Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Last month I hosted a roundtable on bus safety to discuss ways that we can make bus transport safer across Australia. The Hunter Valley bus crash, tragically, killed 10 innocent people, devastated families and communities and shocked all Australians. Joined by road safety experts, manufacturers, operators and unions, we discussed ways to ensure that the tragedy of the Hunter Valley crash is not repeated. Conversations about the use of seatbelts, the Australian Design Rules and future educational campaigns were shared. Everyone should know the importance of wearing a seatbelt, but we know that too often road users are choosing to ignore seatbelts where they are fitted, often knowingly making themselves more vulnerable to serious injury or even death.

Almost 100,000 buses on Australian roads move people around and between our towns and cities every day; without them, many people would not be able to go about their daily lives. Bus transport, relative to other modes of transport, is a safer way to travel and accounts for around 0.5 per cent of hospitalised injuries and 1.4 per cent of deaths from road crashes over the past five years. But we know that when there is a bus crash it is often more catastrophic in comparison to other road crashes.

The commitment from all stakeholders at the roundtable to bus safety is reassuring, proving that when we work together we progress towards our collective target of Vision Zero—that is, zero deaths on our roads by 2050.