Exhaust-pipe pollutants from trucks kill more than 400 Australians every year and cause or contribute to diseases including lung cancer, stroke, heart disease, pneumonia, asthma, and type-2 diabetes.

The work that trucks do is crucial for our economy and way of life, but we must do more to limit the harm they cause to our health and environment.

Old trucks are much more polluting than new trucks. Fourteen per cent of the Australian fleet is pre-1996, and these trucks emit 60 times the particulate matter of a new truck, and eight times the poisonous nitrogen oxides. To keep the most-polluting trucks away from most people, pre-2003 diesel trucks should be banned in Sydney and Melbourne from 2025.

The federal government should also rescind pointless regulations – such as the requirement that trucks in Australia be 2 per cent narrower than the global standard – which limit the range of less-polluting trucks available to buy here.