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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1138 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Transport Commission, the national scheme applies only to heavy vehicles with a gross vehicle mass of over 4.5 tonnes. We are now talking about vehicles that are less than 4.5 tonnes, so there is no obligation to hide behind the transport reforms in this regard. If our citizens are going to be disadvantaged, that is a good enough reason not to do it.

New South Wales, as I said, is starting to regret its sudden involvement in the Australian road rules. According to an article written by a New South Wales member of parliament, that state's acceptance of the road rules has been a disaster. I refer members to the issue before last, I think, of The Parliamentarian, the official journal of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, in which Mr Peter Nagle MP, talking about national scheme legislation and the implications for states, actually bagged the national road rules, saying that they did not apply to his state and there was insufficient consultation with industry groups. I refer members to that publication. In his article, he said:

The Australian road rules were adopted directly from the national government's road rules without proper impact assessments and studies being made to see if they were appropriate and would work in New South Wales.

(Extension of time granted.) The minister will also argue that these changes are needed because approximately 16 per cent of the registration renewals are paid up to a month late. In fact, on radio the minister said that 16 per cent of the people are rorting the system. When we looked into it, two things emerged. Firstly, in an email response to a gentleman from overseas about this subject, the minister said:

One important benefit of continuous registration is that it will discourage people from driving unregistered vehicles between registration periods.

I do not know about that. If you have not got the money, this sort of system will not encourage you to pay up; it will not make any difference. He also said it will discourage people from driving unregistered vehicles between registration periods, as there will no longer be a financial advantage to do so. He went on to say:

According to the vehicle register, about 16 per cent of registration renewals are paid up to one month late.

He could not tell me how many were one day late, one week late or three weeks late, but 16 per cent of them were up to a month late. The relevance of that, Mr Speaker, is this: I asked the minister yesterday whether he could tell me how many of that 16 per cent were people who were rorting the system and how many were people who were paying late because their family circumstances were such that they could not afford to pay on time-for example, people who live from payday to payday and whose payday falls, say, three or four days after the registration expires. Some people-somewhat stupidly, you might say-will be a couple of weeks late in paying registration for their vehicle. They may act responsibly and not take the car out of the garage because it is, in a sense, unregistered, but will walk along a week later and pay it. The people who cannot afford it are in the 16 per cent. If you are going to make a big argument about trying to stop the crooks around the place, you should justify the number. The minister was not able to do that.

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