Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises the critical importance of harmonised road safety data in formulating road safety policy;

(2) notes that:

(a) individual state and territory governments collect road safety data on a non-uniform basis; and

(b) the road safety data collected by state and territory governments is not made available to the Commonwealth Government notwithstanding the Commonwealth Government's significant financial contribution to state and territory governments to improve road safety outcomes;

(3) commends the leadership of the former Government in ensuring road safety was a consistent agenda item for the Infrastructure and Transport Ministers' Meetings (ITMM);

(4) further notes that at the ITMM that took place on 5 August 2022 road safety was not included on the agenda or indeed discussed; and

(5) calls for a nationally consistent approach to the collection and distribution of road safety data by establishing a national road safety data sharing agreement with the states and territories.

Sadly, 2022 has been a terrible year on Australian roads. In fact, we surpassed last year's national death toll by July this year. The road toll is going in the wrong direction, with 1,196 people killed on Australian roads in the 12 months to October 2022. Road related trauma places significant financial and social burden on the community, and its financial cost is quantified at more than $30 billion. Beyond the financial cost, the emotional and social cost of road trauma on the community is far-reaching and long-lasting. The Australian government provides significant funding to state and territory governments to deliver safety treatments on road networks nationally, including through the Road Safety Program. But it's self-evident that we're unable to adequately quantify the extent of road trauma or the effectiveness of funding for programs and treatments to reduce it without adequate data to understand the multiple causes of road accidents. The lack of consistent measurement and reporting of national road safety data across the states and territories continues to be a major impediment to data driven, evidence based solutions to reduce road death and trauma.

Current data collected by states and territories is not coordinated nationally and it lacks detail in many key areas such as serious injury. There need to be consistent metrics and reporting formats at a national level for data to be coordinated and made available to inform policy on and investment in road safety across all levels of government. The collation and reporting of road safety data will allow for the quantification of road safety issues, the development of evidence based solutions and the cross-jurisdictional evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions. Australia's National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 sets out a commitment to reduce annual fatalities by at least 50 per cent by 2030, an admirable goal. Accurate and consistent data is paramount to informing policies and investments into road safety to achieve this, as is the National Road Safety Action Plan currently being developed.

Harmonisation of road safety data is an important item for discussion in previous infrastructure and transport ministers' meetings under the former coalition government. Meetings of infrastructure and transport ministers listed road safety as the first item on the agenda, signalling its importance. The first infrastructure and transport meeting under the new Labor government, held in August 2022, saw road safety dropped off the agenda for discussion. The former coalition government was committed to establishing a national data sharing agreement with states and territories, but this no longer seems to be a focus for infrastructure and transport ministers' meetings under Labor. The coalition government was making inroads—pardon the pun—having tasked the Office of Road Safety to work with states and territories to develop a data sharing plan.

But I don't want you to take my word for it; let's see what the AAA, the Australian Automobile Association, which has been calling for this data harmonisation, has had to say. AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley said just last week:

There is an urgent need for the Commonwealth to declare the changes it will make, as our National Road Safety Strategy is not credible when one of its two key objectives is to reduce the incidence of a metric which is neither measured nor reported.

Reviews of Australia's road safety performance continue to identify the leading cause of Australia's failure to achieve road trauma reduction targets as being the Commonwealth's lack of leadership and coordination.

It is not acceptable that in 2022, we have no national data on the quality of our road network, the types of road crashes occurring, the factors causing them, the enforcement of road rules, or their relative effectiveness, when road trauma continues to hospitalise 100 Australians daily and cost the economy $30 billion annually.

Commonwealth road safety data collation and reporting must be an urgent priority if road death and injury targets are to be met.

The Commonwealth's ongoing failure to facilitate the timely, consistent, and open reporting of national safety data prevents Australia from quantifying its road trauma problem, developing evidence-based responses, or evaluating their effectiveness.

It's said that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

What we need to see is a program that immediately harmonises data collection across state jurisdictions. In return for the gargantuan amount of money that the federal government provides for each of those state jurisdictions for road safety treatments and road funding otherwise, we should have that data and we should share it and use it as a management tool.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to commend the member for Barker for moving this motion. It is of course very much in keeping with coalition policy: plenty of announcement, no delivery. They had 10 years to do something about this, and what did they do? Nothing. I recently met with one of our major insurers who tells me that the data is, in fact, available through the insurance industry for major motor vehicle accidents—from the causes to the type of vehicle, the type of driver and the type of road. All this data is available. In 10 years, the coalition government has done absolutely nothing about it.

In Macarthur, of course, the residents travel long distances to and from work. They are exposed to very poor roads, and the recent rain events and the floods have, of course, exacerbated this. So residents drive on dangerous roads and they drive long distances. I'll mention Appin Road. I have been begging for seven years for the coalition government on a state and federal level to do something about it. They have done absolutely nothing. In fact, there was another fatality on Appin Road in July, bringing the total in the last 15 years to 22 people who have died. We know from road safety data that, for every person who dies on our roads—and there are about 1,200 a year in Australia—at least six times as many people are severely injured to the point where their injuries will have major lifelong effects on them and their families. I've lost count of the number of kids I've looked after who have lost one or even both parents to major road traffic trauma, yet for 10 years we've had a federal coalition government who sat on their hands and have done very little.

The Albanese government understands the major issues that traffic accidents and road safety problems cause, particularly in rural, regional and outer metropolitan areas. Macarthur has recently received almost $1 million for recent road safety upgrades in the recent budget, and the budget also outlined another $26 million over three years to address the four pillars in the Road Safety Strategy. Those pillars are safer road use, safer roads, safer vehicles and safe speed. There's much that can be done with road safety improvements to our national vehicle fleet, yet there's no mandatory safety implementation process for new vehicles on our roads. There are very important steps being taken at a Commonwealth level to see where deaths and injuries can be prevented and, unfortunately, the Morrison government and the New South Wales Perrottet government have an appalling record in improvements to road safety.

The road issues can be fixed. The data can be addressed. We can't continue on the same laissez-faire road management process with the rorts of road grants to country areas to save a few coalition votes. We can't continue along that process. There needs to be fairer data collection and appropriate management of our road safety issues across the country, not just for a few select electorates. The New South Wales government continues to act very slowly, with many families unfortunately severely impacted by injury and death that's occurring on our roads. My personal entreaties to the coalition government about the roads in Macarthur and the adjoining electorates of Hume and Werriwa and further south have fallen on deaf ears. We've had nothing but rorts and poor management of road safety data that already exists. Yes, we need global national data. That can be collected and our insurance companies are well aware of that, yet the coalition government did nothing for 10 years. It's now down to the Albanese government to make sure that our data collection is correct and that we encourage state and federal governments to work together for better road safety across the broader Australia.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As much as I like the member for Macquarie, I have to say that I earnestly disagree with some of the comments that he made—scripted, of course, from the Albanese government's talking points. I headed up many infrastructure and transport ministers meetings. I went to those meetings in good faith. I implored some of those state ministers to come on board with us in relation to road safety data collection. Sadly, all too often you go to these meetings in good faith as a Commonwealth minister. The states will agree politely, and there will be a great discourse about what we need to do. Then they will return to their respective capital cities and all will be forgotten. Even though at a national meeting they may well have agreed that they will do something about it, the difficulty is that they will go back, and because they hold so near and dear to the jurisdictional obligations they feel, they won't do things in the national interest. Other ministers who've headed up similar forums would tell the chamber this and back me up every step of the way, and I'm sure Labor will find this out. It's unfortunate. They'll do things in our own political interest to keep that niche, that obligation they've got to the states.

This is a good motion. I commend the member for Barker. His electorate is more than 63,000 square kilometres. Mine is nearly 49,000 square kilometres. That of the member for O'Connor, who will speak after me, is 1.1 million kilometres squared of land. We know about roads and we provided record funding for roads. When you provide that money in infrastructure budget—it was $110 billion when I was the Deputy Prime Minister—every piece of road funding equates to road safety. Every piece of bitumen that you put on a previously unsealed road leads to better road safety outcomes.

As the member for Barker has quite correctly pointed out, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. He is so right. The quantified financial cost of road trauma to the Australian economy in 2016 was estimated to be more than $33 billion. Imagine what it is now. That was in 2016; we're now in 2022. We do need these road statistics to be compiled, because if you have proper data that is available, ready and easily accessed by all concerned, be they states, the Commonwealth or other stakeholders, it will lead to better outcomes.

I also commend the Australian Automobile Association, I had a good relationship with Michael Bradley and still do. The work they do in this area is admirable. We do need to be able to get on board. The member for Macarthur was in here. In the meeting I was talking about, the initial infrastructure and transport meeting under the new Labor government in August, road safety wasn't listed as a discussion item—what a pity, what a great missed opportunity.

I wear the badge that Peter Frazer has put out there for SARAH, Safer Australian Roads and Highways. Sarah is the name of his daughter, who was killed in 2012 on the Hume Highway while heading to Wagga Wagga to study. The driver who struck her and tow-truck driver Geoff Clark was distracted for 11 seconds. I was silent then for 11 seconds. It's a long time. Look away from the road for that amount of time and you don't know what's going to happen. Eleven seconds is a very long time. Peter has dedicated and devoted his life to making sure that road safety is something that is paramount in every person who gets behind the steering wheel, and I'm sure he would commend the member for Barker, as I do, for bringing this motion to this important parliament, to this important debate. Peter Frazer doesn't want to see anyone else suffer like his family has. He received an order of Australia medal for his efforts to improve road safety, so I commend the member for Barker. I love Peter Frazer; he's a great bloke. Anything I can do and that we as a parliament can do to improve road safety outcomes we should do.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm standing in the emergency department as I have so many times before, first as a medical student and then, finally, as a senior medical officer. There's one sound that will always stand out in my mind, and that is the piercing drill of the bat phone. This phone is the prearrival notification of a critically unwell patient requiring immediate and life-saving therapy or life-saving intervention. The paramedic provides a brief handover with regard to the status of the patient and the mechanism of injury. On this occasion, standing on the flight deck—the part of the emergency department where that bat phone is—phone in hand, I'm rapidly transcribing details of the information of a patient who has been seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident.

This is a constant reality on the Central Coast, it is a constant reality throughout New South Wales and it is a constant reality right across Australia. Someone's family—their world—has changed in an instant. The gravity and enormity of the situation, the absolute catastrophic and horrendous time when someone is involved in an accident, cannot be understated. From the time of the crash to the extrication and treatment by paramedics, emergency management and beyond, the toll on the patient, the family, the staff and the emergency services is enormous. It's unparalleled.

I want to take you now to the emergency department following a traffic accident. The bright lights are on, the team are assembled and we're standing in the resus bay. The airway doctor and nurse stand prepared, ready to assess and secure the airway of the patient. The breathing staff are ready to assess and manage immediate and life-threatening insults to the patient's ability to breathe and oxygenate. Circulation is the urgent evaluation and management of the patient's circulatory system, arresting major sources of bleeding. In the disability assessment, there's a rapid neurological evaluation, an assessment of the level of consciousness and the spinal cord, and a hypo/hyperglycaemic evaluation. During exposure assessment, we have a hypo/hyperthermic assessment and evaluation for other injuries, minor or serious.

Further staff then prepare the necessary pharmacological intervention that may be required for the patient. Radiology arrive with a portable X-ray machine, and the CT scanner is placed on standby because in a motor vehicle collision it's likely the patient has suffered serious fractures or serious injury. Pathology and the blood bank are placed on standby in case of the need for a massive transfusion protocol to be activated, and social workers are present to provide psychosocial support to the family and loved ones of the patient. This is only to name a few of the team members ready to provide care to the patient who has been involved in a motor vehicle accident. This is a massive team effort to ensure the health of the patient.

We are not invincible or impermeable to harm. I have seen this firsthand on many occasions with people of all ages, of all abilities and from all backgrounds. Life is precious, and we must treasure it and protect it. That is why we need to act, and that is why we are acting, as a government and as a country.

Our government is firmly committed to delivering improved road safety throughout Australia. The National Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 will guide the government to deliver these safety outcomes alongside our partners in the states, territories and local government areas. This strategy sets out Australia's road safety objectives and priorities for action. It includes road trauma reduction targets for the decade to 2030. Tragically, approximately 1,200 people are killed and a further 40,000 are seriously injured on Australian roads each and every year. This strategy will cover four pillars of the safe road system: safe road use, safer roads, safer vehicles and safer speed.

The government is developing an action plan to be considered by Australian infrastructure and transport ministers. It will be designed to have measurable criteria and clear lines of accountability for action, divided between the states and the federal government. Of local importance on the Central Coast is the Black Spot Program. Fagans Road at Lisarow and Showground Road at Narara are being targeted by this program to reduce risk. It's through these actions of our government that we can make our roads a safer place.

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support my good friend the member for Barker and his private member's motion on road safety data collection. The first point I want to make is that the road toll this year is heading in completely the wrong direction, with 1,197 people so far this year having died on Australia's roads. I'll come back to my electorate of O'Connor in a moment, but 95 of those people have died on regional Western Australian roads. That's about 70 per cent of the total road toll. Many of those 95 people perished, sadly, in my electorate. The member for Robertson has given a very moving description of what happens in the emergency department of a major hospital when someone is brought in from a critical accident. People across my electorate of 1.1 million square kilometres can only dream about getting to that level of care and help so quickly. Many people have accidents hours from that critical care, and, sadly, many of those people, who may otherwise have been saved by the care of the member for Robertson and other fantastic medical professionals, may well pass.

The quantified financial cost of road trauma in Australia is around $30 billion. That's a massive cost to the economy, and it's obviously a massive emotional cost to those families and loved ones when someone doesn't return home from a road journey. Sadly, still to this day, current data collection by states and territories is not coordinated nationally, so it's very difficult for policymakers to get an accurate handle on exactly what is going on out on the roads and what we need to do to drive down that way-too-high number of road deaths in Australia. The Australian Automobile Association has said, through their director Michael Bradley:

There is an urgent need for the Commonwealth to declare the changes it will make, as our National Road Safety Strategy is not credible when one of its two key objectives is to reduce the incidence of a metric which is neither measured nor reported.

That's a fairly damning statement on all policymakers. I know that the previous coalition government were certainly working very hard to achieve that outcome. We had the former minister and former Deputy Prime Minister here talking about the moves and efforts that he'd made to get a coordinated compiling of that data. It's simply not acceptable, given the increased road toll, and policymakers certainly do need to get on with the job. It's incumbent on the new government now to take up the cudgels to try and bring the states on board.

I want to talk a little bit about of my electorate of O'Connor. As I said, it's 1.1 million square kilometres, so a great deal of the Western Australian road network falls within my electorate. I'm sure the member for Macarthur, who is one of the really decent people in this place, regrets making his comments about road funding in regional areas being a rort. I really think if he had time to reflect on those comments he would probably come back in here and withdraw them, because it is a spear in the heart of those 95 families who have lost loved ones on regional roads in Western Australia to describe efforts to make the roads safer and prevent deaths in future as a rort.

I'm very, very proud of the road safety funding program in Western Australia—$120 million across our state. Every Western Australian would have travelled roads where there's about a metre of bitumen being put on the shoulder, which Main Roads tell me has a significant impact on road safety. Also, as the chair of the WA roads black spot funding committee, we put $13 million into identified road black spots to reduce those instances of fatal accidents. I also want to say, in the lead-up to Christmas, to everybody who's taking a long journey or who's going to be on the road in the next little while: please drive safely and make sure you come home to your loved ones.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30