Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Barker for placing a motion about the blackspot road safety program on the Notice Paper. When all is said and done, we should all care about road infrastructure, keeping our roads safe and lowering the number of fatalities and injuries that occur on roads across Australia every year. That is evident by all the contributions here in this place today. And condolences to those morning their loss, including those in the members for Riverina's and Indi's electorates.

According to the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, blackspot projects reduce the number of crashes causing death and injury by roughly 30 per cent. There is a good quote within the National Road Safety Strategy which I'll heavily paraphrase: it calls on eliminating the fatalistic mindset whereby deaths and injuries on our roads are just an inevitable part of road use. We can't allow that.

The Black Spot Program itself was born during the time of the Hawke government, although it was put on ice by the Keating government. As the member for Barker pointed out, it has been continuously in place since 1996, when it was reintroduced under the Howard government.

Being a member from South Australia too, I am aware of a number of other titles and positions the member for Barker has held from time to time; however, a title that the member for Barker once held was that of the Chair of the South Australian Consultative Black Spot Panel, a position that he held under the previous government from 2016, if I'm not mistaken. The blackspot consultative panel system extends to all states and territories in Australia, and at face value it appears to be a fundamentally sound system to have in place to better identify the areas that most need funding through the program.

During the course of this debate we have heard from three panel chairs of their respective states and territories, being the member for Solomon, the member for Lyons and the member for Bendigo. They were also joined by their fellow panel chairs from this side of the chamber—the members for Gilmore; Blair; Fremantle; Canberra; and, from my home state, Makin. These panels are constituted similarly but have a few distinctions, given the local variants of infrastructure, motorists and road safety groups across the country.

On the South Australia panel sits the member for Makin with delegates from the Local Government Association of South Australia; the RAA; the South Australian Road Transport Association; the SA Police; the SA Freight Council; the Traffic Management Association of Australia; the Department for Infrastructure and Transport; and a representative for South Australia's minister for road safety, Joe Szakacs.

In fact, less than two months ago, I was delighted to be joined by the panel chair the member for Makin when the assistant minister for infrastructure was in Adelaide to announce 17 projects that were receiving funding under the Black Spot Program in 2023-24. We were also joined by Tom Koutsantonis, the South Australia Minister for Infrastructure and Transport; Tony Piccolo, the state member for Light; Mayor Glenn Docherty and Mayor Karen Redman of the city of Playford and the town of Gawler respectively. We all converged upon the not-all-too-quiet intersection between Dalkeith and Stebonheath roads out in Kudla, located in my electorate of Spence. This was to announce that the Black Spot Program would be funding the installation of a roundabout at this location to the tune of almost $2 million from a total of $5.9 million across 17 announced successful projects. This project is one of concern to many local residents who travel down that intersection every day.

But I wouldn't be a good local member if I didn't say that this is just a drop in the ocean for the road funding that would fix many of the issues faced by motorists in the north of Adelaide. I'll even go so far as to be collegial with the member for Barker and, for that matter, the member for Grey also. It is especially important given that many road users will traverse through their electorates to get to mine or travel further onwards into metropolitan Adelaide and vice versa. A good example that comes to mind would be a heavy vehicle operator, many of whom I represented as a Transport Workers Union official before my time in parliament.

However, this unity ticket waivers a bit when I see the member for Barker speaking of the need to change the rules to make the process of applying easier, yet he thought better of doing so in the many long years he was at the coalface as the chair of South Australia's blackspot panel. As a member so loud to both praise and criticise, he was eerily silent about this. He was keeping it a secret. I wonder why.

The member for Barker left the chamber earlier. One thing that was pointed out to me early on, by the member for Riverina, when I was elected to this place last year was: when it's that big of a matter to you, you usually stay in the chamber as a matter of courtesy to hear the entire debate.

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