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) notes that:

(a) 677 lives were lost on Australian roads in the six months to 31 December 2023; and

(b) the second half of 2023 was the deadliest six months on Australian roads since 2010;

(2) recognises that the data needed to understand Australia's worsening road toll is being collected by state and territory governments but is not consistent and not being shared;

(3) further notes that:

(a) before the 2022 election, the federal Labor Party committed 'to cooperate with the states and territories to improve the timeliness and quality of road trauma data and look for opportunities to extract better quality road safety data from states and territories in return for funding of road projects'; and

(b) the Government has failed to deliver on that promise; and

(4) calls on the Government to compel the states and territories to collect and share data relating to the quality of Australian roads, the causes of crashes, and the effectiveness of road safety measures as a condition of the $50 billion in federal road funding allocated over the next five years under the National Partnership Agreement on Land Transport Infrastructure Projects.

Six-hundred and seventy-seven lives were lost on Australian roads in the six months to 31 December 2023. In fact, since lodging this motion 114 people have lost their lives on roads in Australia to April 2024. That's a 24.7 per cent increase over the average for April for the preceding five years. We are heading in the wrong direction. In the year to 30 April 1,310 people died on Australian roads, up from 1,178 a year earlier. Again, we are headed in the wrong direction.

What, then, can we do about that? For some considerable time, I, together with the AAA, the peak motorist body in this country, have been calling on those opposite to collect and release data regarding those tragedies, with a view to guiding policy decision-making and, of course, to compelling state governments to collect that data, which they do, but also to provide it. After all, the federal government provides more funding than you can fly a rocket ship over to state and territory governments to invest in their infrastructure network, including the land transport network in this country, which comprises a tick over 800,000 kilometres and where these lives are lost. I am grateful that those opposite, belatedly and after a consistent campaign stretching for more than two years, have announced that they will meet the request to collect that data and force states to release that information.

But there is little more that we do know. We still don't know how often states and territories will be compelled to report the data or how government will ensure the data is consistent; which data will be included, and how quickly it will be made publicly accessible. This data needs to cover the quality of Australian roads, the causes of crashes, the effectiveness of each state's road rules and enforcement regimes as it's crucial for understanding the nation's road trauma problems and for developing effective responses. Data sharing would reveal which state's road safety measures are most effective and the safety interventions that are most needed. That would not only save lives, but it would also end the politicisation of road funding because it will reveal where the funding is most needed and it will ensure funding goes to the areas of most need.

Now, in the past I've been accused of being a little cynical, but I'd respectfully suggest to this place that one of the reasons why the states and territories are disinclined to share that data is because they want to continue to fund projects that are politically popular, that tick the electoral need box, but that's not what road safety should be about. Road safety should be about driving down the statistics I spoke about at the beginning of this contribution. We should be on the right pathway, not the wrong pathway. And whilst I congratulate those opposite for finally heeding the call, there's so much more to do. Give us the detail so that we can assess whether you'll be good on making that commitment.

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

Is the motion seconded?

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for moving this motion. As a doctor, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating impact road trauma has on individuals, families and communities. Many days at the Alfred, a major trauma hospital in Australia, were and remain scenes of unspeakable suffering and anguish as victims of road trauma were either driven in or, in the most severe cases, choppered in while their relatives often were the ones holding up the walls in the hospital in grief.

No electorate is untouched by road trauma. In March, two young people—kids who were from my electorate—died when a car driven by a 17-year-old male hit a tree in Toorak. Our local priest, Father Peter French, witnessed an inferno where the screams were also audible. Both of these children died. The community remains traumatised and are calling on council and the state government to make changes to Clendon Road to slow down the traffic. They also want consideration given to actually closing off one end of Clendon Road to stop drivers from gathering this sort of speed.

The recent surge in road fatalities in Australia is a grim reminder of the urgent need for effective road safety measures and comprehensive data sharing to address this escalating crisis. In the year leading up to the end of May 2024, Australia recorded just over 1,300 road deaths, marking a 10 per cent increase from the previous year. May 2024 saw 96 fatalities alone. This follows a particularly deadly 2023 across the nation, and this is evident in the Alfred. It was also evident just after the early years of the pandemic, when we saw an uptick in road trauma victims, and there was an anecdotal sense that this was due to greater risk taking in the community. We can't forget that road trauma also includes serious injury, much of which results in life-changing outcomes. In 2021 alone, there were nearly 40,000 serious injuries on Australian roads. These numbers are not just statistics. They represent lives lost, families shattered and communities left to grapple with the aftermath of these avoidable tragedies.

In response to the rising road toll, the Albanese government held a national road safety conference in April of this year which brought together more than a hundred road safety stakeholders to identify a range of short-term government and industry actions that can stem this tide. We know that the top five causes of a rising road toll are (1) speed, (2) alcohol and other drug impaired driving, or AOD, (3) driver distraction, (4) failure to obey traffic lights and signs, and (5) fatigue, all of which are entirely preventable. Every single one of these causes is preventable.

The government has listened and is acting. The National Road Safety Action Plan 2023-25 cites the importance of community education and awareness, and to that end we are kicking in over $10 million to fund a national road safety and awareness campaign. The other projects include targeting vulnerable road users, First Nations communities, technology, innovation, and research and data. We're also, it goes without saying, attempting to improve the quality of our roads, and to that end we are committing nearly $3 billion towards a road safety program over five years from 2021. It's estimated that these projects will upgrade approximately 15,000 kilometres of roads, and there are currently over 1,600 projects approved. The government are also doubling the Roads to Recovery funding, from $500 million to $1 billion, and we are substantially increasing the Black Spot Program, which will be progressively increased from $110 million to $150 million a year.

Perhaps most important, however, is the need to harmonise data and to collect better data so that our response is actually data driven and data informed. We can announce that we have reached agreement with the states to achieve just that, and that is critically important. We will be creating a nationally consistent dataset. This is the first step towards creating a much more holistic data informed approach to bringing down the road toll. To support this effort we have committed $21 million to the National Road Safety Data Hub to support enhanced evidence-based road safety strategies, with an aim of eliminating road trauma by 2050.

As with housing, energy and health care, the previous coalition government's inaction has led to this disaster or contributed to it. We are making up for lost time and intend to push on.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not the first time that I've stood in this place to remind those opposite what government's primary purpose is, and that is to keep its citizens safe. Often I'm referring to the national geopolitical trend or trends, but today my focus couldn't be more local or more grassroots. It's something that impacts everybody, no matter where you live. And, if you live in rural or regional Australia, statistically and tragically, you are disproportionately impacted. I am talking of road trauma. No matter how much money, effort or goodwill we have poured into reducing road trauma across Australia over the past 20 years, it has failed. That's a fact.

In 2004 there were 1,583 deaths on Australian roads, and in 2013 there were 1,193. In this year, to date, it is 1,310. There has been no statistical improvement. In Tasmania, it's a similar story. In 2014 we had 33 fatalities and 267 serious injuries. In 2023 those figures had risen to 35 fatalities and 309 serious injuries. Although young adults under 25 make up just 11 per cent of the Tasmanian population, 16- to 25-year-olds make up 21 per cent—21 per cent—of all deaths and serious injuries on Tasmanian roads. So the question is: what can we do about this? Well, we know that this is happening. We can see the statistics but, clearly, we are yet to identify and to implement best practice countermeasures to combat this terrible waste of human life.

Data means everything. It is impossible to implement an effective road safety strategy without meaningful data collection across all Australian jurisdictions. I am sure that the public will be perplexed when I tell them currently there is no state or territory government that provides road safety data to the federal government. As we draw to the end of this Albanese government's term, they have done nothing to rectify this. This is despite their promises in the lead-up to the election that they would look at this very important oversight. Two years on and they have not moved—well, not until my good friend the member for Barker lodged this important and pertinent motion. Now all of a sudden it has become very important to Minister King, because the member for Barker has shone an important spotlight on another broken promise by the Prime Minister that he has tried to sweep this under the carpet.

In 2023, the Australian road network recorded its deadliest six months in nearly 14 years, yet data relating to the quality of our state and territory roads remains a secret. The cause of these crashes remain the privileged information of the state and territory governments respectively. The effectiveness of each state's road rules and enforcement regime is not shared. Without this shared data we will never be able to develop effective countermeasures to reduce road death or trauma that would not only save lives but it would go a long way towards ending the politicisation of road funding. We would know whether or not governments are investing in the roads that need the safety upgrades, whether they are investing in roads to shore up marginal seats.

We all have a part to play in reducing deaths and injuries from road accidents. This includes the road designers, the vehicle manufacturers, road users and the like. But the decision of policymakers at the state and federal government level must be at the forefront of driving our goal of zero road deaths. I call on the minister to honour the Albanese government's promise to compel states and territories to provide better quality data in return for funding road projects. Australia is facing a road safety crisis and the data states and territories hold is key to developing a meaningful solution—that is, a meaningful reduction in road deaths and injuries in our states and territories.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Road safety impacts all Australians. In May 2023, my electorate, Hawke, was shaken by an alarming road traffic accident, a collision between a truck and a primary school bus in Eynesbury. This incident, which resulted in a number of serious injuries to the children on board the school bus, served as a harsh reminder of the importance of road safety across our entire community. This tragedy affected our whole community—the children, their families, the first responders who attended the crash. There are no words to express how terrifying the crash must have been and the pain these children had to go through, as well as the broader impact that this has had on our community.

These roads are used every day to help people commute to and from work and school. Each one of these commuters deserves to be safe on the road, to know that the government is committed to ensuring them a safer trip home to their loved ones. The Eynesbury crash underscored the necessity for us to prioritise road safety, not as a political issue, as those opposite seek to do, but as a matter of public safety.

Road traffic incidents are more than just statistics. These are peoples' families, friends and loved ones. That is why, as part of the Black Spot Program, the Albanese Labor government is funding safety improvements for roads in Eynesbury, an important contribution towards reducing serious injuries for all road users. The treatment will include better shielding for roadside hazards, upgrades to create dedicated left- and right-turn lanes, realignment of line markings and the installation of kerbs and channels. By progressively increasing the Black Spot program's funding to $150 million a year, the Australian government, the Albanese Labor government, is taking action to reduce the road toll. The range of safety measures included in the program seek to ensure that the chance of another serious crash on Hawke's roads is significantly reduced.

Road safety is a shared responsibility for us all, one that the Albanese Labor government shares with our communities. It's a responsibility that we take very seriously. Our Labor government is committed to taking clear and decisive action to enhance road safety measures. That's why we're doubling the Roads to Recovery funding, bringing it up to a billion dollars a year. This will support the construction and maintenance of local road infrastructure, creating better accessibility and safety for our communities. Additionally, the Labor government is working with the National Road Safety Data Hub to find more interventions and strategies that help keep our roads safe. Our goal is simple: to make our roads safer for everyone so that no child, no commuter and no worker is unreasonably put at risk on our roads.

Earlier this year, the Albanese Labor government passed our closing loopholes legislation. Following a years-long campaign from the Transport Workers Union, this legislation introduced a suite of changes designed to protect not only transport workers but all road users. The legislation has empowered the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards for the road transport industry to ensure that safety isn't compromised by cost cutting and tight margins. These changes have made our trucking industry sustainable, viable and, more importantly, safer. The closing loopholes legislation also empowered the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards for our gig workers. We know that there is a direct link between low rates of pay and safety. It leads to a situation where workers take risks so they can get more work because they're struggling to make ends meet. That's why the Albanese Labor government changed the law to better protect Australian gig workers' rights to fair pay.

I want to thank the Transport Workers Union for their unwavering advocacy in pursuing these changes that will make our roads safer for everyone. I also want to thank them for the work they do each and every day to protect the pay and conditions of transport workers right across the country. I'd like to give a special shout-out to my dear friend the TWU Vic/Tas Branch Secretary, Mem Suleyman, for his years of dedication to supporting transport workers as well as Michael Kaine and the TWU national office for their extraordinary leadership in this space. By making the transport workers safer, by making the transport industry safer, the TWU is making every road in Australia safer.

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

Road safety is so important in our society. Better roads means less deaths on those roads. The member for Hawke politicised his argument. He said those opposite always make a political play thing out of this—not true; not true. But, seeing as he wants to take this motion there, the 90-day review put in place by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, the member for Ballarat, prior to the federal budget last year, which turned into a prolonged, protracted, 200-plus-day review, led to a number of road projects being stalled. It led to a number of major infrastructure projects concerning our arterial roads—and, dare I say, our smaller byways as well—losing workers for those projects, and the road toll is up. That is a fact.

There was a total of 96 road deaths during the month of May 2024. It's higher than what it was previously. One death—one injury—on our roads is one too many. We lose 1,200 or so Australians each and every year on our roads, and that figure doesn't even generally take into account, when it's being talked about in the media, the tens of thousands of people who get injured in those and other road crashes. I know that, when I was in the portfolio area of responsibility for road safety, I took that very seriously—the issue of making sure that we had the right infrastructure in the right places. Our regional people are all too overrepresented in the road toll statistics.

Just last week, whilst driving around my very large Riverina electorate, I noticed that the line-markers were out doing those audio-tactile lines on the sides of the roads and widening the centre lines by painting another line up the middle of the road. The centre lines, the gap between one side of the road and the traffic going the other, were what former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader John Anderson used to call the 'corridor of uncertainty'. I take great pride in reflecting on the Roads to Recovery initiative. That program was brought about by the same John Anderson when he was the member for Gwydir and the infrastructure minister in this place. When you look at programs such as that and the other initiatives that we subsequently brought in—the Great Western Highway upgrade, the Beef Roads Program, the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program—so many of those specific targeted road projects and programs are saving lives. I was very proud that when I was the Deputy Prime Minister we put in place that $3 billion for the road safety upgrade during COVID because it has saved lives, and it will save lives. There will be people who may never know that they have been saved by just one of those audio-tactile lines on the side of the road, if late at night, or at any given time of the day, they just happen to veer slightly over before hearing that 'thump, thump' and realising: 'I've veered over. Straighten up and make sure I stay in my lane.' Making sure that we put that very slight additional room in the middle of the road by just another line makes roads safer.

I appreciate the work that the heavy-haulage transport operators have also put in this place. I take the member for Hawke up. He came in here and praised the union. I want to praise truck companies and particularly Andy Fox and Ron Finemore, who have two of the biggest transport companies in this country, for what they have done as far as road safety is concerned. We're all trying to get to zero 50—making sure that there are no deaths on our roads by 2050. It's a noble initiative and it's a difficult initiative. It won't be done by stalling road projects.

Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was a police officer in the traffic branch, before I would let a driver go, I would always say, 'Safe journey home.' Or, if it were a Chinese driver, I would say, 'Zai jian,' which translates as 'goodbye' or 'see you again'. Even as I said those words, I knew the journey was not always safe, and sometimes there was no 'again'. I've witnessed far too often the ugly heartbreak of death on Australian roads. I remember being called to a scene where a traffic crash happened between a bus and a motorcyclist. As a first responder, this tragedy stayed in my mind for a long time. I can only imagine the family's pain. That such a traffic accident could happen in a low-speed area, a 60-kilometre zone, makes this tragedy even more difficult to process.

Our Labor government is investing in road safety to help stem the rising road toll. We are doubling the Roads to Recovery funding from $500 million to $1 billion a year. We are also increasing the Black Spot Program funding. It's rising from $110 million to $150 million a year. For my constituents in Tangney, the Labor Black Spot program means the installation of a roundabout and upgraded street lighting at the intersection of Corbel Street and Modillion Avenue north in Shelley. In January 2021, a tragic accident happened at this intersection which claimed the life of a young 17-year-old boy. I'm thankful that this black spot funding has been addressed by our government and I'm grateful to his parents for advocating this change. I want to stress that everyone can advocate that black spots to be addressed—everyone can—so please advocate.

We are implementing the National Road Safety Strategy, which is supported by the National Road Safety Action Plan 2023-25. This plan is in collaboration with all states, territories and local governments because we must all cooperate and collaborate on this vital issue. The road safety action plan is linked with data collection, and one key action is for road safety data to be officially exchanged and published.

In April 2024 there was a historic first. Each of the state and territory governments signed an intergovernmental road safety data sharing agreement. We want to improve data sharing, have a nationally consistent dataset and have high quality and timely data. To support this effort, the Albanese Labor government has committed $21 million to the National Road Safety Data Hub.

When I was a police officer in the traffic section, I used to give infringements to drivers. I would ask them to please remember the reason. Sometimes they got infringements because of speeding, sometimes it was for not wearing a seatbelt and sometimes it was for using their mobile phones when they were driving. All drivers need to understand the importance of road safety and good driving behaviour. This is why we are providing $10.8 million for a national road safety and awareness campaign. Education and awareness are so important.

There has been $2.96 billion committed to the road safety program over five years to support the rollout of life-saving road safety treatments to ultimately reduce death and serious injury from crashes on our roads. It is estimated that this project will upgrade approximately 15,460 kilometres of Australia's roads.

We are focused on the delivery of this action plan, including committing $43.6 million to deliver non-infrastructure road safety programs. These comprehensive road safety measures are to help us to get to Vision Zero—zero fatalities and zero serious injuries on our roads—by 2050 so that all Australians can truly have a safe journey home.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.