About 20 rigs driven by angry truckers parked outside Australia’s parliament in Canberra yesterday to protest rising fuel prices, contending that high bills are forcing them to make exhausting extra runs.

According to Associated Press reports, the truckers are demanding higher freight rates, a national investigation into fuel pricing and a cut in fuel prices.
Canberra trucker Glenn Smith told the AP that drivers were facing financial ruin.
"It's like this: I had a quiet period a couple of months ago and couldn't pay myself wages for five weeks," he said. "That's the bottom line. We're doing it for free and we're going broke."
Some lawmakers are sympathetic to the truckers’ plight.
"People are regularly pushed beyond the limit in the Australian transport industry, with often-tragic results," said lawmaker Paul Neville, who headed a parliamentary investigation into road safety issues.
Prime Minister John Howard, however, said rising fuel prices are going through the roof thanks to recent global rises in oil prices and were out of his control.
Indian truckers threatened their own nationwide strike over the oil price hikes when tens of thousands of drivers announced plans to begin a protest next month, according to Agence France Presse.
"Truckers all over the country will go on an indefinite strike if the government fails to roll back the hike in diesel prices," All India Motor Transport Congress Secretary General J. M. Saksena said in a statement.
Saxsena said the truckers' strike will begin Nov. 3 and added the transporters would also observe a symbolic hunger strike today in all state capitals to press for a price reduction.
The influential group ordered a nine-day truckers’ strike last year that ended up forcing the government to roll back a hike in diesel prices.