The next government must reset Australia’s approach to road safety and productivity, the ATA’s 2022 election policy charter says.

The charter calls for a dramatic improvement in road safety, with an aspirational target: a 25 per cent reduction per year in crashes involving trucks. The charter puts forward a policy reset to achieve this goal, including—

• the Australian Government funding and operating all major freight roads
• a ten year, $5 billion truck roads and rest area program, so truck drivers always have a safe place to stop
• continued full expensing for trucks and trailers to increase the use of newer and safer trucks
• air crash style investigations of truck crashes where there are lessons to be learned.

The policy charter also calls for a dramatic improvement in the industry’s productivity and the elimination of red tape. At present, trucking businesses need to lodge 44,000 applications per year to use roads that were built to be used. It’s wasteful, costly and time consuming.

The Tasmanian road access system shows it is possible to reduce this pointless paperwork by 95 per cent. A policy reset by the Australian Government would get same results nationally.