Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—

Introduction

The Australian Government has committed to report annually on the progress of the National Road Safety Strategy, and today I will outline the government's commitment to tackling road safety and our progress.

Last year alone some 1,291 people died on our nation's roads and over 30,000 were hospitalised—all because of road crashes. Since record keeping commenced in 1925, over 180,000 Australians have died on our roads. In dollar terms, the cost of road crashes to the Australian economy is estimated at $27 billion a year. It is a burden that is disproportionately carried by trauma victims and by their families. But the effects are also felt in our hospitals and by our medical and emergency services. The costs in lost productivity are felt by the whole community.

The Australian government believes that there is much we can—and must—do as a nation to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on Australia's roads. And pursuing this change is a shared responsibility—we can only make significant inroads if we all work together—all levels of government working in partnership with the community.

National Road Safety Strategy

In May last year, federal, state and territory transport ministers approved the National Road Safety Strategy 2011 to 2020. The Australian government led the establishment of the strategy following an extensive process of consultation with road safety agencies, professional organisations, industry groups and the broader Australian community. The strategy is an ambitious one, setting out an agenda for sustained road safety improvement, and guided by the vision that no person should be killed or seriously injured on Australia's roads. It is a strategy that moves away from the outdated mindset of blaming the driver, recognising that solutions to reducing road trauma need to adopt a wider and much more integrated approach.

It is clear that such a complex problem cannot be solved by narrowly targeted or easily derived measures. In light of that, the strategy provides a 10-year plan to move us towards our long-term vision of a road transport system that is inherently safe, built around four fundamental pillars—safe roads; safe speeds; safe vehicles; and safe people.

The strategy aims to reduce the annual numbers of both deaths and serious injuries on our roads by at least 30 per cent by 2020. Research evidence and traffic growth projections suggest it will be challenging—but with a concerted effort it is achievable. The strategy identifies 59 specific action items for priority attention, and a formal review of the strategy will be undertaken in 2014, and I expect it will reveal significant progress.

Progress report

A few weeks ago, the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure received the first status report on the strategy—almost exactly a year after its introduction. Even at this early stage, the report shows that a considerable amount of activity is in progress. Action is well underway to develop and implement improved safety standards for new vehicles. The Australian government has also led the way to promote best-practice fleet purchasing policies by adopting a five-star vehicle safety requirement for the Commonwealth fleet in 2011.

I am also pleased to note that all states and territories have taken steps to strengthen their drink driving and speed enforcement programs. In most jurisdictions, this includes the introduction of, or plans to introduce, point-to-point speed camera systems in a concerted effort to improve safety on major traffic routes.

Projects scheduled for completion over the next two years are addressing issues such as:

The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) is currently developing a new national road crash database to enable full reporting against a range of key statistical indicators. While this is a work in progress, preliminary data produced for the first status report show that total road deaths in 2011 declined by 9.5 per cent relative to the strategy baseline. Indeed across a number of key indicators we are seeing improvements, including a 21 per cent reduction in deaths among 17- to 25-year-old drivers and motorcycle riders, and a 13 per cent reduction in both motorcyclist deaths and deaths from single-vehicle crashes.

Commonwealth contribution to road safety

I emphasised earlier that road safety is a shared responsibility. And in the spirit of shared responsibility I would like to outline the Australian government's major contributions to date.

Safe roads

It will come as no surprise to you that the strategy highlights the role of quality roads in ensuring safety. For this reason our $36 billion Nation Building Program is investing significant funding to upgrade and build new, safer roads around the nation. The government has already made unprecedented investments in upgrading highways, rail links and urban transport corridors, and through the latest budget, we will continue to do so.

Take for example the Black Spot Program. The Australian government's budget provides an additional $300 million to continue the program for a further five years until 2019. It is a significant investment—equating to a considerable $60 million per year to improve some of our nation's most dangerous patches of road.

And it is a program that is working. The bureau recently estimated that through the first seven years of projects funded by the Black Spot Program, around 4,000 crashes and almost 30 deaths have been avoided per year. We can expect that the Australian government's latest investment will prevent a further 2,000 crashes and save 13 lives a year.

The budget also announced additional funding to continue the Roads to Recovery Program from 2014-15 to 2018-19. A total of $1.75 billion in new funding will provide $350 million per annum directly to local councils, or states and territories in locations where there are no councils. This ensures those who know the local roads best have direct involvement in funding their improvement.

Safe vehicles

In the area of safer vehicles, the Australian government's role in vehicle safety regulation includes the ongoing pursuit of higher crash protection standards and the adoption of new and effective safety technology in vehicles. In driving forward the ambitious goals of the strategy in this area, the Australian government has made it a requirement starting July 2013 that all new passenger vehicles, passenger vans and sports utility vehicles are fitted with driver's seatbelt reminder systems.

Other work has seen the introduction of a new vehicle safety standard for ISOFIX child restraint anchorages, which will lead to greater choices for parents looking to ensure the safety of their children.

We will continue to work hard over the next two years, as we evaluate the case for mandating a range of other measures, such as:

Australia is also leading a United Nations working group to develop an international vehicle regulation on pole side impact. As side impacts account for over 20 per cent of Australian road deaths, and also a high proportion of serious brain injuries, this is a very important initiative. We are aiming for the UN agreement for the regulation next year and will then be in a position to implement the new standard here in Australia. I particularly acknowledge the international leadership and pioneering research of the department in this initiative and the support that we are getting from the Australian industry. ANCAP

While improving the safety of vehicles through changes to national standards, the Australian government has also turned its efforts to complementary safety measures, becoming a member of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program—ANCAP for short.

As I touched upon earlier, the government is showing its support for this important safety rating system by stipulating on 1 July last year that all new passenger vehicles purchased through the government's fleet purchasing system musthave a five-star ANCAP rating. I am particularly pleased that we have now increased the government's fleet of five-star passenger vehicles from 76 to 82 per cent over the last 12 months—all while maintaining our longstanding commitment to Australian vehicles. We will continue our commitment as we strive towards reaching the target of 100 per cent.

Also pleasing is the leadership that this has provided for other governments in Australia—and private fleet operators as well—to take up the challenge. Last month the Gillard government congratulated BHP Billiton on its announcement to require vehicles in its worldwide fleet to have the maximum five-star safety rating under New Car Assessment Programs operating around the globe. And we continue to urge others to follow.

Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program

I want to turn to an area of road safety that has been a particular concern to this government, namely the safety performance of heavy vehicles. The heavy vehicle transport sector plays a vital role in our economy and employs hundreds of thousands of Australians. However, heavy vehicle crashes also contribute substantially to road trauma, often involving the occupants of light passenger vehicles and pedestrians. We currently are, and will continue to be, dependent on heavy vehicles—they will not be disappearing from our roads anytime soon. But we can improve the safety of truck drivers, and by extension the rest of those on the road, by expanding the provision of suitable roadside rest areas.

In this year's budget, the government announced a $140 million extension to the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program through to 2019. This program directly targets heavy vehicle safety by providing funding for new and upgraded rest areas, parking and decoupling bays and other road enhancement projects. Impressively, in its first four years this program has delivered 236 projects—and we are building on this by doubling the amount of funding dedicated to this program.

This latest investment is on top of our recent establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal—a huge step forward in stemming risky behaviour by heavy vehicle drivers—as well as working to establish the first ever single National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.

Seatbelts on Regional School Buses

Another aim of the National Strategy is to improve the safety of children travelling in school buses on high-speed or potentially hazardous roads. The government's recent decision to extend the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program for a further four years is an important contribution to that objective. Since its introduction in 2007, the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program has invested some $4.8 million in seatbelts on more than 300 buses throughout Australia. The government's additional $4 million commitment will ensure that many more seatbelt-equipped school buses are available for students in rural and regional parts of Australia.

Young people

Last year, 133 young people aged between 17 and 25 years were killed while driving a vehicle. Tragically, a further 77 died as passengers. While we are making improvements in most areas of road safety, this young adult age group continues to be significantly over-represented in serious road crashes. That is why the Australian government is helping to improve young driver safety by funding the national keys2drive learner driver program. This groundbreaking initiative developed by the Australian Automobile Association provides learner drivers—and their supervising parents—with free lessons from an accredited driving instructor. With over 1,000 accredited driving instructors across the nation, this program has now delivered almost 100,000 free lessons to young learner drivers—and the program is continuing to expand.

One of the ways we seek to improve young driver safety in Australia is through graduated licensing systems for learner and p-plate drivers. I am pleased that transport ministers have agreed for work to be done on this issue and to consider options for a better national approach to graduated licensing at the next meeting of the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure.

Another matter of great concern to me, and that I have also raised with my state and territory colleagues, is the number of children killed or seriously injured in driveway-related incidents. These typically involve very young children being run over while they are playing—often in the family home—and often with a family member or friend behind the wheel. And these young children do not appear on our national road trauma statistics. I am determined to see some action nationally to prevent these tragic incidents, which impact terribly on families and communities. My department is undertaking work on options to address this problem and I will be taking the matter up at the next meeting of transport ministers later in the year.

Global decade of action for road safety

In addition the National Road Safety Strategy, the Australian government is a strong supporter to the global Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020. And we continue to contribute internationally to reduce the level of road trauma as part of the decade.

Conclusion

Australia has a commendable record of road safety achievement stretching back over four decades. In 1970, our worst year, 3,800 Australians lost their lives in a single year of road carnage. Since then we have seen combined efforts from all levels of governments and the community to get these figures down. We were the first country to introduce compulsory wearing of seatbelts and bicycle helmets. We were at the forefront of random breath testing, roadside drug testing laws and child restraint requirements.

We led the way in performance-based vehicle safety standards, black spot road improvement programs and fatigue management reforms in the heavy vehicle transport sector. But there is clearly a lot more that all of us need to do. We have made a good start under the new National Road Safety Strategy, and the government is determined to maintain the momentum.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Gippsland to speak for 15 minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Gippsland speaking in reply to the minister's statement for a period not exceeding 15 minutes.

Question agreed to.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do appreciate the opportunity to speak in response to the Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure and Transport's report on progress in relation to the National Road Safety Strategy, and I recognise that it is quite an unusual occurrence for a parliamentary secretary to make a ministerial statement and I do congratulate her and recognise her passion on this issue and her determination to achieve positive results across Australia.

Road safety is an issue of critical importance to all members in this place, but I would suggest it is particularly an issue of great significance to regional MPs—primarily because we do tend to drive longer distances on an annual basis. We often travel on a poorer standard of road, and tragically it is our friends and our family members and our colleagues who are overrepresented in accident statistics. Road issues are very close to the heart of all regional MPs. We depend heavily on our road networks to link our regions and to help break down our isolation, but we need a good, safe road network to travel on because roads are the arteries of community life and economic activity in regional Australia.

Unfortunately, I imagine that everyone in this place and those listening today have been touched either directly or indirectly by road trauma. Last year almost 1,300 people died on Australian roads and 30,000 were hospitalised. There is no question that we have some made enormous progress since the bad old days of the 1970s. But we have a long way to go, and we need to commit ourselves to working in partnership with all jurisdictions and to accept our shared responsibility as legislators, as road users and as parents to do the best we can to reduce road trauma.

The burden of road trauma is carried for life. There is the ongoing care which is required for people who have acquired serious injuries. There is a loss of quality of life for those individuals. There are major costs in the loss of productivity for the injured individuals but also for those who care for them. So there are some very compelling social and economic reasons to improve our road safety outcomes. That is why I welcome the National Road Safety Strategy. I believe it is a good document, but it is only as good as the commitment it receives from all stakeholders to the implementation of the key strategies that it outlines, some of which the parliamentary secretary referred to during her statement.

At the heart of the National Road Safety Strategy is its vision that no person should be killed or seriously injured on Australia's roads. I welcome that vision because it directly tackles the proposition that deaths and injuries on our roads are inevitable. The document presents almost 60 specific items for priority attention and acknowledges that many of the severe accidents we experience in our communities are preventable. It is a good document, but it is not without its shortcomings, and I think there is room for improvement, as you would expect in a document of this nature.

I turn to the substance of the parliamentary secretary's report on the progress of implementation. There is now a recognition that road safety is not all about enforcement measures and improving driver behaviour. I think that is a very welcome change, which we have seen perhaps over the past decade. We need a more holistic approach which revolves around the so-called safe system principles of safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles and safe people. That means we need to train drivers and other roads users to be as safe as possible and to factor safety into their everyday lives. We need to continue to invest in improved safety within vehicles and to legislate, if necessary, to introduce proven safety measures. We need to ensure that speed limits are set appropriately for the accident risk of a section of road and that drivers appreciate the importance of complying with those limits. We also need to provide the safest possible road environment so that one mistake by a driver does not necessarily end in death or serious injury.

There have been numerous reports in recent years which have indicated that the great gains in reducing road trauma will come from improving the safety of the road environment rather than having a focus, as was the case in the 1980s and 1990s, on improved driver behaviour and improved enforcement measures. I recognise that it is a complex equation and that primary responsibility does rest with other jurisdictions, but I think there is a strong role for our federal government. I welcome this opportunity to speak on the strategy and the parliamentary secretary's report on progress. When we are dealing with human error, we are never going to have a perfect system. But that should not dampen our enthusiasm or limit our resolve for effective action in the future.

I do take on the issue of road funding in the context of the most recent federal budget. I have some concerns. The budget papers revealed that the estimated expenditure on road transport would reduce this year from the previous year. That is an issue of concern when we are talking about ways to invest in improved road safety across the board and to adopt the safer road principles that the National Road Safety Strategy promotes. On the positive side, I note the current government's commitment to continue with the Roads to Recovery program. I think that that program has been incredibly successful across regional Australia. I have found it to be very well received by local councils in my travels. The point is well made within the National Road Safety Strategy document that many of the accidents and much of the trauma which occurs throughout Australia occurs on local roads, and any effort we can make to assist local councils with their infrastructure shortfalls would be welcomed.

The Nationals and the Liberals have always been supportive of measures targeted at improving road safety, such as reintroducing the discontinued Black Spot programs and introducing the Roads to Recovery program in March 2001 I give credit to the current government, which has continued that program in a bipartisan way. I believe that there is going to be more pressure on us at a federal level to invest more in Roads to Recovery in the future as local government grapples with the infrastructure shortfall.

I believe that the Nationals and Liberals in coalition came up with a good policy—our $600 million bridges renewal program—during the previous election campaign in 2010 and that the government could have a close look at it. There are an estimated 30,000 bridges in decay throughout regional Australia. I believe that local councils will never have the wherewithal to maintain them, let alone upgrade them or replace them as they approach the end of their useful life. That is a challenge we have in the infrastructure network. We need to have a plan to help our regional communities rebuild those bridges to ensure productivity and keep communities connected. If we do not fix those bridges and do not provide access for these regional communities, we are forcing people to take longer routes and to detour around roads that may not be quite as safe. We all know that fatigue is an issue in road safety. I think the bridges which link some of our road networks are as critical a component as the roads themselves. I would encourage the government to take this fact on board and to consider it closely in its future budget deliberations. It is a good program that was put forward by the Liberals and Nationals, and hopefully we will have the chance to implement it in the future.

The parliamentary secretary referred to another practical measure which I am very supportive of—the commitment to build more rest areas. In the previous election our policy was to work in partnership with other jurisdictions to build 500 rest areas at an estimated cost of $300 million over 10 years. I think that, if we are going to go down the path of enforcing more regulations on professional drivers—the heavy vehicle drivers—in our community, then we have to provide decent and safe facilities for them to take the appropriate breaks. Heavy vehicles are overrepresented in road accident statistics, and improving the rest areas is an important strategy. We will pursue that with vigour if we have the opportunity in the future. There is a link between heavy vehicle users and recreational vehicles, and it is causing problems for our tourism industry. It is a substantial issue in many regional communities that large recreational vehicles do not have anywhere to park in our towns. I think that, if we can work in a constructive way with the heavy vehicle sector in providing rest areas which are appropriate for their needs, we may be able to come up with a design which alleviates some of the pressure on recreational vehicles as well.

As the parliamentary secretary indicated, there is a lot of support within the community for the Australian Automobile Association and Rotary International improved driver safety training program through the Keys to Drive initiative, which has the bipartisan support of the House. Like the government, we remain committed to working with ANCAP and to programs such as the installation of seat belts in regional school buses to improve safety for some of our youngest road users. These are good initiatives, and I do congratulate the parliamentary secretary for continuing to work in that direction.

Road safety is a very complex equation, and I fear that future reductions in the road toll will be hard for us to achieve. I do not want to sound pessimistic on a day when we are talking about 10-year strategy, but I would argue that some of the easy gains—if you could call them that—in the reduction of road trauma have already been made. We are seeing them in the introduction of the compulsory wearing of seatbelts, in drink-drive legislation and in improved enforcement of speed limits. So I suggest that some of the easier gains have already been made and that what we will see from now may well be incremental improvements rather than dramatic improvements.

Australia has been a world leader in the past—and the parliamentary secretary touched on this—with our legislation and some of the enforcement measures which have been aimed at reducing the road toll. They have been very successful over a period of 40 years. But there is growing evidence to suggest that we are falling behind the rest of the world, and there are opportunities for us to lift our game and to learn from the international experience and to see what measures we can bring from other countries to Australia. Keep in mind that there are some unique conditions which we endure in Australia and which other parts of the world do not endure. I think there are opportunities for us not only to learn from other parts of the world but also to encourage innovation and research here within Australia.

In short, my argument is that there is room for improvement within Australia. We can make more gains, and we should not give up in that regard. There is a need for eternal vigilance on the issue of road safety, and we need to be willing to pursue policy reforms where they are available to us and to, wherever possible, pursue them in a bipartisan manner. As I said from the outset, I think that members on both sides recognise the critical importance of road safety initiatives and the economic benefits that come from improvements as well as the obvious social benefits of reduced trauma.

There are a couple of improvements I will suggest in the short amount of time I have left. I express some disappointment with the National Road Safety Strategy in its failure to fully explore the opportunities and the safety benefits which exist from getting more heavy vehicles off the road and onto rail. I think it is a bit of a shortcoming of the strategy. As we talk about adopting a more holistic approach to the issue of road safety more generally, I think it is reasonable to expect that such a strategy have a more holistic approach to the transport task itself.

I will give a classic example. Last week I had the opportunity to visit Parkes, where there was a Melbourne-to-Brisbane inland rail symposium undertaken. Part of the case for building that long overdue link are the improvements in road safety that will flow from the project. Reducing the number of heavy vehicles interacting with passenger vehicles on the highways—in this case, primarily the Newell Highway—and in towns along the route can deliver a very large safety dividend. I think that there is an opportunity for this document in the future to consider what the opportunities are, given that heavy vehicles are overrepresented in our road accident statistics and given the push that is on to build projects such as the inland rail project and to link those in and reap the safety dividend. That is one area of improvement which we can perhaps look at in our overall safety strategy.

I am also particularly interested—and the parliamentary secretary touched on this as well—to see how we can focus more of our energy and our research and development on the question of how we get more young people into the safest possible car. My experience probably would not be very different to those of other members in that when I turned 18 I bought the car that I could afford, and, if it kept running for a year or two, you were happy. We have matured as a nation since then, and we recognise that having 18-year-olds getting around in old bangers is not necessarily the safest way to approach our road safety issues.

I recognise that affordability is an issue here, but there is compelling evidence that improvements in vehicle safety contribute significantly to road trauma reduction. Our problem is that the Australian fleet has an average age of around 10 years, which means that any advancements we see today in the safety technology of our vehicles will take a long time to flow through the fleet and improve safety for all those road users who may purchase a second-hand vehicle in the future.

There is something of an irony in this, in that by the time that we as adults can afford to buy a new and undoubtedly a safer car, we are probably already safer drivers because we have those years of experience and probably a reduced propensity to take risks. Our challenge is to get new vehicles, with their safety benefits, into the hands of young drivers, who are vastly over-represented in accident statistics. I would like to think that we can be innovative about this. Perhaps we can link assistance to the car industry in the future to a scheme that provides incentives for young drivers to purchase new vehicles. The government and the banking industry may be able to develop a system of interest rate subsidies to help drivers under the age of 25 purchase a new car for personal use. Perhaps there could be an opportunity for parents who assist their children in purchasing their first car to access some sort of program to support them in their efforts to get their loved ones into the safest vehicle they can afford.

In conclusion I acknowledge the great work that has already been done by legislators across various jurisdictions, by our researchers, by emergency services personnel—who are at the front line of this issue—by our medical professionals, by community groups and by individuals who are passionate about road safety. I include the parliamentary secretary in that final category. Australia has come a long way, but we do have a long way to go. Every loss of life in a car accident is a tragic event, and we must commit ourselves in this place to continue working towards the vision that no person should be killed or seriously injured on Australia's roads.