The opening morning of TruckingAustralia24 in Canberra was full of praise and congratulations for outgoing ATA Chair David Smith who has served two terms over four years guiding some significant changes for the industry.
The Hon Catherine King MP was invited to provide the opening address and she took the opportunity to outline the number of initiatives the government has completed to benefit the trucking industry in recent years, and the key strategic projects in the pipeline.
“It is an absolute pleasure here today to be Trucking Australia 2024 and it’s a privilege to be introduced by David Smith,” said Minister King in her opening remarks. “What a four years it has been David, drought, fire, flood, pandemic, adblue shortage, David, your two terms in the job have not been dull. They have been very, very busy.”
“Importantly, though, you have just dealt with the problems of the day. You found solutions and driven reforms that will last for decades to come.”
“Without you we couldn’t have landed Euro6, we couldn’t have addressed truck widths, and we couldn’t have provided certainly up a road user charging. And I really want to thank you.”
Road safety
The Minister singled out road safety as one the biggest challenges faced by government and the road transport industry.
“The Australian Government is fully committed to implementing road safety, to improving road safety, and to reducing road trauma across the nation’s road network as we work towards Vision Zero by 2050,” explained Minister King.
“We’re pursuing this vision that no one should be killed or seriously injured using our roads by 2050, the National Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan. This plan sets out the key actions that all levels of government will undertake into 2025 in pursuit of these agreed priorities.”
“But sadly last year, Australia had a catastrophic catastrophic number of road fatalities. 1,266 people were killed on our roads. That is a 7.3% increase compared to the previous year. And around 15% of all road crashes in Australia involve a heavy vehicle.”
“While heavy vehicles do crash less often than other vehicles, these crashes are more likely to result in serious death or injury regardless of fault due to the greater mass that’s involved in these accidents.”
Road construction and improvements
Safer and smoother road to improve transport productivity is also part of the government’s 10 infrastructure investment pipeline.
“Today the Commonwealth, we are investing more money in infrastructure across Australia than has been done before with the 10- year infrastructure investment pipeline sitting now at bit over $120 billion,” the Minister explained
“We’re jointly funding more than 440 major projects across the nation and we’ve taken a new step of combining projects into corridors that see continued improvements along our major road networks such as the Bruce Highway, which we’re currently investing over $10 billion in improvements and there’s a sequence of projects that are underway.”
“Just last week BITRE, which is a major research arm of my department, released the most recent quarterly infrastructure construction figure closing out the 2023 calendar year. These figures show that public sector expenditure on road construction was at $18.8 billion for the 12 months of December 2023 and public expenditure on rail was $13.4. It’s an 18% and 17.6% increase on the previous calendar years respectively. And for both of these figures, that was the highest level of spending on record. Not only will that deliver smoother roads to drive on, it will give safer roads as well.”
Rest areas
An area the ATA has been focusing on for some years is rest areas. Truck drivers need better facilities and enough space to park while taking mandatory rest breaks.
“We’re investing directly as David (Smith) alluded to in truck rest areas for the first time listening directly to truck drivers about where to best invest their money and where they are needed,” the Minister stated.
“And I of course acknowledge the work of Michelle (Harwood), who represents the ATA on the steering committee and has provided invaluable advice to government and we’ve made some initial announcements about the way that money’s being spent at the same time is investing in safety.”
Climate change
Reducing emissions and electric trucks are two hot topics in road transport which leaves operators wondering how they will be able to afford to reduce their emissions by converting to new technologies. The Minister attempted to reassure there audience there was a well thought out plan from the government.
“We all know that industry needs to be as sustainable as possible over the years to come. Our government obviously is pursuing an ambitious climate change agenda targeting a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050,” the Minister explained.
“Transport contributes 21% of our national emissions and in 2023 heavy vehicles made up a quarter of Australia’s transport emissions. With the heavy vehicle sector so vital to the operation of Australia’s supply chains, and the heavy vehicle freight task projected to grow 26% by 2050. We do need to take action to cut emissions where we can particularly with trucks being such long lived assets in our communities.”
“Taking all of this into account, the government is developing a transport and infrastructure netzero roadmap and action plan, that will be evidence based to reduce emissions in the transport and infrastructure sectors.”
Through the early consultation phases with heavy vehicle stakeholders, the government has identified there focus areas:
- The need to set transition milestones to shift demand away from diesel powered heavy vehicles;
- Invest in the rollout of charging and refuelling infrastructure to support battery and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, and;
- To support the increased use of low carbon liquid fuels which could be deployed for larger payloads and distances until the supporting charging refuelling infrastructure and technology is in place.
Width, weight and Euro6
These are significant changes announced during the last 12 months and the Minister was keen to highlight these achievements which will support the introduction of low emission technologies.
“Euro six technology, as you know, will typically increase the total unless unloaded mass for heavy vehicle by about half a ton. And to ensure that there is no loss of productivity for these cleaner vehicles, we’re working to amend the regulations to increase the mass limits under which these vehicles can run,” said the Minister.
“The National Transport Commission has been consulting on how to achieve that goal for different axle mass limits, and different heavy vehicle combinations. And those new regulations will be considered in May, and can hopefully be passed into law before the end of this year. That will ensure that there’s no productivity penalty for newer cleaner vehicles that are part of our efforts to reduce transport emissions.”
