Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to speak about the Black Spot Program, which funds safety measures—for example, traffic signals, roundabouts, barriers where serious car crashes or near misses are known to have occurred—particularly because I have the honour of chairing the blackspot committee in the Northern Territory. The Black Spot Program is a Hawke government initiative that began in 1990 and was later reintroduced by the Howard government, and I give them credit for doing that. It's one of the most important and effective federal programs for reducing crashes nationwide. One early review of the program found that, for every dollar spent on it, about $4 was generated for the Australian economy, and that's huge already, before you even consider the incalculable value of the lives that are saved by it. As of 2012, there were 1,600 blackspot projects around Australia, each preventing, on average, 1.7 car crashes. Even with a conservative estimate of two people involved in each car crash, that is over 5,000 people saved from grave injury or death across these projects. This program is central to the Australian government's commitment to building safer roads, as we work towards our vision of having no deaths at all on our roads by 2050. That's the ambition. I'm very proud that our Labor government has committed $110 million per year to the Black Spot Program, working with state, territory and local governments to improve road safety across our nation.

I was particularly pleased that the Territory received $2.4 million under the Black Spot Program for this financial year. Territory roads, as you would know, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, are spread over a massive area—1.3 million square kilometres—and about three-quarters of our 36,000 kilometres of roads are unsealed. Our geography and our climate extremes make it even more important to construct safe and resilient roads. I value the contribution by the member for Barker, who moved this motion, to our current inquiry into improving road resilience. The fact is that the Territory remains the most dangerous place in Australia to be on a road, with 475 people killed and 4,242 people seriously injured on our roads in the 10 years from 2006 until 2016. Just last year we lost 52 lives. Scores of families were absolutely shattered. Of course, one road death is too many, and our goal remains zero. That's why the nine blackspot projects across the Northern Territory are so welcome, making an important contribution towards reducing serious injuries and deaths on our local roads. They build on previous investments in the Territory, and these include $144 million in funding to the Northern Territory as part of the Australian government's $3 billion national road safety program.

In Darwin, which is the place I've represented with Palmerston, the blackspot projects include a roundabout to reduce vehicle speeds in Fannie Bay, as well as a left turn lane on the corner of Amy Johnson Avenue and Boulter Road in Berrimah. Those watching will know exactly where that is. And in Palmerston we are investing in intersection delineation, reducing lane width and three school zone crossings on Emery Avenue to keep families, kids, students and parents safe around Bakewell Primary School.

As I said, I welcome the member for Barker's motion which acknowledges the absolute importance of this program. It's crucial that this and other road safety programs remain bipartisan and are strongly supported. I want to acknowledge that local governments are very important in this area, given that they're responsible for 77 per cent of our road network, and I note that they can seek funding under the black spot road safety program. We should always continue to work to make sure that programs such as this are as user friendly as possible so that we can get the best results out of them. I encourage those that are involved in road safety to continue to look for all those opportunities.

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