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

WN (—) (): Earlier this year I spent some time visiting logistics and road safety organisations in Victoria. Thanks to the assistance of Peter Anderson from the Victorian Transport Association, I spend time with the team at MIRRAT logistics at the Port of Melbourne. MIRRAT is an impressive Australian logistics company which supports the importation of vehicles to Australia. With a purpose-built facility at the Port of Melbourne, MIRRAT has enough room for 14,500 cars and two dedicated quarantine wash bays.

My conversation with MIRRAT focused strongly on how supply chain issues were impacting on the importation of vehicles into Australia. On the day we met, there were three cargo ships full of new vehicles anchored in the Port of Melbourne, waiting to be unloaded. While handling all this, they've also managed to run almost entirely on renewable energy sourced from their very own solar panels.

Also while in Victoria, I had the opportunity to visit Linfox's Australian Automotive Research Centre with one of their tenants, the Australasian New Car Assessment Program—ANCAP. ANCAP provides consumers with independent, transparent and trusted information and advice on the level of protection offered to vehicle drivers and passengers in the most common types of crashes. Further, the testing provides information about the ability of a vehicle to avoid or mitigate the severity of a crash with other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, and, from this year, motorcyclists. Since 1992, ANCAP has published safety ratings for thousands of vehicle makers, models and variants sold across Australia and New Zealand by using a star-rating system of zero to five stars. ANCAP has had a longstanding relationship with the Australian Automotive Research Centre in Anglesey, which provides organisations, companies and government with a facility to test a range of automotive vehicles, from cars, trucks and motorcycles through to defence machinery.

The purpose of my visit was to test out the automatic braking and lane support systems in two vehicles, and I'm pleased to say that both passed. I also had the chance to see Australia's first motorcyclist test dummy. As of 2023, vehicles will be assessed for their ability to avoid a crash with a motorcycle. The dummy will be used in a range of emergency braking and lane support testing scenarios. The dummy sits atop a motorcycle and is propelled on a platform.

ANCAP has played a key role over the last 30 years in encouraging vehicle manufacturers to continually improve the safety features and technologies offered in their vehicles, ahead of regulation. It was great to see ANCAP's work firsthand and to see the vast variety of needs that the Australian Automotive Research Centre is able to cater for. I'm also proud that the Australian government, through the National Road Safety Action Plan 2023-25, has committed to continuing to fund the fantastic work that ANCAP does. I'd like to give a big thank you to ANCAP's CEO, Carla Hoorweg, and her team for making the day so informative and memorable.

I then had the opportunity to sit down with some of the world's leading road safety researchers at the Monash University Accident Research Centre—MUARC. MUARC is one of the world's most comprehensive injury prevention research institutions, with extensive research being conducted in a wide range of fields. MUARC has 40 staff and 30 students, all of whom believe that the translation and implications of research should be able to be understood by policymakers and advocates alike. Sitting outside of other faculties at Monash University, MUARC is able to lean into many different research specialties while conducting road safety research in an ethical manner. The MUARC professors and researchers I met with came from fields of engineering, psychology and public health and all worked together in collaboration on various pieces of research. In recent years, MUARC has launched several professional road safety programs, including the Road Safety Management Leadership Program.

The Road Safety Management Leadership Program aims to deliver a leader's capability in delivering change through a five-day intensive program. The program focuses on participants leaving with an in-depth understanding of road safety management, including a safe systems approach and its underpinning scientific principles. Past programs have attracted international attendance from road safety leaders from countries including South Africa, Indonesia, India and New Zealand. At home, the program is highly regarded by state and territory police forces and state and local governments across the country.

One of the programs MUARC runs is a complementary program to the ANCAP safety rating program, known as the Used Car Safety Ratings. The free ratings are available on a number of used vehicles and are presented using star rating scale of one to five stars. Used Car Safety Ratings provide an indication on the relative risk of death and serious injury to the driver of the vehicle in a crash compared to other vehicles on the road. Cars which receive a five-star driver protection rating provide greater protection to the driver; are less likely to result in serious injuries to the other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists; and have a lower risk of being involved in a crash in the first place. I am also proud that the recent National road safety action plan 2023-25 contains federal government action continuing to contribute funding to MUARC's Used Car Safety Ratings program. I look forward to visiting MUARC again to see the testing they undertake for the used-car safety program in person.

While in Melbourne I had the opportunity to visit Road to Zero: Road Safety Experience, which has been developed by the Transport Accident Commission. The Transport Accident Commission is a Victorian government organisation set up to support survivors of road trauma. TAC does impressive work in the road safety space, including their exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. The Road to Zero exhibition is world-first road safety education exhibition with interactive technologies for people to explore the impact of road crashes both on the body and socially. While at the exhibition, I had the opportunity to use the virtual reality experience, which had me travelling in cars from 1970 through to 2055 and learning the history of and vehicle safety in Victoria. At the beginning of the experience, in 1970, roads were mostly wide and undivided, and a total of 1,034 Victorians died on Victorian roads. The simulator shows how, by 2055, future upgrades to the infrastructure network and improvements in vehicle standards will lead to zero deaths and zero injuries.

Last but not least, I had the opportunity to visit the National Transport Research Organisation, formerly known as the Australian Road Research Board. NTRO work alongside all levels of government to provide innovative, impactful solutions that benefit all road users. NTRO does extensive work on both the measurement of current road conditions and the creation of new or modified road service materials. One of the NTRO's core beliefs is that, if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. To complement this ideology, NTRO have a full suite of data and analysis services which are used by state and territory and local governments across the country.

During my time at NTRO, I had the opportunity to see some of the vehicles they use for the infrastructure measurements, including the network survey vehicle. When I was at the NTRO office in Melbourne, one of the iPAVEs, which is a dedicated truck with a series of lasers mounted on the trailer to measure the state of the road underneath, was conducting post-flood assessments of roads in Victoria and another iPAVE truck was in Queensland. All in all, I would like to thank all of the remarkable organisations and research institutes that I was able to meet while in Melbourne, and I look forward to keeping up to date with the work of each organisation well into the future.