John Anderson (Gwydir, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say at the outset that I commend the mover of this motion, who sits immediately behind me, for his efforts in bringing this matter to our attention. I think we are all rightly concerned about the tragic loss of lives on Australian roads despite the very real progress that has been made since road trauma and crisis galvanised the attention of the Australian people back in the early 1970s.

Briefly, it is worth making a couple of points of history in relation to our early days in government. One is that in those days we faced a very real budgetary crisis in this country: government outlays were in a mess, government debt was huge and rapidly expanding and we faced real constraints in the early years in relation to road funding. I think it is fair to say that, in my case, I was rather taken aback at how quickly economic growth started to increase the load of the transport task in this country. That immediately highlighted two issues, not just the obvious one of the need to find more money for roads but another issue—that is, despite the fact that we were a century or so into Federation in this country, we had never developed a properly coordinated national transport plan. It had not happened. One of the things that disappoints me a little is that there is precious little recognition, even to this day, that we now have one. We do not run tax policy on the basis of complete ad hocery or political expediency—you do not run health policy on that basis, you do not run a defence policy on that basis and you should not run your transport policy on that basis.

AusLink, which was very strongly resisted by the states for a long time, it has to be said, is an integrated, thought-through national transport plan for this country. In the first instance, as evidence of that, it gives us a national highway system which is matched by a national railway system. We have a national highway system because the states do not have adequate interest in national and international connectivity; the federal government does, on behalf of all Australians, and it ought to construct and maintain the national highway system to a high order. But, almost by definition—it is so obvious that it is like the nose on your face; you really should not miss it if you think about it—you need a matching rail network for freight. Under AusLink we secure that. A vital part of road safety in this country is in ensuring that there are no more trucks on the road than makes economic, social or environmental sense. That is why we now have a real federal commitment to operating a national rail network, which over time will take more and more pressure off our roads—not a commitment to operating trains, which governments are no better at doing than they would be at operating trucks. It will make our roads safer, drive the road funding and, I think, produce valuable environmental outcomes.

A comment about the subsets of AusLink is that very often, to be quite frank, those of us who are elected to this place need to make sensible decisions about the funding of infrastructure. The truth is that the Roads to Recovery program, which funds local roads everywhere in every council area across Australia, is not only popular but makes common sense, but no BCR model would support it. A benefit-cost ratio conducted by economic gurus in this town would tell you that Roads to Recovery or the FAGs grants for local roads cannot be justified on economic grounds. All of us would recognise what nonsense that is. We might as well say, ‘We’re no longer going to kerb and gutter our suburban streets’ because I do not think you could make a BCR stack those up either. Common sense tells you that virtually everything we produce, everything we value add, everything we export starts its life on a local road. There is a very powerful case for upgrading local roads.

We have brought the crash rate, the accident rate, down dramatically in terms of the distance and kilometres travelled by Australian people over the last 35 years. Better cars, better roads, better training, seatbelts and drink-driving laws and their pursuit have all helped. The reality is: we need to do more. Our road toll is still too high, particularly amongst young men. The Black Spot Program is part of it. I see the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads at the table; I urge him to do whatever is necessary to get the road training trial up for young people. It is now about 2½ years since I committed to doing that. It is time we rolled it out. We must do more to get young people to drive sensibly within their skill set. It is not simply a question of expanding their skill set; their skill set needs to be observed and recognised. (Time expired)

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