Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for this statement. At the time he announced the establishment of the National Road Safety Council I issued a statement supporting it, and I do so to this day. Road safety is an important national issue. The tragedy of road deaths has affected almost every family in the country. When a life is cut short, mothers and fathers are left without children or children are left without parents. Other people are maimed and therefore not able to contribute as they would wish to their community. Opportunities are lost and the shock of an unexpected road accident certainly reverberates through a whole community.

As the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government mentioned in his comments, there have been some particularly tragic accidents over recent times which have touched the hearts of all Australians, and so any action that any government or community can take to try and reduce the road toll is indeed commendable and worthy of support. There is no magic cure. Everyone has a desire to see things done better. Improvements to roads make a difference. Improvements to training make a difference. But I think ultimately there needs to be a culture of safety and awareness on the road and a desire amongst motorists to give priority to arriving safely, even if that means a compromise to a schedule or some inconvenience from time to time.

As the minister said, significant progress has actually been made. In spite of the publicity that we receive on television and radio, the road toll is actually in decline in Australia, and that is very welcome. The minister referred to the targets set 10 years ago by transport ministers around Australia to cut the national road toll by 40 per cent. I suspect when that target was set that it was considered to be ambitious, maybe even unachievable. But we actually did very well, and midway through the period, in fact as recently as 2008, there was the expectation and hope that we might actually reach that 40 per cent target. The road toll had fallen in almost every year and people were getting optimistic that the target might in fact be achievable. But sadly 2009 has been a bad year, the biggest increase in the road toll in a decade, and that has set back any realistic hope that we might get to a 40 per cent reduction by the end of this calendar year.

Nonetheless we can be thankful that some progress has been made. We need to look at whether there are any particular factors that have resulted in an increase in the road toll in 2009 and we must seek to address them. There are statistical bumps and anomalies from time to time and this could be one of them, but in reality we need to always be diligent in looking at ways in which we can act responsibly to try and reduce the road toll. The public have a desire to see stronger policing on the roads and I think that is important. On the other hand there is also often criticism that policing is used by the various state instrumentalities to raise money for the state budget rather than to really attack the areas of greatest concern. But if we have a law, and that law is properly prepared and presented and has the potential to save lives or to reduce injuries, then it ought to be enforced. So long as police and the authorities act reasonably then I have no objection to, and indeed strongly support, an active and visible campaign by police on the road to try and ensure that road safety is at the highest possible level.

There are a lot of statistics, and the minister referred to the new studies that have apparently been released today. I have not seen those studies but I have looked at some of the figures over recent times and there is an enormous range in the accident rate between the Australian states. Maybe that also provides us with some questions that need to be answered. In the ACT, for instance, there are only 0.58 deaths per 10,000 registered motor vehicles in a year. That is too many, but it is only 0.58. In Victoria it is 0.77, in Queensland it is 1.03, and other states also fall within that range of 0.77 up to the Western Australia figure of 1.2. On the other hand, in the Northern Territory the rate is 6.1—six times the national average. A lot of attention is sometimes drawn to the different speed laws in the Northern Territory, although I am not sure that they are the major factor. We often talk about Aboriginal disadvantage in this country. There are many statistics about the health levels of Australian Aborigines and about underachievement in education and in a whole range of other areas, but one of the greatest tragedies is that the death rate in road accidents among Aborigines is many times the national average. So there also needs to be a real effort to address road safety as a culture within the Aboriginal community. I think that ought to be a priority area of action as we look towards trying to find new areas where we can help to improve road safety in Australia.

There are a number of other initiatives that could be taken which may well be constructive. Every state and federal government has been active in supporting various driver training programs, but it is doubtful whether any of those programs has identified itself as being outstandingly successful above others. Indeed there is the issue of the training program lasting not much longer after it is left. People forget the good habits that they have learned and in practice their standards of driving fall apart. So we need to look very closely at new driver training programs. Young drivers, inevitably, are inexperienced and therefore less able to handle a difficult situation. But sometimes young people also make bad decisions and get themselves into positions where they ought not to be, and so training programs will always be important.

I think we should move to a situation where all new cars sold in Australia in volume carry an ANCAP star safety rating. That system is not applied universally. Many cars do have the safety rating and it is a tribute to the Australian manufacturing industry over recent times that we are now getting some vehicles at the top end of that star safety rating, but it would be a great encouragement if we insisted that all vehicles sold in Australia, particularly any sold in numbers, have such a rating. You destroy a car in the process, so clearly you cannot do it for one-off imports or for very small levels of imports, but I think it is something we ought to look at for the major volume sales in this country.

We need to work hard on constructing new roadside stops for truck drivers. There are new rules that have been put in place in relation to requiring them to have rest stops, but we do not have the rest stops in place—they are not constructed. That is true on the national highway, but it is particularly true on the state roads. A truck driver is obliged to stop. There is no defence in some states for the fact that there is no road stop available; they are still expected to stop. But, if there is no safe place for them to have their rest break, those laws seem to be a bit unreasonable. In reality, what we have to do is put in the capital to make sure that the rest stops are built so that the regular rest breaks that truck drivers are expected to have can in fact occur. We need something like 500 new roadside stops for truck drivers to meet the standards and there needs to be a significant and continuing program to get those truck stops built.

The Australian Road Assessment Program measures the safety level of highways and is generally supported by the states. Some states have been less enthusiastic than others, but it has been a good program for identifying the roads that need particular attention. We should extend that also to some of the major secondary freight routes, which are sometimes under state control, again so we can be aware of the danger spots and concentrate expenditure in those areas. I welcome the establishment of this safety council. I hope it will take a leadership role in identifying areas where more things can be done. Governments will need to then back those areas with the financial resources to undertake appropriate programs. But there needs to be a national commitment to take very seriously the issue of road safety. The United Nations is proposing a decade of road safety from 2011, and Australia should participate in that program, particularly following our own decade of safety activities. (Time expired)

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