Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) urges all Australians to drive safely and with consideration for fellow road users over the upcoming summer holidays;

(2) notes the Government has made significant investments in road safety including:

(a) $500 million from 2014-15 to 2018-19 in the Black Spot Program (BSP);

(b) an additional $200 million from 2015-16 that makes an important contribution to reducing the national road toll under the National Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan; and

(c) completing 977 projects under the BSP which has saved an estimated 116 lives and prevented 5,959 injuries from crashes over 10 years;

(3) encourages all state and territory governments to address the over-representation of men in road fatalities through improved driver information and education; and

(4) calls on all Australians to drive carefully over the summer period.

Just over a week ago, four young men were killed in a car accident on their way to work in my home state of South Australia. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families at this terrible time. The families and friends of these young men will face an unimaginably difficult Christmas this year. We do not know the reason for their accident, but it forms a tragic reminder that male drivers remain vastly overrepresented in our road deaths each year.

I call on grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends to remind the men in their lives that they need to take extra care when driving. We desperately need to raise awareness of the risk men face. My home state of South Australia provides a stark example of the overrepresentation of male fatalities, as I discovered in 2014 when I wrote to The Advertiser about a horror few days on our roads that saw four male drivers killed in four separate accidents in the space of one short weekend. In the decade between 2005 and 2015, 75 per cent of drivers, or 446 individual men who were someone's—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:25 to 12:46

As I was saying, in the decade between 2005 and 2015, 75 per cent of drivers, or 446 individual men—someone's husband or father or brother or uncle—were killed on South Australian roads. In comparison, 148 female drivers were killed. This is even though the numbers of male and female licensed drivers were almost equal. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, our state-based road safety campaigns never focus on the fact that men are more at risk. We hear a lot about the dangers of drug driving, drink-driving, fatigue, speeding, distraction, young drivers, country driving and seat belts, but we do not hear the simple fact that more male drivers are likely to die on our roads. Our national statistics also reiterate this fact: last year men represented 73 per cent of the road toll Australia wide. Every one of us needs to do more to make men aware of the tragic fact that they are at risk. Our state governments, through their road safety awareness programs, need to do more to provide information about those facts as well.

From a national perspective, a figure that is just as concerning is the fact that during the last 12 months 1,271 men and women died on our roads. We need every single Australian driver and road user to be aware of these facts and to stay safe on our roads over the school, summer and Christmas holidays. Nationally, we, as the Turnbull coalition government, are doing our part to help road users stay safe. We have committed $500 million to the Black Spot Program from 2014 to 2019, which includes an additional $200 million over the two years from 2015-16 to improve road safety across the nation. The Black Spot Program is estimated to be reducing fatal and casualty crashes at treated sites by 30 per cent. I am proud to say the Turnbull coalition government has provided $296,000 of blackspot funding in my electorate of Boothby to improve safety at a very busy part of my electorate of Jetty Road, Brighton.

This said, it is up to every single driver and road user to make sure they are taking responsibility for themselves and their actions on the road, particularly during the summer, school holiday and Christmas period. I say to drivers in particular, 'Do the right thing'. As someone who grew up in the country and who spends a lot of time on the road in my electorate of Boothby, here are my do's and don'ts. Most of them are obvious. Do not take drugs, do not drink-drive, do not drive at dangerous speeds, do not drive when you are tired, do not tailgate, do not use your mobile phone and always use a seatbelt. Some seem to be not quite so obvious from what I have witnessed on our country and city roads, which I find astounding, particularly in the country where people are driving at speed. Drive to the conditions—if it is pouring with rain, slow down. Keep two hands on the steering wheel at all times. Pay attention and anticipate what every single driver coming towards you might do. Do not swerve to miss a bird or a kangaroo and end up killing yourself or another road user. Be a considerate road user. If you are not driving at the speed limit, or if you have no intention of overtaking the car in front of you, leave plenty of room between you and the next car so that people can travel freely and do not get frustrated. We know that is when accidents can happen: when people get frustrated and do silly things. Most of all, I want to say to all Australians, all South Australians and everyone in my electorate of Boothby: please stay safe these summer, school and Christmas holidays when you are driving on our roads.

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