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.
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ATA chief executive officer Chris Melham said the current 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,” Mr Melham said.
“But instead of reducing charges, ministers decided to freeze the revenue from the charges at 2015-16 levels for the next two years. As a result, truck and bus operators will be overtaxed by more than $500 million 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,” he said.
“Instead, the reforms must include generally lower compliance costs and smoother cash flow as core objectives.”