Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Bills

Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms ALLAN:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Ms RYAN (Euroa) (13:12): It is an honour today to rise to contribute on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. This is the first bill on roads that I have had the privilege of leading for the Liberals and Nationals since being appointed the Shadow Minister for Public Transport and Roads, and at the outset I just want to put my view that road safety is certainly not one dimensional. I do not think it should just involve fining people or indeed hitting them with demerit points; it should also be about making roads safer, including of course road surfaces, and that is a very big point for many of us in this place but particularly for those of us who live in rural and regional Victoria. The three main things that this bill seeks to achieve are to enable new cameras to fine people for not wearing seat belts or for using their mobile phones while driving; to add to the list of serious offences that Victoria Police may use to trigger immediate licence suspension and disqualification when charges are laid under the Road Safety Act 1986; and to make changes to the state’s transport accident scheme, which largely are about addressing a series of anomalies—at least that is certainly what the government is suggesting.

In terms of the introduction of cameras, the government is introducing new cameras to detect people who are using their mobile phones while driving or indeed who are failing to wear a seatbelt. Clauses 3 to 5 of the bill allow for new camera technology to receive evidentiary status, and that follows a trial of new artificial intelligence technology which I understand ran for three months using a commercial trailer-mounted camera system. That scanned 679 438 vehicles, with an average mobile phone offence rate of 2.4 per cent, which is one in 42 drivers, or 16 177 drivers in total, over that three-month window. The government has advised me that those offences ranged from someone resting a mobile phone on their lap to texting with both hands, which is clearly incredibly dangerous.

The penalty for using a mobile phone is four demerit points and a $545 fine. However, it can also result in a court-ordered penalty of up to $29 400, so it is quite a large infringement, I suppose. It carries quite a financial penalty. It is worth noting that if all of the penalty notices that were issued over that three-month period were upheld, the revenue from those three months would be about $9 million to the state. I think it is incumbent on us to put on the record the fact that the government stands to make a significant amount of money from the installation of these new cameras. That is the simple reality of it.

In terms of the issues around failure to wear a seatbelt, that offence was detected at a rate of 0.15 per cent, or one in 667 drivers. I have to say I find it really extraordinary that in this day and age—campaigns around wearing seatbelts have been run over many years by the TAC, and most Victorians would certainly acknowledge the importance of doing that—there are that many people who are still not wearing a seatbelt when they are driving. Indeed, I understand there were 31 fatalities last year where someone was not wearing a seatbelt; 27 were drivers, four were passengers. I think in this day and age they are quite extraordinary figures. Someone who receives an infringement for failing to wear or improperly wearing a seatbelt faces a fine of $364 and three demerit points, so there is quite a difference there between failing to wear a seatbelt—again I think it is just extraordinary that so many people are still doing that—and using a mobile phone whilst driving.

There were a number of concerns raised by opposition members about privacy surrounding the use of images that are taken by these cameras. I understand that three images will be taken of every vehicle. The software that is used captures both the exterior and the front cabin of every vehicle in high resolution. Those images are analysed using a pattern recognition algorithm, with the ones that show where there has been likely offending behaviour then reviewed by an actual person. The government has advised that the processes around that and the timing and retention of those images are subject to discussions that they are still having with the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, Victoria Police and the Department of Transport, and I would urge the government to be transparent when this policy is implemented so people understand what that process is, because I do not think we want to see an erosion of faith in the system. I have no doubt that the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner will have strong views around this, but I think it is important that the Victorian public understand what that process is.

I did want to make some broad observations about the government’s approach to road safety. I do feel—and I think many of my colleagues feel, though I will leave it to them to articulate their thoughts—that the government is quite selective about which aspects of road safety it wants to address. Those of us in this chamber know the debate around the joint parliamentary committee, the Road Safety Committee, and I think given the importance of road safety to both sides of the house, you have to seriously question why Labor, on coming to office in 2014, decided to abolish that joint committee on road safety. That committee has a very long history in Victoria. It was first established in 1967. Coincidentally, when the Andrews government decided to abolish it, it was history repeating itself, because Labor abolished it when it first came to government in 1982 and rolled it into something called the Social Development Committee. Liberal and Nationals MPs at the time pushed for it to be reinstated, which it then was by the Kennett government in 1992, and then of course again when Labor was elected in 2014 they decided to strip that back and abolish it. That committee had been lauded for its work, including by very respected entities like the Monash University Accident Research Centre.

That committee’s work has led to really transformational initiatives around road safety and measures which have led to a significant reduction in fatalities and serious injuries on Victorian roads. It was that committee which drove the introduction of mandatory seatbelts in Victoria, and as we know, Victoria was the first jurisdiction in the world to do that. It drove the introduction of the demerit point system as a deterrent for repeat offenders. It was responsible for random breath testing, alcohol prohibition for probationary drivers, power capacity limits for motorcyclists who are on their L-plates or P-plates, compulsory child restraints in cars, mandatory helmets for cyclists and 40-kilometre zones outside schools. The work of that committee is really, really significant. You could almost argue that it has been one of the most significant and most reforming committees in modern times in this Parliament, so I think it is a great shame that the government has decided to abolish that committee and does not see a need for it, and I would question why that is.

I was interested to note that the committee in 2006 also completed an inquiry into driver distraction, which is the subject of the bill that is before us, or a good part of the bill, and they looked at the prevalence of mobile phone use by drivers, its impact on crash causes, the suitability and enforcement of existing laws concerning the use of mobile telephones and other electronic devices by drivers and the possible need to change legislation or statutory requirements to implement their recommendations.

So, again, we have had a vehicle—pardon the pun—to examine some of these really serious issues around road safety, but the government is refusing to use that. We have, as I said, sought to re-establish that committee on a number of occasions. To me what it really speaks to is a pattern where the Andrews government has sought on multiple fronts to dumb down the Parliament and to concentrate power in the hands of the executive government, and quite frankly I think that this is a case in point and it is a disappointing case given the importance of road safety to both sides of this chamber.

In 2019, because we do not have that committee the Legislative Council’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee was asked to inquire into the increase in Victoria’s road toll, which was quite significant at the time. Recommendation 14 from that inquiry was that the Victorian government review speed limits on all rural and regional roads as a matter of priority to, and I quote from the recommendation:

Identify unsafe roads with low traffic volumes where speed limits should be reduced and reduce them accordingly.

The government supported that recommendation in full, and they have since flagged that they are looking at lowering the speed limit to 80 kilometres an hour on local government roads and on major roads if safety works like wire rope barriers cannot be installed. The government said this in its response to that report:

Where investment in barrier systems and other infrastructure is not a feasible solution, due to lower traffic volumes and other geometric constraints, the Victorian Government will look at 80km/h speed limits to manage roads with high crash risks.

They conclude by saying that they understand the community is concerned that reduced speed limits in rural and regional areas will lead to increased travel times but they will support any changes with community education. Well, Deputy Speaker, you are a representative of regional Victoria, but certainly from where I stand there is nothing that rural and regional Victorians hate more than being told they will be educated about what is good for them, and quite frankly I think that is very lazy policy. It is arrogant policy. Everywhere I travel across Victoria, but particularly in regional Victoria, our road surfaces are crumbling, they are deteriorating. Road safety should not be used as a guise to hide the problems that have been created by years of chronic underinvestment in our road network. Since 2014 we know that Labor has lost more than $24 billion to waste and cost overruns on major projects, including major road projects like the North East Link and the West Gate Tunnel. And of course we also had that $1.3 billion to not build the east–west link. So it seems that there is no end of money when it comes to plugging the Minister for Transport Infrastructure’s leaky buckets but not for the unglamorous work of actually making sure that our roads are up to scratch, that potholes are repaired properly and that road surfaces are safe.

I think it speaks to the fact that the government would rather decrease speed limits on country roads than invest in them. We have an old saying, ‘If you invest in country roads, you’ll save country lives’. One of the government’s first decisions on coming to office in 2014 was to cut the country roads and bridges program, which put money directly into the hands of local government to help maintain local road networks. I know across my own patch that money was used very effectively and went a very long way to improving the safety issues in my region. While the government actively examined lowering speed limits in regional Victoria, it also cut the road asset maintenance budget by 25 per cent last year. We had a budget of $807 million in 2021 and this year it is just $616 million. The government and a number of agencies frequently claim that there is not a great link between road surfaces and serious injuries or fatalities. But there is research which suggests that fatalities and serious injuries are halved for each incremental improvement in the star rating system—that is, if you go from 1 star to 2 stars, or from 3 stars to 4 stars, you will significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries.

Victoria actually has no legislated obligation for our roads to be built or maintained to a certain standard to increase safety for road users. That same committee which recommended lowering speed limits in fact also recommended that the government review its road maintenance priorities to ensure that standards like line marking, safe shoulders and resurfacing are adequately maintained on high-speed minor roads. It also recommended that the government undertake research to determine the cost and time frame of ensuring that all highways, arterial roads and other roads of significance in Victoria are a minimum 3-star rating. Shock, horror! Those recommendations did not in fact receive the government’s full support, and I have had many people who have asked me, ‘The government requires us to have roadworthy cars; why doesn’t the government require our roads to be car worthy?’. I actually think that that is quite a compelling point.

The Minister for Roads and Road Safety—I am pleased he is at the table—has previously said that he is making roads smoother and safer, but that quite frankly is not the lived experience for many people in Victoria, particularly in regional Victoria. The Hume Freeway at the moment, our national road—the main road that links our two major capital cities in this country—has been subject to 80-kilometre speed limits for weeks and rough surface signs right through my stretch. We have rough surface signs warning motorists that that road quite frankly is not up to scratch—our nation’s main road. Now, the impact that has on productivity for particularly the freight task that uses that road or the thousands of people who use it to commute into Melbourne each day is extraordinary, to say nothing of the safety impact. And we have seen that the quality of work around the state is very, very poor. The Auditor-General warned the government about this back in 2017, but all Labor has done is reduce spending further, and I have not really seen any material change as a consequence of the recommendations that the Auditor-General made. Perhaps they have not been implemented, but certainly the Auditor-General pointed to the need for longer term funding cycles to ensure that roads were maintained to a higher standard, and we quite simply just have not seen that happen.

Persistent safety concerns are also routinely ignored, and I want to mention a couple in my own electorate of Euroa. We have a stretch of road between Violet Town and Murchison. In 2014 we had a fatality on that road at Miepoll as well as four serious injury crashes. There was another fatality near the Goulburn Valley Freeway in October 2015 and another serious injury crash a few days later. In 2019 there was another fatality at Gillam Road, and last year a minibus rolled, which killed one person and saw a number of others airlifted to hospital.

That road is a key freight route as well as being a main east–west corridor through that region. Lowering the speed limit to 80 kilometres an hour, as the government wants to do on such roads, would have really major ramifications for the community. It would have major ramifications on productivity but also just on the daily life of people who need to travel long distances to get where they need to go. The issue here is that the community’s concerns about the safety of the road—about narrow shoulders, sharp run-offs and the camber of the road—have not been addressed by the government. They just are routinely ignored.

Similarly, at the Colbinabbin Primary School we have been pushing for variable speed signs to be introduced around that school, which has B-doubles travelling within a metre of where kids have to get into their cars—where you have got kids walking along the road to get to the recreation reserve, where you have got kinder kids walking that same path and where the principal is so concerned about the safety of his kids he has resorted to borrowing the line marker from the rec reserve to try and mark a safe route for the children under his care. When that issue was raised with the government, again we were told that it was not a priority. Now, again, I use these examples to highlight the fact that I think Labor’s approach to road safety is one-dimensional. It is about taking a stick to people as opposed to making the investment to ensure that our roads are properly maintained—that we make the investment in places to actually improve the safety of communities.

The second part of this bill deals with licence suspensions, and clauses 6 to 17 prescribe changes to offences for which a senior member of Victoria Police can suspend someone’s licence on the spot. It adds a number of offences including for someone who commits the following offences with a motor vehicle: manslaughter; negligently causing serious injury; culpable driving; dangerous driving causing death; dangerous driving causing serious injury; intentionally exposing an emergency worker, a custodial officer or a youth justice custodial worker to risk; failing to immediately stop and render assistance if an accident occurs; and dangerous or negligent driving while being pursued by police.

Most recently of course we had the report of a hit-and-run—on 22 March in Armadale at 6.30 in the morning—where a 23-year-old P-plater allegedly hit a pedestrian who was attempting, I believe, to get on a tram. The allegation is that she fled the scene and came back several hours later. I raise that, I suppose, as perhaps the freshest example I can think of where this immediate on-the-spot disqualification of someone’s licence might take effect. Under these changes the police would have had the power to suspend her licence then and there. When you look at the seriousness of some of those offences that I have just named, I think this is a sensible decision by the government to include a broader list of offences. The community test by any measure would be well passed here; most people in the community would certainly agree.

Part 3 of the bill makes changes to the compensation scheme that is administered by the Transport Accident Commission. Most of those changes are to address anomalies in the scheme, and the government has advised me that it estimates the total cost of these amendments to the scheme will be between $5.7 million and $8.5 million annually. Clauses 21 to 23 and clauses 25 to 29 change the way a client’s preaccident weekly earnings are calculated if they are in the very unfortunate circumstance where they have another transport accident and they are already in receipt of TAC loss-of-earnings benefits. I understand that the TAC believes that this change is going to impact about five to 12 people a year, so it is not huge by any measure, but it is certainly important to those few who very unfortunately find themselves in that circumstance.

Clause 24 strips someone who is convicted of murder or manslaughter of benefits. I understand that is already the case for benefits under their own claim if someone is injured, but it does not currently extend to dependency benefits. Clauses 30 to 32 alter death benefits so that the commission is not actually liable to pay someone’s partner or their dependent child if that partner or child is convicted of murder, manslaughter or culpable driving.

I certainly do not think that anyone would disagree with the government’s decision to strip death benefits from individuals who are charged with murder and manslaughter. In the case of culpable driving charges, it is likely that the person who has been the subject of that offence is already grieving the loss of their partner or their parent and is, I would imagine, suffering intense guilt over the consequences of their actions. I think if you take this to the extreme, this could be a 16-year-old L-plater who made a poor—illegal, but poor—choice to pick up their mobile phone whilst they were driving; they might have run off the road and they might have killed their parent. The death of a person in those circumstances is absolutely tragic for a family, but it is also really tragic for a child who may be involved and who will pay for that mistake for the rest of their life. I think this has the potential to be a bit of a grey area, and it should be monitored to make sure it does not have perverse outcomes, accepting of course that culpable driving is a very serious offence. One possibility could be to tie this to those cases where someone is convicted of culpable driving and is sentenced to a custodial sentence. That would perhaps give some discretion to the judicial system and to the TAC, particularly in instances where a judge feels that an offence has been committed but there are, I suppose, some extenuating circumstances.

The final change to the scheme is to include people who are involved in car-dooring accidents. The TAC have advised that there are about 70 car-dooring claims per year, but in about 75 per cent of those the cyclist is already covered for lump sum damages because the door was opened by a driver. At the moment, as I understand it, the scheme includes cases where a driver has opened the door but not where a passenger has opened the door. That is a sensible change, that in those 25 per cent of claims that are currently received where a passenger has opened the door this will be covered under the scheme.

In concluding, I do want to put on the record my thanks to Emma Henderson, the minister’s adviser, who worked pretty hard in obtaining some details from the department and the TAC for me on a number of questions that we posed during the bill briefing. I am pleased that the government has agreed to go into consideration in detail on this bill. I am somewhat amazed they have, considering it is only the second time in this term of Parliament, but I very much welcome the opportunity, as I am sure the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, who is at the table, does. I really look forward to interrogating some of the details of this bill in greater detail at that time.

Mr CARROLL (Niddrie—Minister for Public Transport, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (13:38): I rise to make a contribution on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I thank the shadow minister and congratulate her on becoming the Shadow Minister for Public Transport and Roads. I hope that that expands to her also becoming the shadow minister for road safety. I notice the member for Kew was the last shadow minister for road safety. Road safety has been bipartisan for so many years, and I think the member for Euroa should have that extension too.

We regard road safety very proudly in this state. Indeed, in the United Nations and worldwide, Victoria is a place that is looked to. It is really because of ministers that have come before me, whether you go back to the 1970s and Victoria being the first jurisdiction in the world to mandate the wearing of seatbelts, whether you look at this being the first jurisdiction to introduce legislation concerning random breathalyser testing in the mid-1970s or whether you look at one of the greatest legacies of the John Cain government, setting up the Transport Accident Commission in 1986. Coincidentally I met today one of the very first clients of the Transport Accident Commission. He is a young man now, but he was only six years of age back in the 1980s. He is in a wheelchair because he was hit by a car on his way home from school. I basically got the picture today of what reforms like the TAC can do to give independence to someone that has had a life-changing incident occur and how that has helped him so much.

We have also, though, introduced speed cameras and are putting record investment into infrastructure. One of the first things I wanted to do when I became Minister for Roads and Road Safety was really focus on people, and I do take a bit of exception to the argument that we have been one dimensional, because we have had record investment in infrastructure. But at the end of the day road safety is about people, particularly vulnerable people, and at the moment obviously we have got an issue supporting motorcyclists and cyclists. Coming out of the pandemic we are very focused on how people have changed a lot of their behaviours, perhaps shunning public transport or having a public transport hesitancy and getting back to the vehicle. That is why we are rolling out our Smarter Roads initiative, and it is why we are, under the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, through the Big Build, adding more lanes than ever before, removing level crossings and building the infrastructure that is needed.

So we know we have got more work to do, small things. This might not be the biggest piece of legislation coming through the chamber, but it is important legislation that will continue to reform the Transport Accident Commission but then take best practice that has been instituted in New South Wales to really do everything we can to target mobile phone use, particularly in motor vehicles. We know with distracted driving, if it is just for 1 second you go to your mobile phone, it is the equivalent of travelling essentially blind for almost 50 metres, and the data does not lie. More people are attached to their mobile phones. More people are looking at their mobile phones. We see every day ourselves when we go out in the community what a distraction mobile phones are, and our message is very clear: put it in the glove box, put it on the back seat, take it away from you, because mobile phones do not belong near the steering wheel or in your lap or in your hand.

That is what we are trying to do here with this legislation. Look at what New South Wales did—and it has been a big success—bringing new camera technology and enforcement to capturing mobile phone use. The shadow minister is right to raise questions around privacy safeguards. The truth is we have been doing this work as a trial, and then through some of our tertiary institutions and partners we are already using cameras to monitor the road network to get more information back to traffic operations that can then get more information to people that are in their cars to make the best choice of route to work or to school or to wherever they are going. But no doubt this matter will continue to be raised and discussed.

We have had the legal community very supportive of this legislation, particularly some of the reforms we have been doing around the Transport Accident Commission. I think the Transport Accident Commission, as I said at the very beginning of my contribution, is an enormous legacy of the Cain Labor government. But more than that too, I want to pay tribute, if I can, to Ms Maxwell in the other place, because she has been someone who consistently has raised addressing gaps in legislation, particularly around the issue of strengthening licence suspension powers. This legislation will address that gap by ensuring that hit-and-run and other serious offences are listed in that category of offences that may trigger immediate licence suspension or disqualification, and the shadow minister highlighted a potential case in point that we are well aware of.

Further though, this legislation, in addition to the reforms to the Transport Accident Commission, in addition to the work around cameras, addresses the issue around seatbelts, and we are in agreement on that. It is incredible that 31 people died while not wearing a seatbelt last year, a 13 per cent increase. We know seatbelts save lives, and that is just the data on the lives lost—when you meet with clients of the Transport Accident Commission you see how not wearing a seatbelt can leave you with life-changing consequences for the rest of your life; whether it is scars, whether it is other incapacities, wearing a seatbelt reduces road trauma incredibly. At the end of the day, whether it is not wearing a seatbelt, whether it is lives lost, we have to remember that every single life lost on our roads is preventable. And, yes, the trend has been coming down, but it has had some peaks and troughs as well. To think as I am standing here today, on 5 April, that 69 people have already lost their lives on Victoria’s roads—that is up on last year by about 11—and every one of those 69 individual lives lost was preventable. Every life lost is preventable, and that is why we are working to have zero lives lost by 2050—essentially an agreement right across Australia and indeed most parts of the world—and to also halve lives lost by 2030 and do everything we can to reduce trauma.

I have made some notes on the shadow minister’s contribution, and she did raise the issue of standards. We are putting record investment into our roads. She would also appreciate—and this is something I have discussed with Minister Joyce in Canberra—that when it comes to road funding you have got federal, state and local government; it is not as simple as just introducing it, it requires some consultation. Hopefully it is something we can work towards, but it is certainly something that we have to do together at the ministerial meetings of ministers and introduce as something Australia wide, because we know we want as much as possible, wherever you are going—whether you are going over the South Australia border or the New South Wales border—all roads to be at the standard we want. That work will continue to be ongoing.

I want to give a shout-out to the Department of Transport for all their work and to the Transport Accident Commission. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Monash University Accident Research Centre, because they are almost one of the jewels in the crown in Victoria, particularly when it comes to innovation. The way you reduce road deaths and road trauma is through innovation, and the work they are doing on alcohol detection and the work they are doing on fatigue is stuff that will be talked about in the future. The work of the Monash University Accident Research Centre, like I highlighted at the beginning—the reforms that will come from their work and their support by the government—will ensure in decades to come that we will look back on their work and say, ‘That alcohol detection device’ or that fatigue management device that is fitted to that vehicle ‘saved lives and reduced trauma’. On that note, I do commend the bill to the house and look forward to discussing it later this week.

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (13:48): I rise to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Like every other speaker who has spoken so far on this bill, I am mystified, outraged—I cannot understand how in this day and age there are so many people not wearing a seatbelt. I remember my father was obsessive about this sort of stuff. I remember him installing seatbelts in the back of the old Wolseley that we had, which had not been provided with them. I am showing my age, I believe. But Victoria did lead the world in 1970 in making seatbelts compulsory under the Hamer government, and to be here so many decades later still having to create further legislation around the wearing of seatbelts because people are not wearing them strikes me as almost unbelievable. How could people be so stupid, really?

As the lead speaker, the member for Euroa and Shadow Minister for Public Transport and Roads, has noted, we will not be opposing this bill, and in the tradition of road safety bills in this place, we do have a high degree of bipartisanship in this area and have had for decades. That is not to say that we think everything is perfect in this bill. We certainly do not think that the government’s approach overall to road safety is encyclopedic or comprehensive.

As the lead speaker noted—and in fact as the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, who was previously at the table, just confirmed when he spoke—the government has a strong focus on driver behaviour. That is certainly a major feature of road safety. How we behave on the roads—wearing seatbelts and not being on the phone—does drive behaviour, but so does the condition of the roads. It is true to say that this government has not been as focused on the condition of the roads as it has been on individual driver behaviour to drive down the road toll and road trauma. We note that the road asset maintenance budget was cut by 25 per cent last year, and there would not be a single country member, at least on this side of the house, who does not get repeated requests from our local governments to bring back the country roads and bridges program—a program that enabled so many of our country local government areas to at least keep up with the maintenance on their roads.

I do note that there have been a number of inquiries—recent inquiries; there have been inquiries over many years—but in recent times we have seen the Legislative Council Economy and Infrastructure Committee do an inquiry into the increase in Victoria’s road toll. That is a government-dominated committee. It made a number of recommendations, of which I wish to talk about a few, and what these recommendations go to is the state of the roads. They asked the government to publish an annual report on road standards that would state the road status for each of the highways and arterial roads. They also asked them to undertake and publish research to determine the cost and time frame of ensuring that all of the VicRoads roads of significance are of a minimum 3-star rating. They also asked the government to review its current road maintenance priorities to ensure standards such as line marking, safe shoulders and resurfacing are adequately maintained.

The government has responded to this report—and remember that it is a government-dominated committee. I have to say I support all of those recommendations. I think they are all very sound recommendations from the Legislative Council’s committee. But in each of the cases the government has failed to support those recommendations. We have got a couple of them that are supported in principle, but when you read the government’s actual response—

Ms Ryan: Weasel words.

Ms STALEY: They are weasel words, member for Euroa. They actually are not doing anything about creating reports to tell Victorians about the state of their roads. There are a couple that are supported in part, but again it is, could I say, the easy part, and at every point they have ducked delivering the kind of data that their own committee has asked for.

I note that the minister for roads in his contribution on this bill mentioned the Monash University Accident Research Centre. He described it as the jewel in the crown of road safety research. That is true—absolutely; I agree with the minister. But I want to now turn to the Auditor-General’s report, Safety on Victoria’s Roads. He particularly talked about regional road barriers, but it makes some broader points. In particular the Auditor-General went and looked at some of the research from the Monash University Accident Research Centre. They noted that VicRoads has a history of overestimating crash reduction factors. In their evaluation the Monash University Accident Research Centre compared what VicRoads said about various reduction factors, whether that be safety barriers or whether it be run-off-road treatments. They were all between 52 and 65 per cent, according to VicRoads, in how much they had reduced crashes. When they looked at what they did do after the fact, it was more like 22 per cent or 24 per cent. What we are seeing is that where the government is doing road changes for road safety, they are overestimating what they need to do and at the same time they are underfunding the basic maintenance. That combination of spending a lot of money on wire rope barriers, spending money in Melbourne on projects that have big cost overruns and at the same time underfunding country roads in particular—and I say that as a country member who drives on those roads and regularly has constituents raise the state of the roads with me—the priorities are not right and they are not congruent with a comprehensive approach to road safety.

What we all want to see is a reduction in the road toll and road trauma—not just deaths on the roads but also road trauma—and increasingly year after year we see that we are still seeing significant road trauma and a significant road toll on country roads. The cars are getting safer, the penalties for poor behaviour or poor driving are getting higher. The thing that is not improving is the state of the roads, and there just comes a point where the roads are not safe. The government has in many ways admitted that, because their response to that is to seek to cut the speed limit on many country roads. Rather than fixing the roads, they want to take them down to 80 kilometres an hour.

All of this comes to a pattern that says the government needs to rethink how it is doing road safety. We all in this place want to cut the road toll, cut the trauma from road accidents, but until we have safer roads, until we have the shoulders on our roads fixed, until we have proper line markings on the edges so that drivers can see the lines on the road that keep you within those lanes and can see the line marking on the left-hand side—all of that basic maintenance is not being done under this government, and it needs to be done. It is all very well—we do not oppose this bill—to bring this sort of bill to the Parliament, but they need to do more. They need to get the roads up to scratch, particularly country roads, so that country drivers do not continue to die in numbers far too high and so that we can push towards a zero road toll, because we are not going to get there with the state of the roads in the current state.

Ms HORNE (Williamstown—Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister for Fishing and Boating) (13:58): It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on this bill and to be able to congratulate the Minister for Roads and Road Safety for bringing this bill before the house, because obviously tackling the road toll is critical, and it is great to see such a bipartisan approach to this. It is a bill that really resonates with me both as the Minister for Ports and Freight and being so aware of the issues that are associated with the impact of trucks on roads along with the way that people move around on our road network as well as being the member for Williamstown and so close to that port precinct, where of course we have got that truck traffic and that intersection between the local community and that important economic driver. Being able to have a bill that emphasises road safety to keep my local community safe is of paramount importance. On top of that we will also see significant road safety benefits come on board, and it has been great to be able to work with groups like the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group over the course of the last three years to be able to really improve community safety on and around roads.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.