THE Australian Trucking Association has called for an independent regulator to set road user charges in any move to a cost based road pricing model.
ATA CEO Chris Melham said the current road charging system overcharged truck and bus operators.
He said the National Transport Commission acknowledged the existing road charging system overcharged truck and bus operators “because the system underestimates the number heavy vehicles on the road.”
The comments were made in reply to the federal government’s response to the Harper review of competition policy as released by Treasurer Scott Morrison.
“It recently provided ministers with several recommendations to fix the error and bring charges back in line. But instead of reducing charges, ministers decided to freeze the revenue from the charges at 2015-16 levels for the next two years,” Mr Melham said.
“As a result, truck and bus operators will be overtaxed by more than half a billion dollars by June 2018.
“Establishing an independent economic regulator, such as the Access and Pricing Regulator proposed in the Harper Review, would help ensure that governments could not ignore pricing decisions like this in the future.”
Mr Melham said the ATA welcomed the government’s commitment that any reform of road pricing would not involve higher overall charges for road users.
“However, these reforms to road pricing must not involve increased compliance costs for trucking operators, such as requiring small businesses to fit expensive satellite tracking systems,” Mr Melham said.
“Instead, the reforms must include generally lower compliance costs and smoother cash flow as core objectives.”
The ATA has also recently updated its truck and dog Technical Advisory Procedure which provides best practice advice for achieving dynamic stability for the popular farm transport combination.
The ATA said vehicle stability was a key safety issue for all trucking operators, but little guidance was available for optimising truck and dog combinations
“Under the Australian Design Rules, the truck and towed dog trailer are assessed as two separate vehicles, which may then be put together into a truck and dog combination,” Mr Melham said.
“While completely legal, this means that operators may not receive guidance on how they can optimise the safety and stability of these combinations.”
He said the advisory procedure provided step-by-step instructions and formulas to help operators improve the overall performance, dynamic stability and safety of their truck and dog trailer combinations.
