Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for moving this motion. As a doctor, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating impact road trauma has on individuals, families and communities. Many days at the Alfred, a major trauma hospital in Australia, were and remain scenes of unspeakable suffering and anguish as victims of road trauma were either driven in or, in the most severe cases, choppered in while their relatives often were the ones holding up the walls in the hospital in grief.

No electorate is untouched by road trauma. In March, two young people—kids who were from my electorate—died when a car driven by a 17-year-old male hit a tree in Toorak. Our local priest, Father Peter French, witnessed an inferno where the screams were also audible. Both of these children died. The community remains traumatised and are calling on council and the state government to make changes to Clendon Road to slow down the traffic. They also want consideration given to actually closing off one end of Clendon Road to stop drivers from gathering this sort of speed.

The recent surge in road fatalities in Australia is a grim reminder of the urgent need for effective road safety measures and comprehensive data sharing to address this escalating crisis. In the year leading up to the end of May 2024, Australia recorded just over 1,300 road deaths, marking a 10 per cent increase from the previous year. May 2024 saw 96 fatalities alone. This follows a particularly deadly 2023 across the nation, and this is evident in the Alfred. It was also evident just after the early years of the pandemic, when we saw an uptick in road trauma victims, and there was an anecdotal sense that this was due to greater risk taking in the community. We can't forget that road trauma also includes serious injury, much of which results in life-changing outcomes. In 2021 alone, there were nearly 40,000 serious injuries on Australian roads. These numbers are not just statistics. They represent lives lost, families shattered and communities left to grapple with the aftermath of these avoidable tragedies.

In response to the rising road toll, the Albanese government held a national road safety conference in April of this year which brought together more than a hundred road safety stakeholders to identify a range of short-term government and industry actions that can stem this tide. We know that the top five causes of a rising road toll are (1) speed, (2) alcohol and other drug impaired driving, or AOD, (3) driver distraction, (4) failure to obey traffic lights and signs, and (5) fatigue, all of which are entirely preventable. Every single one of these causes is preventable.

The government has listened and is acting. The National Road Safety Action Plan 2023-25 cites the importance of community education and awareness, and to that end we are kicking in over $10 million to fund a national road safety and awareness campaign. The other projects include targeting vulnerable road users, First Nations communities, technology, innovation, and research and data. We're also, it goes without saying, attempting to improve the quality of our roads, and to that end we are committing nearly $3 billion towards a road safety program over five years from 2021. It's estimated that these projects will upgrade approximately 15,000 kilometres of roads, and there are currently over 1,600 projects approved. The government are also doubling the Roads to Recovery funding, from $500 million to $1 billion, and we are substantially increasing the Black Spot Program, which will be progressively increased from $110 million to $150 million a year.

Perhaps most important, however, is the need to harmonise data and to collect better data so that our response is actually data driven and data informed. We can announce that we have reached agreement with the states to achieve just that, and that is critically important. We will be creating a nationally consistent dataset. This is the first step towards creating a much more holistic data informed approach to bringing down the road toll. To support this effort we have committed $21 million to the National Road Safety Data Hub to support enhanced evidence-based road safety strategies, with an aim of eliminating road trauma by 2050.

As with housing, energy and health care, the previous coalition government's inaction has led to this disaster or contributed to it. We are making up for lost time and intend to push on.

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