The Australian Trucking Association has launched its campaign in the lead-up to the federal election, focussed on the carbon tax, the road funding system and industry road charges.

 The major transport industry body has lashed out at the Government’s proposed carbon tax extensions to cover truck fuel, claiming a possible seven cents per litre increase would cost the industry more than half a billion dollars in the first year alone.

Australian Trucking Association Chairman David Simon says “most trucking businesses do not have the market power to increase their freight rates to cover the cost of the tax... and operate on very tight margins as it is.”

When proposing the changes earlier this week, ACTU director of policy Joel Fetter said "the whole point of the scheme is to reduce our emissions, thereby reducing the GDP and the incomes to all the factors of production that would otherwise have taken place... we will also have very high emissions and so at some point in time the planet will catch up with us and then you'll see what happens to GDP."