Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) urges all Australians to drive safely and with consideration for fellow road users over the upcoming summer holidays;

(2) notes the Government has made significant investments in road safety including:

(a) $500 million from 2014-15 to 2018-19 in the Black Spot Program (BSP);

(b) an additional $200 million from 2015-16 that makes an important contribution to reducing the national road toll under the National Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan; and

(c) completing 977 projects under the BSP which has saved an estimated 116 lives and prevented 5,959 injuries from crashes over 10 years;

(3) encourages all state and territory governments to address the over-representation of men in road fatalities through improved driver information and education; and

(4) calls on all Australians to drive carefully over the summer period.

Just over a week ago, four young men were killed in a car accident on their way to work in my home state of South Australia. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families at this terrible time. The families and friends of these young men will face an unimaginably difficult Christmas this year. We do not know the reason for their accident, but it forms a tragic reminder that male drivers remain vastly overrepresented in our road deaths each year.

I call on grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends to remind the men in their lives that they need to take extra care when driving. We desperately need to raise awareness of the risk men face. My home state of South Australia provides a stark example of the overrepresentation of male fatalities, as I discovered in 2014 when I wrote to The Advertiser about a horror few days on our roads that saw four male drivers killed in four separate accidents in the space of one short weekend. In the decade between 2005 and 2015, 75 per cent of drivers, or 446 individual men who were someone's—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:25 to 12:46

As I was saying, in the decade between 2005 and 2015, 75 per cent of drivers, or 446 individual men—someone's husband or father or brother or uncle—were killed on South Australian roads. In comparison, 148 female drivers were killed. This is even though the numbers of male and female licensed drivers were almost equal. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, our state-based road safety campaigns never focus on the fact that men are more at risk. We hear a lot about the dangers of drug driving, drink-driving, fatigue, speeding, distraction, young drivers, country driving and seat belts, but we do not hear the simple fact that more male drivers are likely to die on our roads. Our national statistics also reiterate this fact: last year men represented 73 per cent of the road toll Australia wide. Every one of us needs to do more to make men aware of the tragic fact that they are at risk. Our state governments, through their road safety awareness programs, need to do more to provide information about those facts as well.

From a national perspective, a figure that is just as concerning is the fact that during the last 12 months 1,271 men and women died on our roads. We need every single Australian driver and road user to be aware of these facts and to stay safe on our roads over the school, summer and Christmas holidays. Nationally, we, as the Turnbull coalition government, are doing our part to help road users stay safe. We have committed $500 million to the Black Spot Program from 2014 to 2019, which includes an additional $200 million over the two years from 2015-16 to improve road safety across the nation. The Black Spot Program is estimated to be reducing fatal and casualty crashes at treated sites by 30 per cent. I am proud to say the Turnbull coalition government has provided $296,000 of blackspot funding in my electorate of Boothby to improve safety at a very busy part of my electorate of Jetty Road, Brighton.

This said, it is up to every single driver and road user to make sure they are taking responsibility for themselves and their actions on the road, particularly during the summer, school holiday and Christmas period. I say to drivers in particular, 'Do the right thing'. As someone who grew up in the country and who spends a lot of time on the road in my electorate of Boothby, here are my do's and don'ts. Most of them are obvious. Do not take drugs, do not drink-drive, do not drive at dangerous speeds, do not drive when you are tired, do not tailgate, do not use your mobile phone and always use a seatbelt. Some seem to be not quite so obvious from what I have witnessed on our country and city roads, which I find astounding, particularly in the country where people are driving at speed. Drive to the conditions—if it is pouring with rain, slow down. Keep two hands on the steering wheel at all times. Pay attention and anticipate what every single driver coming towards you might do. Do not swerve to miss a bird or a kangaroo and end up killing yourself or another road user. Be a considerate road user. If you are not driving at the speed limit, or if you have no intention of overtaking the car in front of you, leave plenty of room between you and the next car so that people can travel freely and do not get frustrated. We know that is when accidents can happen: when people get frustrated and do silly things. Most of all, I want to say to all Australians, all South Australians and everyone in my electorate of Boothby: please stay safe these summer, school and Christmas holidays when you are driving on our roads.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for the member's motion?

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by adding my condolences to the families of the four young people killed in the south-east recently. When former Prime Minister Abbott was elected in 2013, he wanted to be known as the infrastructure Prime Minister of Australia. He thought that, if he said it often enough and if his government members said it often enough, he would be so. But the reality is that it was all spin and the facts show otherwise. If the Prime Minister wanted to be the infrastructure Prime Minister of Australia then he needed to actually spend money on building infrastructure, and the reality is that he did not.

The spend that occurs and has occurred since this government came to office has been nothing more than normal annual expenditure that governments of all persuasions do each and every year. It is what taxpayers expect governments to do with the taxes that they pay. But the reality is that we are not even getting the amount of infrastructure spend that we might have got in the past. Much of it is just deferred or delayed and, whilst the government keeps talking about it, the reality is that it is saving the money by not spending it.

Even worse than that, when this government came to office, one of the first things it did was to freeze the financial assistance grants to local governments. That meant that it was cutting $1 billion from the councils around Australia. Councils build and maintain local roads. It is a core responsibility for them, and indeed they are one of the levels of government that actually do a lot of good local work in repairing and maintaining our local roads. When the government finally decided that it would give some money back to councils, it did so because of Labor's insistence that its support for the fuel excise indexation was contingent on the money raised going back to local government. So it was, indeed, Labor who ensured that that additional money went to local councils.

But I say to the member for Boothby that we did not get back the $18 million of supplementary local road funding in South Australia that the Local Government Association of South Australia has for years been campaigning for and which in previous years was given to South Australia as a supplementary fund. When this government came to office, it was cut. We did not get it. It seems to me that, as a state that has 11 per cent of the roads, seven per cent of the population and only five per cent of the road funding, we could do a lot better. Perhaps the member for Boothby would like to stand up within her party room and see what she can do about ensuring that that is the case. It is time that funding for roads in South Australia was fairly and permanently fixed up.

Road safety is affected by many factors. Bad roads in terms of both design and maintenance, poor driving, poor vehicle maintenance and driver fatigue all contribute to road accidents. When the Transport Workers Union of Australia raise these legitimate concerns, government members ridicule them and dismiss the concerns that they raise. Safe Work Australia confirms that truck driving is Australia's deadliest job. Five hundred and eighty-three drivers were killed between 2003 and 2015. Yes, most of them are males, because, if we look at who most of the transport drivers of this nation are, most of them are males. In the 10 years to 2014, over 2,500 Australians have died in truck crashes, so it is not just the drivers who become our road fatalities. In fact, my understanding is that since October of this year, in less than two months, we have had 26 people die on our roads through truck crashes.

Transport companies and owner-drivers widely place unreasonable and unsustainable pressure, by low-cost contracts, on drivers, forcing them to skip maintenance, to speed, to overload vehicles and to drive long hours. They do that in order to make ends meet. Not surprisingly, the industry has very high rates of bankruptcy, suicide and workplace deaths and injury. ASIC data confirms that transport operators have one of the highest rates of insolvency in the country. And then we have the case of exploited migrant workers who are given shonky licences from dodgy training schools, without proper training, or are being paid low rates and are working extra hours without even being paid.

The causes of all these accidents are known to this government and they should stop ignoring them, because road safety affects us all. Finally, can I say that the motion says nothing about the responsibilities of the federal government with respect to road safety.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to commend this motion moved by the member for Boothby and also to commend her outstanding speech. It is a timely reminder to all Australians about the need to drive safely on our roads. As the motion describes, there are at least two approaches that our communities can take to address this issue: driver education and government investment in known black spots.

Driver education can, of course, come in many forms, but as the mother of two young children no example has struck me more than the one championed by the Little Blue Dinosaur Foundation, an organisation of which I am proud to be patron. Michelle and David McLaughlin launched the foundation in memory of their precious son Tom. The tragic loss of Tom in a road accident at Macmasters Beach in my electorate two years ago helped Michelle and David build a legacy through child road safety initiatives and education. In their own words, Tom was a vibrant and loving young boy with a zest for life and an unforgettable smile. He loved to draw blue dinosaurs, and image that is now the logo for his foundation. Tom's message, 'Slow Down, Kids Around' is now written in colourful writing on signs at beaches and alongside some of our busiest roads on the Central Coast. And I am sure it is sinking in, because my own two young children, Oscar and Mollie-Joy, have both stopped in front of busy traffic on two separate occasions, because they remembered the little blue dinosaur and its message. I would like one day to see the 'Slow Down, Kids Around' signs displayed right around the country, especially if it means safer roads for families and young children.

Other driver education methods can be more direct. For example, I have met with Ronak Shah and Luke Wall from the Academy of Road Safety in my electorate. Their focus is to reach as many high school students as they can to deliver training in knowing what to do if faced with an emergency situation behind the wheel and in understanding the reasoning behind speed limits. I would encourage our young people to consider courses like this, in particular, as the Member for Boothby has outlined, our young men.

The New South Wales member for Terrigal, Adam Crouch, has also been a strong advocate in this area and I would like to commend his leadership in helping to make sure more young people are getting the training they need to stay safe on our roads. Two recent devastating fatal incidents in my electorate this year have demonstrated why this is so urgent. First, teenager Jackson Williams died on Willoughby Road at Wamberal. Jackson was a back-seat passenger in a car that left the road, hitting a power pole. Local resident Lindy Hewett started an online petition, which has attracted more than 5,000 signatures. It was presented to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport here at parliament. Such an extraordinary response in just a few short days from our tight-knit community on the Central Coast is partly why I am calling for this road to be upgraded by Central Coast Council.

The other incident tragically happened just three weeks later. It involved a mother of four young children, Annabelle Deall. Aged in her early 30s, Annabelle, a pedestrian, died after being struck by a car outside The Cowrie, a restaurant in Terrigal. I have also nominated this stretch of the Scenic Highway for consideration for Black Spot funding. I recently held a community morning tea in Terrigal to hear more stories from locals about why this road—which is not a highway, in the strictest definition of the word, but a suburban street—must be addressed.

We still have work to do with the council and our community to ensure we get the right traffic solutions in both locations. But I welcome the response from Central Coast Council, which announced that at a public meeting to be held in the coming weeks they will reveal preliminary plans for the Scenic Highway. Council CEO Rob Noble said last week that they have inspected the site and started a detailed review of the road, which includes improved pedestrian facilities and roadworks designed to slow down traffic. I echo Mr Noble's words: 'This was a terrible, terrible tragedy, and our hearts go out to the family.'

I am fighting for funding from the Turnbull government's Black Spot Program for both projects. The government has invested $500 million in this program, from 2014-15 to 2018-19, with an additional $200 million from this financial year that makes an important contribution under the National Road Safety Strategy and the National Road Safety Action Plan to reducing the national road toll. More than $2.7 million has already been delivered in my electorate since 2013, including fixing dangerous black spots at East Gosford, Green Point, Umina Beach, Gosford, Woy Woy, Narara, Kincumber, Mooney Mooney, Patonga, Avoca Beach and Somersby. I commend this motion to the House and again ask drivers to slow down and take care this holiday season.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the arrival of the holiday season comes many family road trips and a large number of people on our nation's roads. I join the member for Boothby in urging all Australian's to drive safely and with consideration for fellow road users. Road safety and road infrastructure are significant ongoing issues in my electorate of Mayo. As many members in this chamber would know, parts of the existing road network in Mayo were significantly damaged in the storms that took place in September and October this year. Several roads were damaged—with parts of these roads being washed away completely, including Montacute Road in Chain of Ponds—making what were already hazardous roads particularly dangerous. Thankfully, repairs are underway. But the fact remains that road infrastructure funding directed towards South Australia is below par and needs to change.

While I acknowledge the government's ongoing financial contributions to the black spot program, I renew my call for equity in funding to be implemented to ensure South Australia gets its fair share. South Australia has 11.8 per cent of the nation's local road network and 7.1 per cent of the population, but currently receives less than five per cent of total federal funding towards land transport infrastructure projects. To make matters worse, in 2014 South Australia lost the supplementary local road funding that addressed this inequity. I have previously called upon the government to reinstate this supplementary funding and I am sure the member for Boothby would support me in that call.

The lack of road funding in South Australia only exacerbates the fact that Mayo contains some of the most dangerous roads in the state. Over the last four years, there has been an average of nine fatalities on roads in my electorate each year. There has been an average of 97 serious injuries from road accidents each year in the same time. This is the highest in the state. Every one of those statistics is a person who is loved and missed. Each day, as I drive from my home to my electorate, I pass at least seven black markers, many with flowers at their feet, for people who were missed and taken too soon—people whose deaths were preventable.

Anyone who has been lucky enough to drive through the beautiful Adelaide Hills would know how treacherous some of our roads can be. They are truly rural roads with blind corners, narrow lanes and many trees. We have high speed limits and at night there is limited lighting. And we have many tourists on roads, who are vulnerable users. Many of them are not even sure which side of the road to drive on. In the southern part of my electorate, the Victor Harbor Road is notoriously dangerous. The most recent statistics from 2014 outlined that there was a crash causing damage or injury on the Victor Harbor Road every week. Unfortunately, it was also the road with the third most fatalities in the state. These statistics are shocking; but, unfortunately, they are familiar. Supplementary funding is critical to upgrade and maintain this road in an effort to drastically reduce these fatalities and serious injuries. If the Victor Harbor Road was in any other state in Australia, it would by now be a dual-lane road. On behalf of my community, I will continue to advocate strongly to the federal government for this road to be upgraded.

In 2014 the federal government committed $500 million to the black spot program from 2014 to 2019. Since that time the government has delivered just over $21 million of the black spot funding to South Australia, and only $3.2 million of that funding has been spent in Mayo. There is no doubt that the funding is needed in Mayo. I will continue to push for more to be spent on the dangerous roads throughout my community.

This festive season many families will be travelling down to Victor Harbor to enjoy some much deserved time off down on our pristine southern coastline. As a top tourist destination, there will also be many families taking day trips. With the increase in traffic on the Victor Harbor Road, in particular, I plead with everyone in my community to take extra care to ensure that everyone gets home safely. Better to be late than never to arrive at all. Every year we hear about families that are torn apart during the holiday season by road fatalities, and I sincerely hope that this year we have a fatality-free period right across Australia. I wish every person in Mayo and across the country, but particularly in regional Australia, a happy and safe holiday season.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I echo those remarks in regard to every electorate across Australia. I hope they have a happy and safe holiday. There is not one of us in this place—or probably in our broader communities—that has not been directly or indirectly affected by motor accident trauma. In fact, we can all go back to somebody, where we have attended a funeral, where families have been devastated. When you lose a child, often the history is that the family breaks up—not because there was anything wrong with the family unit before the child was killed in the accident, but these things are pretty hard to deal with in families. In fact, it is so traumatic that it not only affects the siblings and the cousins and the friends but has long-term effects on families.

I can personally attest from my own youth. People do not notice, but my left hand is quite severely smashed to pieces. It was at 16 years of age, and it was the first operation that used microsurgery at the Box Hill Hospital, to sew my wrist back on and connect up the nerves. It is not noticed that I suffered that trauma myself and lost my best friend in the process at that time, a tragic accident that affected his family so enormously that I could not explain to you the enormity of what happened at that time. So I can identify with every family who has lost a child, even in my own close family. They lost a brilliant young doctor in Western Australia who was only hurrying home to watch Collingwood on the television, and the car slipped on some gravel—tree; end of story.

I do not know what message we can possibly send to the Australian people when the Victorian road toll is actually increasing after all we have done, after all the advertising programs, after, 'If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot,' and, 'Don't get on the back of the ute.' How many instances have you seen of kids on the backs of utes in country Victoria being killed. There were those four wonderful young men in South Australia going to work at three o'clock in the morning, obviously to get there by 7 o'clock in the morning to start work in the forest industry—all killed. We do not know the background to the story or what happened, but four of them were killed. It completely changes the history and lives and generations of people.

There have been 1,200 people killed across Australia this year—1,271, I think. If that were an epidemic or a sickness or something else, this parliament would be running against it. We have become immune in our heart and soul and being to what is happening in our community, because these are, in many cases, very young people—highly talented in some cases—that are a massive loss to our community, yet we say, 'There's been another road accident,' and we move on.

The other road accident recently that I heard about in my area turned out to be someone very close to me; his mum was very close to me. They just make a one-second mistake or a two-second mistake—'I didn't see it coming.' In front of me the other day, there was a brown-coloured car in front of me on the way to Phillip Island, and a silver-coloured car was doing a right-hand turn. Just as the brown-coloured car came to that silver-coloured car, the silver-coloured car turned right directly in front of the car, missing it by seconds. The silver car did not see the brown car. It saw me, but in the light of that time of night they just did not see the brown car at all, or obviously they would not have turned in front of it. We are moving at such speeds these days that your life is gone in a second with one mistake.

The last thing I bring to you is: where is the road rage coming from? I have to say to those around me: do not respond. I wish everybody, as every member in this House does, a safe Christmas on the roads, but the only person that can protect you is yourself.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the issue of road safety, an issue that impacts on all Australians. I was very proud to introduce the current National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020, part of a global response to this issue. It seeks to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 30 per cent over this decade.

Unfortunately, however, as we stand up to this point we have, in the last two years, headed in the wrong direction if we look at the number of fatalities on our roads. After literally decades of improvements, for a range of reasons, we are going backwards. There are three key elements of road safety: safer roads, safer vehicles and better driver behaviour. The latest figures show that to October there have been 1,081 deaths so far in this calendar year, 6.5 per cent higher than the same period last year. These figures hide the real trauma—the trauma of all those who have families and friends. There would be not Australian who has not been affected directly in losing a loved one or a friend on our roads. Every death is one too many.

We do need to address safer roads. Major investments in roads such as the Pacific Highway and the Bruce Highway were a part of that. That funding needs to be accelerated, not slowed down as has occurred over the last two financial years. The motion refers to a range of programs for the government. The problem here is that a range of those programs have seen underinvestment compared with what the 2014 budget promise was. The Black Spot Program, for example, in its first two completed years—2014-15 and 2015-16—had an underspend of $34 million, so 55 per cent of the budgeted amount was not spent. The Bridges Renewal program had a $25 million underspend—40 per cent of the budget not invested. Most disappointingly, the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program, one that I was proud to introduce—basically, truckies' rest stops—had $27 million not spent, or 70 per cent of the budget not invested.

I was concerned last year with the government's abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. We know that fatality rates for accidents involving heavy vehicles are about 12 times the national average, and there are about 200 lives lost annually—not just heavy vehicle drivers but, more often than not, people in passenger vehicles impacted with heavy vehicles. We need to address it. The government abolished the tribunal but did not replace it with anything.

Also, the second part of our campaign needs to be safer vehicles. Data shows that the percentage of new light vehicles sold with a five-star ANCAP rating has increased from 56 per cent to 86 per cent since 2010. That is a good thing. New technology, including smart vehicles and telematics, should also provide opportunities for increasing safety to all road users and pedestrians.

The third part of the strategy is targeting driver behaviour. The strategy measures both responsible and irresponsible driver behaviour patterns, including age, type of vehicle, lack of restraint, consumption of alcohol or not holding a licence. The segmentation shows considerable difference in results between 2010 and 2014. Federal support for programs like keys2drive, which is administrated by AAA, are very important. It is a free lesson for learner drivers at a cost of $4 million per annum, but also, importantly, a lesson for those people who are training those young people—for the parents and the friends who are doing that—and making sure that good lessons are passed on.

Safer roads, safer vehicles and better driver behaviour—all three need to be supported by all sides of this parliament if we are going to truly address these rising figures and turn it back to where it should be, which is reducing the number of fatalities on our roads. (Time expired)

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.