Page 5428 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
It must be said that, even with the charges the ACT Government has imposed, it is still dramatically cheaper to register a large bike in the ACT than it is in New South Wales. To register an over 600cc motorbike in the ACT costs $206. To get the same bike on the road in Queanbeyan will cost $411. So, this iniquity, this slug, this onerous burden that Mr Stefaniak talks about, means that under our proposal the Canberra resident would pay $206 while his Queanbeyan cousin pays $411. Mr Stefaniak thinks that is an appalling slug on the ACT motorcyclist and proposes that the ACT motorcyclist will pay $206 when his Queanbeyan cousin will pay $411 - precisely half the cost.
No doubt that will continue to see the number of motorcycles registered in the ACT dramatically increase. When you have that sort of incentive for cross-border operations - a 100 per cent price difference, in effect, between the cost here and the cost in New South Wales - you really are encouraging people to get around the law and register their motorcycles in a mate's name in the ACT. That is not a satisfactory position to be in and it is not a positive move. This measure was going to raise revenue in the order of $70,000-odd, which will now be thrown out if this motion is passed.
Mr Stefaniak went on at some length about motorcycle safety. It remains the case that all States and Territories are concerned about safety of motorcyclists. Motorcyclists as a group, unfortunately, comprise a larger proportion of road accident statistics than they should as a percentage of road users, and that problem has been addressed in a number of positive ways. Only a matter of six or eight weeks ago I was able to open formally the new motorcycle education course opposite the Phillip motor vehicle registry.
Governments around Australia are recognising that one of the important ways of addressing motorcycle safety is to have better educated riders, as well as focusing on other awareness programs. All of that costs money, of course, and all those programs must be paid for. This registration proposal, which is consistent with usual ACT practice of keeping charges around those of New South Wales, is correcting an imbalance that occurred in the mid-1980s, when for the first time ACT fees became dramatically different from those of New South Wales and resulted in a vast increase in ACT registrations.
In throwing out this proposal and throwing out that revenue, we will have to look elsewhere to fund those sorts of programs. Mr Stefaniak says that we should charge everybody a little more rather than recovering from this group. I am not sure whether everybody else would be terribly happy to get a letter from the Government saying that, because the Liberal Party have thrown out a fee that was based on parity with New South Wales, because the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .