Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Services, Local Communities and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Today I give my second annual statement to the House on progress in delivering a vital national initiative—the National Road Safety Strategy 2011-20.

The strategy aims to cut the annual number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads by at least 30 per cent by 2020. It is an ambitious target.

Australians recognise the absolute importance of achieving this target, and this understanding underlies the commitment of all Australian governments to delivering the strategy.

The Gillard government is proud to have played a major part in forming the strategy in 2011 and to have a major role in delivering it.

The strategy is multidimensional, because there is no single solution to improving road safety.

The strategy covers 59 priority action items in four cornerstone areas: safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles, and safe people.

These themes encompass the need for both the safer design of roads and vehicles, and the safer behaviour of drivers, passengers, pedestrians and other road users.

The Australian government is responsible under the strategy for allocating agreed infrastructure resources to the national highway and local road networks, and for regulating safety standards for new vehicles.

Minister Albanese and I emphasised at the launch of the strategy that this target of a 30 per cent reduction in fatalities, and also—equally importantly—a 30 per cent reduction in serious injuries, was challenging but achievable, and it remains so.

In 2012, 1,309 people died on Australia's roads—2.5 per cent more than the number of road deaths recorded in 2011.

The 2012 increase is incredibly disappointing.

However, I do want to emphasise that it runs counter to the long-term downward trend in national road fatalities and still represents a significant 8.2 per cent reduction relative to the strategy's baseline period of 2008 to 2010.

Furthermore, all states and territories achieved reductions in road fatalities compared with the strategy baseline, and road deaths decreased across most age groups and road user categories.

Unfortunately, the main exception to this pattern involves people aged 60 years and over. In 2012, fatalities among this older group were up by 19 per cent, relative to the baseline period, and while it is premature to see this as an emerging trend, it is clearly an issue that warrants further examination.

Despite the encouraging gains overall, the level of death and injury on Australia's roads remains unacceptable and underlines the need for continuing efforts by all governments to implement the priority actions of the national strategy. I particularly want to take the opportunity to recognise in this place the role that local government played last night at the Australian Council of Local Government awards. We recognised, at the ALGA awards, that the Dungog, Maitland and Port Stephens councils received not only the national road safety award for local government, but also the overall national award for some fantastic work that they have done in their local communities on motorcycle safety. In fact, during the six months that they have had the program in place, they have not had a single motorcycle accident, and I want to acknowledge that.

I now want to turn particularly to the progress the Commonwealth has made in our specific areas of responsibility under the strategy.

Over many decades, the Australian government has administered the Australian Design Rules, which have underpinned the safer design of Australian road vehicles.

All road vehicles, whether newly manufactured in Australia or imported as new or second-hand vehicles, must in general comply with the relevant ADRs at the time of manufacture and supply to the Australian market.

As part of its commitment under the strategy, the Australian government is pursuing significantly improved road vehicle design in several areas.

We have streamlined the harmonisation of the ADRs with international standards, and we will continue to work closely with our international counterparts to ensure we progress improved safety measures in vehicle regulations that can be applied internationally.

Until recently, this has been a position supported by both sides of the House.

In addition to improving the safety of vehicles through changes to national standards, the Australian government continues to support complementary safety measures—particularly since becoming a member of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, ANCAP, in May 2010.

Labor is proud to be the first federal government to join ANCAP as an actual member.

We have provided ANCAP with $4.95 million in the period 2009-10 to 2013-14, which aims to increase ANCAP's crash test program and research and development. I think it is a tribute both to the funding and to ANCAP's work that it has become the driver of consumer concerns in safety and one of the components that people look for on the purchase of a new vehicle.

On recent figures, around 98 per cent of the vehicles rated by ANCAP have four or five star ratings.

The Australian government has also mandated seatbelt reminder systems, set requirements for ISOFIX child restraint systems and improved the standards for electric bicycles.

Our work is now focused on mandatory electronic stability control and brake assist systems.

In April this year, I released for public comment a proposal to make ESC compulsory for new light commercial vehicles, such as utilities and goods vans, and to make BAS standard in light passenger and light commercial vehicles.

In parallel with these efforts, the Australian government's work on the introduction of anti-lock braking systems for heavy trucks, trailers and buses is now well advanced.

This work, which forms part of phase 1 of the National Heavy Vehicle Braking Strategy, is an important step in bringing more modern braking systems into Australia's heavy vehicles.

It is also very encouraging that peak industry bodies are developing a code of practice to help operators optimise the performance of different braking technologies when combining trucks and trailers together.

Consistent with the National Road Safety Strategy, the government envisages that the next phase of the National Heavy Vehicle Braking Strategywill consider even more advanced braking technology such as ESC systems.

While we often and understandably think of road safety mainly in domestic terms, it also has important international dimensions.

Australia's National Road Safety Strategy coincides with the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, and around 90 per cent of the world's road fatalities—which exceed 1.2 million—are suffered by low- and middle-income countries.

Australia is seen as a world leader in road safety for our significant achievements in reducing road trauma over several decades. Countries in our region often look to us for assistance and expertise in developing their own responses to this immense public health issue.

Australia is the largest donor to the World Bank's Global Road Safety Facility.

We contribute to regional road safety measures through international forums such as APEC, and we are delivering safety improvements through our aid-funded infrastructure programs in developing countries.

Australia has also participated very strongly in the development of international vehicle standards by the United Nations World Forum on Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations.

Australia has led the development of a Global Technical Regulation on Pole Side Impact—the first time Australia has led development of an international vehicle standard. It is one that impacts on Australian motorists very heavily.

Side impacts with poles, trees and other narrow objects account for over 20 per cent of the Australian road toll and for a large number of serious head injuries. This new standard will require strong protective measures for vehicle occupants, including curtain airbags, which will be beneficial in all side impacts.

I am confident that the GTR will be adopted by the UN forum and that it will be incorporated into future Australian design rules.

Infrastructure Investment

Improving safety through investment in the nation's road infrastructure is a critical element of the strategy. The Australian government has made major investments in Australia's highway and other road infrastructure under the Nation Building Program. The government's expenditure on roads between 2008-09 and 2013-14 will total over $20.5 billion.

This investment has built and upgraded around 7,500 kilometres of road, resulting in a marked improvement in the condition and safety of our highways. The Australian Automobile Association considers that the proportion of the National Road Network rated 'high risk' has fallen substantially since 2007.

The second phase of the Nation Building Program will maintain the momentum of this investment.

The Black Spot Program, which targets road locations with recurrent crashes, will continue as part of the Nation Building Program until at least 2019.

An amount of $300 million will be provided over five years from 1 July 2014. Since 2008-09, more than 2,000 sites have been approved for funding, and this extension will fix a further 1,200 black spot areas.

The Australian government established the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program as part of the Nation Building Program, to improve the safety and productivity outcomes of heavy vehicle operations across Australia.

Funding has been applied to a range of projects to provide new or upgraded heavy vehicle rest areas and new or upgraded parking or decoupling bays, and projects which enhance the capacity and safety of roads and bridges and also saleyards for livestock to allow better access by heavier, high productivity vehicles to the road network.

The 2013-14 budget provided a further $100 million for heavy vehicle related projects under the next tranche of the Nation Building Program. This will bring total funding between 2012-13 and 2018-19 to over $250 million.

Seatbelts on Regional School Buses

The strategy also calls for governments to address the risks to children on school bus routes. For its part, the Australian government runs the highly successful Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program, which aims to increase the number of school buses equipped with seatbelts for students in rural and regional areas.

The program provides school bus operators with funding to fit seatbelts to new buses or to retrofit existing buses. I am pleased to see some movement from state governments on this issue. In April this year, I approved grants for a further 115 buses under the government's scheme, which has now provided total funding to date of $7.5 million to install seatbelts on 421 buses across bus routes in regional Australia.

Driveway Safety

One issue that has been very dear to my heart has been the problem of children being killed or injured by vehicles around the home. It is a matter of particular urgency. My department is working with a wide range of stakeholders to produce a set of voluntary building design guidelines to help protect young children—in particular—from the risk of vehicle run-overs in home driveways and related areas.

I am planning to release a public discussion paper on this work by the end of June.

Yesterday I also announced that my department is now undertaking the first stage of an international study into the effectiveness of reversing cameras as a means of reducing reversing crashes, including those leading to driveway deaths and injury of young children.

National Road Safety Forum

In August last year I also had the pleasure of hosting a very successful National Road Safety Forum at Parliament House in Canberra, engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in a national discussion on road safety issues.

Ministers of the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure have since agreed to convene the forum annually. The 2013 forum will be held in Hobart next month and will focus on vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and motor cycle riders.

Implementation Progress

The Commonwealth and other jurisdictions are closely monitoring progress in delivering the strategy against high-level outcome measures and specific performance indicators.

In November last year, transport ministers published a report on the implementation status of the strategy. The report found that there was a considerable amount of work underway to implement the strategy, and that good progress had been made in several areas.

These areas include improving safety standards for new vehicles; the delivery of infrastructure programs addressing major crash problems and vulnerable groups; and stronger speed enforcement and compliance programs.

However, we still need to strengthen efforts to ensure that sufficient action is being undertaken to deliver the strategy.

At the most recent meeting of the transport ministers in May, I called on all governments to reaffirm their commitment to improving road safety by strengthening all of their efforts to implement the key priority action areas highlighted in the strategy.

Ministers noted that progress remains limited in a number of key areas including the introduction of point-to-point speed camera enforcement for all vehicles, which is highlighted in the strategy as a very effective road safety measure.

At that meeting I also raised concerns about the continuing lack of national data on serious injury crashes, due to major inconsistencies in the way states and territories define a serious injury crash. This significantly limits our capacity to properly monitor and analyse national road safety trends.

The Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics within my department, in cooperation with state and territory agencies, has developed a national road crash database to support measures of progress against the targets for both fatal and serious injury.

This national crash database was used in the last implementation status report for the strategy to produce fatality measures against most of the strategy's indicators. There is in-principle agreement among transport ministers to include serious injury measures once an adequate source of national serious injury data is established. I encourage all states and territories to continue with that work.

A comprehensive review of the national strategy and progress towards the target will be undertaken in 2014. The review will be an important element in ensuring we stay on track to achieve the aims of the strategy and reduce fatalities and serious injuries by at least 30 per cent over the decade.

I am pleased to have been able to bring a number of developments in that vital area to the attention of the House.

I present a copy of my ministerial statement, and 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 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

In rising, I welcome the opportunity to respond to the ministerial statement on the progress of the National Road Safety Strategy. In doing so, I would like to stress the largely bipartisan nature of the political debate right across Australia in relation to the urgent need to reduce the impact of road trauma in our community. In that spirit of bipartisanship, I would like to congratulate the minister on her appointment as the Minister for Road Safety. As others in the industry have remarked, it will certainly help to elevate the issue of road safety to a new level in the Commonwealth and I commend the minister for her efforts in that regard.

As a regionally based MP, something I share with the member for Ballarat, I think we have a shared concern about the disproportionate number of rural and regional road users who continue to die or are seriously injured on our roads, both on our regional highways and on our local road networks. I think it is also a source of enormous anguish for you, Deputy Speaker, in your regional electorate that people in our regional communities continue to suffer a disproportionate amount. It troubles me deeply that although the overall road toll has reduced across Australia in recent years, the regional road toll has not responded at the same rate. This is despite not only the very good efforts of community groups and local government, which the minister referred to in her report, but also of state governments and now the federal government. I think it remains an enormous challenge for us all to confront in this place, but particularly the regional members on both sides of the chamber.

The minister was right to make the point that the issue of road safety is not a simple one. It is not just about increased enforcement activities by police, although that is important. It is not just about improved driver behaviour, although we do know that distraction, excessive speed, use of mobile phones and so forth, and drink-driving are all important issues. And it is not just about building safer roads or having safer vehicles. It is a combination of all of these factors and about making sure we do as much as we possibly can do right in the interests of reducing road trauma wherever possible.

There is a very complex equation or sequence of events that can contribute to a road accident occurring—or can contribute to a road accident not occurring through prevention measures that have been put in place in the first place. On top of that, there is the equally complex equation that will decide how serious the injuries are of the people who have been involved in that accident: whether there has been an appropriate road treatment put in place to minimise the level of damage to a vehicle, whether there are emergency services available in a time effective manner, whether in fact there are mobile phone services available for people to seek help in the first place. These are all part of this complex equation about whether we can prevent accidents and, when they do occur, how we minimise the damage—obviously to the people involved but also to the broader economy. It is by no means a simple issue that we are talking about here today and there are no simple answers or silver bullets in relation to the road toll.

As the minister indicated in her progress report, there has been some good news and some bad news in relation to the key target of the National Road Safety Strategy to reduce the annual number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads by at least 30 per cent by 2020. In 2012 more than 1,300 people died on Australian roads, which is a 2.5 per cent increase in the number of deaths that were recorded in 2011. Thankfully, it is contrary to the longer term trend of reductions in the overall toll. But the obvious question for this place is: are the reductions, are the improvements, happening fast enough? Are we doing everything we possibly or reasonably can as a nation to save ourselves from that enormous economic cost of road trauma, which is estimated at more than $27 billion per year—and that is quite aside from the very significant social costs as lives are shattered and loved ones are left to grieve.

Personally, I believe we can do better. In fact, we must do better if we are to reclaim our place as a world leader on road safety. That is not just my view; to quote from the National road safety strategy 2011-2020:

Over the past several decades, Australia has earned an international reputation as a model country in many areas of road safety intervention. But the overall performance in recent times has not kept pace with the achievements of other developed countries, and there is a need for a major shift in thinking by governments and the community.

Against international levels our relative performance has fallen. If there was a road safety Olympics, we would not win a medal at the moment. That is a concern for a nation that has a very proud record in relation to road safety. If we had a road safety Olympics right now, Australia would not feature in the medals.

I am not by any stretch trying to disparage the efforts made by this government or by people in our community, but I believe it is time for us to reset the clock on the road toll and to raise our aspirations. That is our challenge here today: how are we going to implement the programs and projects that we know work, and also when are we going to encourage innovation to make improvements wherever possible? I fear that, as a community, we have become perhaps complacent or perhaps just accepting of the road toll. We seem to be almost resigned to the fact that accidents will always happen and there is not much we can do about it. I beg to differ, and I think there is more we can do and we must never rest in that regard.

That is also the view of industry stakeholders, who I am sure the minister has met with and discussed this issue with. They have the view as well that there is more we can do to reduce both the prevalence of accidents and the severity of those accidents when they do occur. I have had the opportunity to meet over the past two years with peak motoring bodies and leading researchers in this space, and they argue to me there is more we can do and that we must do more in reducing the toll, particularly that severe economic impact of $27 billion per year to the national economy and obviously, as I said earlier, the severe emotional impact on people who have lost loved ones on our roads.

I stress that my comments are not intended in any way to be a criticism of the minister or the current government at a federal level. As I said at the outset, I believe the minister's appointment has helped to give prominence to this issue at a national level, but I think we can do more. I am confident that if there is a coalition government after September it will aim to continue to provide national leadership on road safety with a focus on, as the minister correctly said, building safer roads, supporting the rollout of safer vehicles and promoting improved driver behaviour. While the nation's road toll has steadily fallen from nearly 2,900 deaths in 1982 to 1,300 in 2012, I want a new coalition government to recognise that more needs to be done to reduce that road toll and to reduce the number of serious injuries from vehicle accidents.

I have taken the advice of key stakeholders across the nation and I share their view that there must be a more holistic approach from governments to reducing road trauma in recognition of the social and economic impacts we have already referred to across the entire community. Across the broad range of government departments there needs to be renewed focus on reducing the public health impacts of road trauma and leading the public debate on road safety initiatives with a partnership approach across all levels of government, the research agencies, community groups, vehicle manufacturers and other stakeholders.

At the moment I think we see the issue of road safety through the paradigms of the new Minister for Road Safety or through the ministry of transport but there is no doubt that the issue of road safety plays out across a whole range of government departments, including the department of health, and there are issues that should be dealt with by the minister for youth and issues that need to be dealt with by the minister for Indigenous affairs. We need to take a more holistic approach and develop strategies to ensure that all government departments and ministries with a relevant role in road safety take up the responsibility and take up the challenge of reducing the impact of the road toll on our community.

I am concerned that at the moment there is too much confusion and duplication of effort in relation to road safety. I recognise that different jurisdictions have the right to have different approaches to road safety but there is confusion within our community at the moment relating to the inconsistency in the graduated licensing system, the safety messages across state borders, the enforcement programs and the road laws themselves, which vary too much across state borders. I would be hopeful, if not confident, that in the future it may be possible for us to do the research and develop a best practice model in relation to road safety and then encourage all jurisdictions to roll out the best practice model in a coordinated and cohesive manner. As it stands today, if Australians move across state or even territory borders here in the ACT, they face a confusing range of laws, regulations and penalties, particularly when it comes to the systems adopted for learner and P-plate drivers. There is an inconsistency between the ACT and New South Wales about the speeds that learner drivers are allowed to drive at. It is ridiculous that in the 21st century we cannot come up with a best practice model and ensure that it is implemented right across our nation.

I take up the minister's references earlier to the government's record in relation to improving the safety of roads because the coalition itself also has a proud record in terms of investing in the safety of our road network. It was the coalition that initiated the Roads to Recovery program more than a decade ago. Also the coalition took a policy to the last election for bridge renewals, which I think is an important initiative. We support the government in its efforts in relation to black spots and its commitment to invest in more rest areas. These are policy commitments that the coalition has made and the government has also been implementing over the past five years.

I think it is foolish for any minister—and I am certainly not referring to the Minister for Road Safety—to stand in this place and suggest that previous governments did nothing. The coalition government did invest in improving our road network. I find it sometimes reckless of ministers, like the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, to claim that the coalition did nothing in relation to investing in the road network. No government ever does nothing. No government ever sets out to not improve the lot of the Australian people. I think it was reckless for the minister for transport to make those types of claims because I know that the former minister for transport worked diligently in his role to improve road safety across the nation within the confines of the budgetary circumstances he was faced with.

I also note the campaign by various Australian motoring organisations. I am sure many other members in this place have been inundated with demands from their constituents for more funding for road improvements. I support those associations in their efforts because we recognise that investing in safer roads and improving the safety of the road environment will save lives. I commend the government for the improvements it has made in that space and recognise that the former coalition government worked diligently in that regard as well.

I recently made some comments in this place—and I think the minister may have made some thinly veiled reference to this in her report—in relation to the message we need to send to international vehicle manufacturers. I think a couple of weeks ago now I referred to the fact that I consider it important that any future coalition government sends a message to vehicle manufacturers throughout the world that we consider safety to be the highest priority when it comes to new vehicles. It remains my personal view that we should ban the importation of any vehicle that is sold in volume in Australia that does not achieve a minimum of three-star—preferably four-star—ANCAP safety rating. The current government has quite rightly moved to a position where its own fleet of light passenger vehicles must achieve a five-star ANCAP safety rating. I congratulate the government for that move because we know that having safer vehicles on our roads can lower the road toll.

I think we should be sending a signal now to the international vehicle manufacturing market that in a specified time in the future we do not intend to keep allowing the importation of vehicles that have comparatively low ANCAP safety ratings. It is a view that some in the industry have strongly endorsed since I made those comments. I note that the minister herself in her comments here today strongly endorsed the fact that safer vehicles do matter. I commend the work the government is doing in relation to its support for ANCAP, which will allow the authority to test more vehicles, and the government's desire to see the rollout of new technologies, such as the electronic stability control system and the brake assist systems. I am concerned about the relatively poor performance in terms of safety ratings of some of the vehicles that are on sale in Australia at the moment. I believe we can send a message to the international market that in the future Australia will be encouraging all vehicles on sale in Australia to achieve a higher ANCAP safety rating.

As the minister rightfully acknowledged in her progress report, there are 59 action items in the National Road Safety Strategy across the four cornerstone areas of safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles and safe people. It is important that the minister come to the House and report on the success or otherwise of the strategy because everyone in this place has a genuine concern for the amount of road trauma in our communities and what steps are being taken at the federal level to reduce that wherever possible.

In conclusion, I finish where I started. I believe that elevating the issue of road safety in our national debate is an important measure. I commend the government for the work it has done in that regard. I welcome the minister's progress report. I commit the coalition to continuing to work in a bipartisan manner wherever possible to further the goals of the National Road Safety Strategy in the interests of saving lives and in the interests of reducing trauma and delivering economic benefits to all Australians.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Gippsland for his contribution and the Minister for Road Safety for her statement.