Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the chair of the Western Australian Black Spot Consultative Panel, I can attest to the benefits of the Commonwealth's long-running Black Spot Program. This financial year, WA will benefit greatly from the program, with 34 dangerous crash sites to be improved at a combined cost of $14.7 million. Over the past five years at these 34 intersections a total of six crashes have caused fatalities and a further 107 have caused injury. As a member for an entirely regional electorate, I'm extremely concerned that, of the 155 people who died on Western Australian roads in 2020, 93 died in regional areas of the state. This overrepresentation of regional fatalities belies the fact that three-quarters of Western Australians live in metropolitan Perth. That's why it's heartening that 47 per cent of WA's black spot projects for 2021-22 are in regional shires and cities.

In my vast electorate of O'Connor, five projects have been funded at a combined cost to the Commonwealth of $1.7 million. These projects are widely distributed across WA's Goldfields, Great Southern, Wheatbelt and South West regions. In the Goldfields, traffic islands will be installed on Lane Street in Kalgoorlie and parking bays modified near a busy shopping centre in the city's CBD. A shared path will be installed, kerbing modified and the paving better marked. This $661,000 black spot project will improve the safety of Lane Street between Dugan Street and Kalgoorlie's best-known thoroughfare, the historic Hannan Street. In the Wheatbelt, a $552,000 black spot project will see a 29-kilometre section of the Williams Narrogin Highway upgraded. Moving onto the beautiful town of Bridgetown in the state's South West, $409,000 will be provided to install kerbing, barriers, culverts and pavement markings to improve Turner Road. Finally, in the Great Southern, Lights Road in Denmark will be made safer, as will Kuringup Road in Nyabing. All these potentially life-saving projects will be undertaken in the 2021-22 financial year. So that's what's happening right now in my electorate and in WA more broadly under the Morrison government's record $1.1 billion 10-year investment in the Black Spot Program.

Turning to the future: what the increased funding and long-term funding stability allows parliamentarians to do is to advocate on behalf of constituents who have raised serious concerns about other black spots. To this end, I'm working closely with the residents of the small Great Southern town of Narrikup to see what we can do about a notorious stretch of the Albany Highway. The highway links the Great Southern and western Wheatbelt to Perth, and is one of WA's main tourist routes. Unfortunately, between Spencer and Jackson roads at Narrikup the Albany Highway is an absolute shocker. In the past five years this 700-metre stretch of road has seen three fatal crashes. Another crash resulted in hospitalisation and three more crashes saw property damaged.

Of course, these crashes are just the ones that have been reported. Concerned members of the Narrikup community tell me that there have been several more unreported crashes that don't show up in official statistics and that there have been many more near misses. These crashes, especially the fatal ones, take a tremendous toll on the people involved and their families and friends. They also affect residents in places such as Narrikup, where the local first responders are called upon to attend the crash scenes. That's why I'm doing everything I can to raise awareness of the horror stretch of highway at Narrikup in order to have this black spot fixed.

To that end, the Black Spot Program follows a clear process that engages local communities and state road authorities in the development of a business case for priority projects. What's also good is that the program dovetails very nicely with other safety initiatives of the Morrison government with, dare I say it, last month's announcement of some big-ticket roadworks around my electorate under the federal Road Safety Program. Firstly, there was $2.7 million of works on the South Coast Highway either side of the small town of Munglinup, which is between Esperance and Ravensthorpe. Then there was $7.1 million provided to improve safety along the Great Southern Highway, which links Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie and Merredin to Perth. And there was $3.5 million to go towards improving various sections of the Donnybrook-Kojonup road; the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway will benefit from $8.6 million of investment; and, finally, but certainly not least, $1.7 million has been provided to make the Lower Denmark Road much less dangerous.

That's an impressive list, but it's not exhaustive. So while it's early days yet in advocating an end to the black spot at Narrikup, the residents there can take heart that the Morrison government takes road safety seriously. With the right combination of analysis and advocacy, worthy road safety projects have been conceived, advanced and completed under the road Black Spot Program.

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