THE long-haul trucking industry is facing renewed calls to pay its way, as pressure mounts to get heavy vehicles carrying dangerous goods off the roads after a spate of fatal accidents.
The Australasian Railway Association is increasingly confident that the review of the tax system by the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, will recommend road-user charges that will recover from the trucking industry more of the money spent building and maintaining main roads.
The New Zealand Government imposes road-user charges on ''diesel-powered heavy vehicles like trucks'', according to its Transport Agency website, while the Dutch Government announced last November that it would impose kilometre-based charges for all cars and heavy goods vehicles from 2012.
The rail association's chief executive, Brian Nye, said smaller trucks - such as those used by couriers and for deliveries to households and small businesses - were subsidising the massive B-double trucks and road trains that travel the highways.
''The current way we price road use is no longer sustainable,'' Mr Nye said. ''For example, I also own a farm, and to register a nine-tonne truck cost me less than to register my ute.''
Mr Nye was commenting after the Rail, Tram and Bus Union - with the support of the rail association and the motoring body NRMA - announced it would begin a campaign to change the law to require the transport of dangerous goods, such as fuel and chemicals, to and from the nearest available rail hub.
The NSW Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, has called on the State Government to restore the subsidy it once provided for companies transporting fuel by rail, rather than road.
''Labor should acknowledge their mini-budget mistake [in November 2008], reinstate the subsidy and start promoting greater use of rail to transport freight, especially hazardous goods, across NSW," he said.
The Premier, Kristina Keneally, said using rail to move dangerous goods was ''an attractive proposition'' but would ''require a very different rail network from the one we currently have''.
''There is still the need to move things from a rail hub to their final destination and you can't build a rail system that provides a door-to-door service,'' she said.
A 2006 Productivity Commission report found that heavy trucks contributed just over $1.6 billion to the total road spending of $10.4 billion. The fuel excise raised $1.07 billion, while $550 million came from registrations.
In a report for the House of Representatives economics committee, Philip Laird, a freight and logistics expert at the University of Wollongong, used a benchmark established by a NSW road freight inquiry to calculate that the unrecovered costs of road transport were $3 billion a year. These included $1.5 billion in construction and maintenance, $850 million in road trauma and $850 million in pollution and carbon emissions.
The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics last year estimated the volume of freight to be carted around Australia would double within the next 20 years.
Mr Nye said the cost of the Melbourne-Brisbane inland freight line was $3.5 billion, which ''could remove every truck from the Newell Highway''.
The rail union says one train of 24 wagons, each carrying up to 60,000 litres of fuel, could replace up to 150 fuel tankers on the road.
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