Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on how the Morrison government is on the side of regional communities who want roads to be safer, particularly in the electorate of Wide Bay?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wide Bay for his question. He is a good member—a member who puts road safety front and centre of many of the things that he does.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just be quiet! You need to listen to this; you really do. We're talking road safety. There's no need to yell out when we're talking road safety, and I'm going to try and do it in a bipartisan fashion. If you want to carry on like that, I won't be bipartisan!

I can well recall that on 23 April 2018, when I stood beside the member for Wide Bay at a press conference announcing the $800 million for section D of the Bruce Highway—a highway that is having a $10 billion spend on it for road safety upgrades and for upgrades in general—the member for Wide Bay was quite emotional. And I'll tell you why he was quite emotional: it was because before he came to parliament, as a police officer he spent far too many nights doing that unfortunate death knock to tell a family that their loved one was not coming home. And that is—why are you shaking your head, Member for Barton? This is just unbelievable. This is truly unbelievable! I'm talking about a death knock; I'm talking about road safety. I mean, seriously!

Australia has entered the age of infrastructure. We are spending money on important road safety upgrades—$10 billion in making Queensland's Bruce Highway safer, because one crash, one fatality, one injury is one too many, and the member for Wide Bay knows that better than anyone as a former police officer. And we've brought forward funding for works on the $1 billion section D project. It will bypass the town of Gympie.

Here's the bipartisanship, and I know the Leader of the Opposition knows this all too well as well. He committed as well to road safety upgrades for the Bruce. Successive governments have put in place upgrades on that road. There's been a 31 per cent reduction in crashes, a 32 per cent reduction in fatalities and a 28 per cent reduction in injuries. Hopefully, the good police officers from Wide Bay and elsewhere won't have to do those terrible early-morning or late-night knocks on the doors of families to tell them that their loved ones are not coming home.

As part of the 2 April budget, we established the Office of Road Safety to provide greater leadership—national leadership and coordination of road safety efforts at an Australia-wide level. The office was a recommendation following the inquiry into the National Road Safety Strategy 2011-20, and through this strategy the government and the states and territories have a goal of reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads by at least 30 per cent by 2020 as we work towards Vision Zero, because that is the ultimate aim of any road safety measure.