehicle industry should we find that there are excess revenues being generated and used on work that is currently superfluous, doubling up on work that other agencies are doing or perhaps not necessary and can either be delayed or, indeed, just not undertaken. With those brief comments, I now move that this bill be read a second time.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (16:43): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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