The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) has released its policy goals ahead of the federal election, which focuses on the reduction of living costs and a roadmap for the industry’s future.
This election platform was released by ATA Chair, Mark Parry, at the trucking industry’s premier national event, Trucking Australian 2025, in Adelaide.
According to Perry, this platform was created to support and protect the interests of the ATA’s many partnering organisations.
“We developed the platform with our member associations and announced our policies during March and April,” he said.
“Our platform document consolidates our initiatives and will be a checklist for our discussions with the incoming government.”
Chief among the ATA’s policy goals is a call for a $5 billion, ten-year program of targeted road upgrades to support high productivity and zero and low tailpipe emission trucks, and to make the country’s road network more resilient overall.
Additionally, the ATA’s election platform will urge the next government to fund eight critical road projects designed to boost the industry’s productivity.
Parry claims that the incoming government’s undertaking of these policies would create big savings for Australians, and even work to make the trucking industry more sustainable.
“Government policies to improve the trucking industry’s productivity would save a typical Australian household more than $400 per year, every year, on their day to day purchases,” he said.
“Together with our voucher scheme for electric trucks and renewable diesel incentives, these policies would reduce the industry’s emissions by more than 35 million tonnes of CO₂ over 25 years.
“In 2035, the trucking industry’s carbon emissions would be nine per cent lower than the current business as usual project, Deloitte Access Economics modelling shows.”
Parry alleged that other benefits from the incorporation of these policies would include safety improvement, largely in the form of resourcing the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to undertake no-blame safety investigations into crashes involving trucks.
“Independent inquiries have repeatedly said that we need to extend ATSB-style investigations to road crashes,” he claimed.
“We need to start with crashes involving trucks; it needs to happen under the next government.”
The ATA’s final discussed policy seeks to tackle the increasing issue of the trucking industry’s labour shortage, which has reportedly manifested in over 26,000 unfilled positions across the sector.
Parry called out the current Federal Government’s lack of assistance in the industry.
“The Australian Government provides financial support to apprentices in priority occupations such as electricians and mechanics,” he stated.
“But it does not support people who want to work as truck drivers, even though trucking can be an apprenticeship and is one of Australia’s essential industries.
“The next government should provide financial support to apprentices undertaking driving operations apprenticeships and their employers.
There also need to be federal incentives for short driver training courses that go beyond getting a licence to include other skills that drivers need to succeed.”
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