Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate Mr van Manen for moving this motion because we don't talk enough about road safety in this parliament. It's important, because Australia is not getting the results that we should be in reducing road deaths and trauma, and the statistics bear that out. In the 12 months to September 2021, 1,142 Australians died on our roads. Over the 12 months in the preceding year, to September 2020, it was 1,087, so that's an increase. In 2019 it was 1,164 and in 2018 it was 1,200. The statistics tell the same story about serious injury from crashes. The data is not so up-to-date but hospitalisations in 2018-19 were 39,755 and in 2017-18 there were 39,404. And if we go back to 2012 it was a similar picture then.

We have a National Road Safety Strategy. It's a decade-long plan that the country puts together to try to reduce the incidence of road trauma. The last plan ran from 2011 to 2020 and they're currently writing the 2021 to 2030 plan. The 10-year plan from 2011 to 2020 had a target of reducing annual deaths and serious injury on Australian roads by 30 per cent and we're failing that. We aren't going to meet that: we've failed. That plan set out a number of directions and interventions: improved standards of road design and construction; speed limits that better reflect the balance of safety and mobility; safety design features mandated in vehicles; graduated licensing systems; and penalties against irresponsible driving.

In 2018, an independent inquiry into the effectiveness of the National Road Safety Strategy was conducted by Associate Professor Jeremy Woolley from the Centre for Automotive Research and Dr John Crozier, the chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Trauma Committee. These two gentlemen, who appear regularly before the Road Safety Committee, have released their findings. They found that 'Australia's road safety performance has stalled,' that 'the scale of the personal and financial cost of road trauma is unacceptable,' that 'current actions and investments are not achieving the desired results' and that 'a dramatic change in road safety management is required in Australia'.

They made 12 recommendations, including a cabinet minister for road safety and a national road safety entity. Thankfully, the government has established the National Office of Road Safety. They suggested $3 billion a year to a road safety fund. The government's put $3 billion but it is over three years—okay, it's a start—and t is an important investment. Other recommendations include speed management initiatives and an accelerated uptake of vehicle road safety technology. Recommendation No. 5 is an important recommendation—that is, the establishment of key performance indicators in the next strategy to measure and report on how harm can be eliminated in the system and to be published annually. To be published annually is really important. The strategy sets ambitions and a plan but there has never been a look at whether anyone is achieving it. The Commonwealth, the states and territories, and local government are not held to account for the decisions that they made around road safety under that strategy.

I will give you a couple of examples of how we can set key performance indicators that will make a difference. On the element of the strategy around reducing speed, we know point-to-point speed cameras work. If a point-to-point speed camera is on a road, it will reduce the fatalities and accidents because people slow down. It has been implemented for trucks. There is a recommendation that has been sitting there for years, to turn on point-to-point speed cameras for all road users in all states. Some states, to their credit, have done it. But in the largest state, in New South Wales, the government refuses to do it, traditionally because the National Party and their members don't like the fact that they would be caught for speeding on roads, so they have obstructed and stopped it. That is completely unacceptable. People are dying on our roads. We have technology that will target speeding to stop it and reduce road deaths but it is not switched on for all road users. That is a key performance indicator that we should have in the next national strategy to say 'states have got until this time to switch it on for all road users or will lose their funding'. That is something that would make a difference. There are plenty more where we can make a difference on road safety if we do a bit more and put our minds to key performance indicators under the strategy.

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