Delivering decades of better roads

Through the Budget, the government has delivered $28b in road investment, ensuring the industry’s journeys will be safer and faster with transport costs increasing more slowly.
The flow-on effects from the Budget will affect every Australian family, long after the current recession is just a memory. More investment in roads will lead to slower increases in prices on consumers’ supermarket bills.
The focus of the government’s investment has been on what it calls Network 1 (N1), the north-south road freight corridor between Melbourne and Cairns.
The government’s four major road infrastructure announcements (the Hunter Expressway, Kempsey bypass, Bruce Highway duplication and Ipswich Motorway upgrades) are all part of the N1 corridor.
The Hunter Expressway links the F3 Freeway directly with the New England Highway near Branxton, giving industry and agriculture in the north of New South Wales direct access to the Newcastle Port, easier access to Sydney and will ease congestion on the New England Highway between Branxton and Maitland.
While the road may not be cheap (the latest estimates put it at $1.65 billion), it is vital infrastructure and very essential to the growth of the region.
The ATA has fought for 20 years to have the Pacific Highway duplicated between Sydney and Brisbane. We have moved one step closer to that outcome following the announcement of the Kempsey bypass.
Major work will also be undertaken in Queensland, with $488m allocated for the duplication of the Bruce Highway between Cooroy and Curra, and $884m to continue upgrading the Ipswich Motorway in Queensland.
The other main focus of the government’s infrastructure program, passenger rail, will also have important benefits for the trucking industry.
When the industry started arguing for more funds for passenger rail there were a few raised eyebrows, but the argument makes long-term sense for our industry.
The only way to reduce urban congestion is to deal with its cause – the growing number of cars on city roads. The best way governments can do that is to offer consumers a safe, quick and reliable alternative to driving.
With fewer cars on the road, the trucking industry will be able to move more freight, more efficiently and therefore, slow our rising costs.
But it is not just the infrastructure investment that is benefiting the industry in the Budget.
The government has increased its bonus tax deduction on new capital assets to 50%  and extended the deadline until 31 December 2009 for small businesses with a turnover of $2m per year or less. Small businesses need to invest $1,000 or more per asset to qualify for the deduction.
Before the Budget, the trucking industry and our suppliers argued the government should expand the deduction, because many trucking businesses who want to buy new equipment were having problems getting finance on reasonable terms because of the collapse of the wholesale finance market.
The extension will give operators with one or two trucks more time to jump over the hurdles now imposed by lenders, as well as providing an additional tax incentive to upgrade their trucks.

Stuart St Clair is chief executive of the Australian Trucking Association