The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) has unveiled its full election platform, releasing a comprehensive plan to reduce costs for families and to build the industry’s future.
The platform was released by ATA chair Mark Parry at Trucking Australia 2025 in Adelaide, with Parry also making free responses from the Coalition and Labor Party.
“We developed the platform with our member associations and announced our policies during March and April. Our platform document consolidates our initiatives and will be a checklist for our discussions with the incoming government,” he says.
The ATA plan calls for a $5 billion, 10 year program of targeted road upgrades to support high productivity and zero and low tailpipe emission trucks, as well as making the road network more resilient.
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The platform also calls on the next government to fund eight critical road projects to boost the industry’s productivity.
“Government policies to improve the trucking industry’s productivity would save a typical Australian household more than $400 per year, every year, on their day to day purchases,” Parry says.
“Together with our voucher scheme for electric trucks and renewable diesel incentives, these policies would reduce the industry’s emissions by more than 35 million tonnes of CO2 over 25 years.
“In 2035, the trucking industry’s carbon emissions would be nine per cent lower than the current business as usual projection, Deloitte Access Economics modelling shows.”
Parry says these initiatives would result in improved safety, with the ATA also calling for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to be resourced to undertake no-blame safety investigations into crashes involving trucks.
This echoes the Coalition’s commitment to provide $6 million to the ATSB over three years for an expanded scope.
“Independent inquiries have repeatedly said that we need to extend ATSB style investigations to road crashes. We need to start with crashes involving trucks; it needs to happen under the next government,” Parry says.
He says truck driving was one of the top five occupations with a skill shortage, with more than 26,000 positions being unfilled.
“The Australian government provides financial support to apprentices in priority occupations such as electricians and mechanics, but it does not support people who want to work as truck drivers, even though trucking can be an apprenticeship and is one of Australia’s essential industries,” he says.
“The next government should provide financial support to apprentices undertaking driving operations apprenticeships and their employers. There also need to be federal incentives for short driver training courses that go beyond getting a licence to include other skills that drivers need to succeed.
“A number of registered training organisations run these courses, which are supported by state governments, trucking industry associations or major companies.”
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