It’s time for conversations about roads in Australia.
Australia is one trillion in debt. Two hundred thousand kilometres of roads need building or rebuilding at a cost of say $100 billion-plus, yet the states have no money.
History shows when governments run out of money they will come back to this industry, the cash cow that always pays, so they are coming somehow.
Damages to transport and private vehicles per year amount in the millions due to the poor state of the roads.
The pittance that government spend on roads cannot continue.
All roads built in the 60s and 70s have used up their build life of 30 years.
The cost of building roads depends on how long they are expected to last.
Current roads don’t last more than two winters after building them.
We still need 2000 parking bays on all roads including government major parking areas in every capital and major towns in Australia.
Without them, the industry has grounds for a class action against governments based on the sections of the Heavy Vehicle National Law on fatigue.
Under current government expenditure it will take 40 years, or more, to make 20 parking bays.
Current road user charges (RUC) in fuel is 32.4 cents per litre with the new consumer price index (cpi). There is no RUC for EVs and hydrogen vehicles.
In 1979, 95 per cent of trucks were six axles, maximum of 38 tonne, not including road trains.
Now we have 10 per cent of six axles vehicles and 90 per cent multi-axle up to 20 axles, and 90 per cent on air bag suspension, which is causing all major damage to roads.
There are more than 44 different combinations of vehicles now, instead of the six we had in 1979, including tri-drive, multiple quad axles on trailers and converter dollies.
The government did not consider their road damage when the flood gates opened on PBS design.
This as an unfair cost and unfair running cost advantage and a free ride that minority operators have to pay for in vehicle maintenance.
The National Transport Commission has been talking about investigating the return of the road maintenance contributions (RMC) for years: has it started?
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has flagged the development of a three cents per kilometre road tax on EV cars to raise $300 per car annually. This should be a warning to the industry of what may happen.
It is no coincidence that three cents per kilometre was the RMC charge on heavy vehicles in 1979 when that levy was repealed.
A BAB quad has an approximate payload of 72 tonne and a gross of 114 tonne and 20 axles. The resulting damage done by them has never been disclosed, if it was ever calculated.
Approximate RUC charges for a vehicle to travel from Melbourne to Sydney, and return, is $189. If RMC was charged for the same B-triple it would be $455.
The current RUC is now out of date in terms of collecting the money to upkeep roads and build them.
The return of the RMC to capture a fair cost recovery from EV, hydrogen and multi-trailer combinations of up to 20 axles, and more, may be needed so everyone pays their way.
For someone, such as this writer, who in the 1970s was paying over $900 a month in RMC for each truck running shuttles until seeing the light after studying the legalities between avoidance and evasion, (monthly new truck payments were less) and fought for abolition of it, this is a major call.
To capture all these vehicles, we would need to go back to the original SA legislated-rate of .17 cents per tonne per kilometre.
If a new RMC must be charged, it must be legislated to apply to every freight contract/invoice, set as separate so it is transparent, so that the supply chain pays it to every prime contractor and every independent contractor must be recompensed by them.
It would be only just that the supply chain pay as it’s their freight doing the damage.
And if a claim is made for a road, a state cannot claim a maintenance cost without evidence it has maintained it, other than just grading it.
Today in the industry where everyone wants to use an electronic work diary, the evidence of kilometres done in each state is already there and one could expect the NHVR to be the watchdog.
What people forget, or don’t know, is that the Marulan, Mt Lambie, Mt White checking stations were built to record details for RMC for NSW, while Gailes, Coomera and Burpengary were the same for Queensland.
Whether the current RUC would still apply would be up to government.
The conundrum for governments is, they could double the current RUC but that wouldn’t pick up the alternative fuels.
- Veteran truckie Jerry Brown-Sarre was inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2005