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HVIA releases election transport report card

On election eve the HVIA is ranking both major political parties on their transport policies

The Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia (HVIA) has unveiled its federal election report card relating to transport legislation on the two major parties ahead of tomorrow’s election.

The HVIA used the National Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030’s recommendations to improve road infrastructure and increasing the uptake of new safety technologies as a measure for both parties rather than regulatory reforms announced.

When it comes to safety, Australian Labor Party (ALP) transport representative Glenn Sterle says that his party would “understand that data quality is a longstanding issue in road safety” and push for more standard data across jurisdictions to enhance safety measures.

The ALP will also consider improving the quality of rest stops and investing $80 million into new rest areas.

But the HVIA says the ALP’s response doesn’t address proposed policy actions, while the current Liberal National coalition (LNP) has made progress on safety technology.

When it came to ranking the two, the HVIA gave the ALP a 2/10 while handing down a 4/10 to the LNP on safety initiatives.

When it comes to sustainability, Sterle says the ALP will support electric vehicle charging stations for the heavy vehicle industry and invest $1.3 billion into a central freight highway backbone across the nation.

With the LNP currently investing in real infrastructure and regulations, the results were even as both parties averaged 7/10 across the board for sustainability.


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For manufacturing and productivity, the ALP ranked slightly higher than the LNP, proving better at streamlining supply chains to avoid local production, delivery and support bottlenecks, as well as not allowing cheap overseas imports to displace Australian heavy trailer designers and builders.

But the LNP scored 9/10 for allowing high productivity vehicles to take the burden off Australia’s growing freight task while the ALP scored 7/10 for this measure.

The final area assessed was skills and jobs, with the ALP’s fee free TAFE plan and jobs and skills movement targeted towards the medium to long term.

The HVIA criticises the ALP’s strategy for not addressing immediate issues, ranking it on average around a 4/10.

But the LNP won out on this one, as despite the HVIA commenting that the current government could do more on addressing productivity improvement, the LNP averaged 6/10.

Despite these results, the HVIA says it will work with whichever party that forms government to enforce these agendas and improve the transport sector.

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