Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Bills

Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:52): I must admit I have risen quicker than I anticipated rising. I am surprised that the Minister for Ports and Freight only did 2 minutes on this bill, given that before question time she was quite emphatic about how important it was to the people of her electorate and the number of trucks that go through her electorate to the port. So I must admit, on behalf of her constituents, I am disappointed that she could not actually spend a bit more time in the house talking about those particular issues.

The Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 does a number of things, but principally it is about putting in place evidentiary matters to detect people who are not wearing a seatbelt and detect people who are using their mobile phone illegally while they are driving. I must admit that on reading the second-reading speech from the minister when this legislation was introduced, the fact that 31 people died last calendar year not wearing a seatbelt, when we have had seatbelts in this state since 1970, I think it is, and there is very good evidence that seatbelts do save lives and do prevent injuries—I am bitterly disappointed that there would be that many people who lost their lives because they were not wearing a seatbelt. They may have saved their life or they may have only been injured if they had worn a seatbelt, rather than being killed. So 13 per cent of the road toll in 2021 was people who passed away while not wearing a seatbelt. There is no excuse. It just defies logic to me. There is no excuse for not wearing a seatbelt. I think for everyone now it should be a habit that as soon as you get in the car—whether you are just backing it out of the driveway, whether you are just moving it in a car park or whether you are actually going on a longer journey in a car—you should put your seatbelt on. There is just no excuse for not doing that.

The other major change is around people who are using their mobile phone illegally or their mobile device illegally. If they go under particular cameras, they will also be caught doing that and attract a very serious fine and a serious penalty with points. Again, as the ads say, ‘If you’re using your phone, if you’re playing on your phone or if you’re texting when you’re driving, you are driving blind’. I think we all, on both sides of the house here, would support the fact that we want people to be safe on the roads. We want people to get home alive. We do not want to see more trauma and more tragedy on our roads. For the families that are impacted but also for all the emergency services staff that have to attend those accidents when they do happen, they are traumatic. They are traumatic for everyone that is involved. Anything that we can do to make the roads safer and make people get home alive without accidents will make it better.

But if we are talking about road safety legislation, we are talking about road safety in general. I am disappointed that the Andrews Labor government’s solution to the conditions of roads in regional Victoria is effectively to put up a speed restriction sign. Too often in my electorate—and I am sure a lot of the other country members would say the same thing—the solution to fixing some potholes, to fixing an area in the road where the surface is breaking up, is to put up a speed restriction sign and leave it there literally for years and years and years. One of the roads that I used to come to Melbourne regularly on is just north of Kyneton on the way to Redesdale. For over two years there was an 80-kilometre restriction on that road. It has been fixed now, but for over two years there was an 80-k restriction. Where the government made a tactical error was they also put a sign up saying, ‘We will be fixing this road soon’. I must admit I probably did Facebook posts for two to three years, I think, every six months. As I came down that road I would stop and I would take a photo of ‘We will be fixing this road soon’ and actually date stamp it, because it went on and on and on. If a road needs fixing, it should be fixed as soon as possible to make sure it is safe.

I have got an issue in my electorate with the Echuca to Kyabram road, where there is a section of that road that has had 80-k signs on it for, I think, over two years now. There are dips and the asphalt is breaking up in a number of places, but it has got to the point now where most people do not even slow down because they just are used to the condition of that road. That is probably unfortunate. Where signs are put up and the road is not seriously dangerous it creates a false sense of security for those people who drive through, and when they actually find a bit of road that is seriously unsafe then they are not prepared for it because there are already signs on roads that are not damaged as much as that.

I followed a police car through that section of road a number of months ago. I do not want to dob a policeman in for speeding, but they did not slow down either, which I found interesting at that time, because they are just so used to that road having speed restrictions on it and with humps and hollows, but not necessarily as dangerous as a lot of other places. It is a very well known fact that if you actually invest in country roads you save country lives.

This legislation brings forward some enforcement measures that will make sure people wear their seatbelts and make sure people do not play on their mobile phones, because if they get caught it will be a serious fine and a serious points penalty. But the key thing the Andrews government should be doing when it comes to road safety is actually investing in country roads—not having the cuts in the road budget that we have seen, not having the roads built to a standard that means they break up almost immediately after they are made. I do not know if the member from Ripon talked about it, but a classic example would be the Western Highway out near Beaufort, where that road has been rebuilt I think three times since it was originally upgraded. There is not enough thought, planning and design specifications given to the roads that are built in Victoria to make sure they last, and I do not believe there are enough engineers within Regional Roads Victoria to make sure that those contractual arrangements are enforced and the roads are built to such a standard as would be beneficial to make it good value for the investment in roads here in Victoria.

The Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this legislation. We believe that people should wear a seatbelt. We believe that people should not use their mobile device while they are in a car, but we do encourage the government to make sure they actually make serious investment in roads in Victoria to make them safer for regional Victorians.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (14:59): I join with my colleagues in being very pleased to speak on this rather important amendment bill. Again, it is another example of the Andrews Labor government getting on with it and getting things done. It has been an interesting debate, and I am glad to hear that those opposite are not opposing these amendments, because they are incredibly important. What I do find interesting is that yet again we are seeing a policy deficit zone where it is about attacking us and creating stories around a blanket 80-kilometre-an-hour speed restriction on arterial country roads, which in fact is not the case, and I know that people on this side of the house will not be surprised to hear that. So local roads will change at the direction or at the request of a local council, and any speed limit changes will continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Speed limits are a fact of what is necessary for a road and what is necessary to keep that road safe. It is not a blanket approach, because a blanket approach is actually lazy and bad policy. So again we see cheap political pointscoring; we see those opposite who just want to create a story where none exists because they are not prepared to do the hard work, to do the policy work to come out with something concrete that helps people in their day-to-day lives. We are wanting to implement change that helps people preserve life. This is what we are focused on with these amendments. We are not interested in cheap shots that do not actually stack up.

The bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into the road toll recommended that the speed limit on all rural and regional roads undergo a review. This report was supported by Liberal members from the upper house. It was also supported by the Transport Matters Party, so it says a lot about the coalition’s approach to road safety that they are prepared to play political games with people’s safety; that they are prepared to talk about changes to road speed limits that are not actually on the cards, that are not being proposed and are not being implemented—and they still have not replaced the member for Kew as a shadow road safety minister.

Now, as part of the current road maintenance blitz our crews are out in force across the road network delivering more than 1050 individual road maintenance projects on some of our busiest regional roads, including the Wimmera, Henty, South Gippsland, Sunraysia and Hume highways. In fact, Acting Speaker Taylor, with your indulgence I will read you a text message from my mum, who had to drive from Traralgon to Healesville on the weekend for a family friend’s 80th birthday—and they had a very good time, thank you for asking. What she texted me was:

Did two different roads too and from Healesville … roads were very good, do not know why the Nationals complain???

This is Mum and Dad going along the back roads of regional Victoria all the way to Healesville from Gippsland, and they had a lovely drive despite the rain and despite the bendy roads. So never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I will talk to my mum through lived, real-life experience as opposed to the imagined fantasy that we get from those opposite.

In total we are rebuilding, repairing and resurfacing more than 1400 kilometres of the state’s regional road network, mowing more than 30 000 kilometres of roadside grass and replacing almost 30 000 signs. Now, 1400 kilometres of the state’s regional road network—I do not know if anyone else around here is playing Worldle, not Wordle but Worldle. You get told that you are 1400, 1500, 1600 kilometres away and you are talking about the length of Europe when you are trying to find country A to country B, trying to work out where you are to work out what the map is, right? Fourteen-hundred kilometres is a lot of road. It is a lot of road. We have already completed more than 600 kilometres of this work, with the remainder to be delivered between now and June this year. Since 2014 we have rebuilt, resurfaced and repaired more than 10 400 kilometres of the state’s regional roads, delivering more reliable journeys for hundreds of thousands of drivers. This is us driving more or less all the way to South America, right? This is a lot of a road.

We know that cars are an important part of our lives, and I suspect that there will be many people on both sides of the chamber who have got stories of their experience with cars, particularly from when they were younger. For me, when I was born my mum and dad put me in a bassinet and shoved me behind the bench seat—in the car well of the back seat. Then when I was big enough to sit they had a little red vinyl seat that hooked over the bench seat, so I sat in the front seat next to Mum and Dad.

Mr Battin: You’re lucky. We had panel vans.

Ms WARD: I take note of the member for Gembrook’s comment about having a panel van. I do feel privileged for being in the front on Mum and Dad’s bench seat in the Kingswood. So we have come a long way, and technology has allowed us to come a long way when it comes to road safety. I will be happy to share a story of my first car, which was a white Mazda 1600 that Dad put some money and effort into making a roadworthy car for me. Much to Dad’s unhappiness—and I do apologise to him—I managed to smash it. I managed to smash it on Research-Warrandyte Road on a wet day, going around a few bends and skidding into a tree. I have to tell you, Acting Speaker, I am incredibly glad that I had a seatbelt on, because I hate to think of the damage that I would have done to myself without one.

We know that with increased technology—we have got airbags, we have got a whole bunch of things that help us keep safe in our cars—we also have the distraction of new technology. As a government we have brought about the road safety action plan. We have made it a priority to invest $34 million over five years to roll out new detection cameras and enforcement systems. We cannot expect the police to look into every car. We cannot expect them to see what everybody is doing in every car or to know what everybody is doing in the car, but we need people to be more responsible in their cars. If people know that there is an opportunity, when they are driving along—my kids were telling me earlier this week that they were next to someone who was sitting in her car, in the driver’s seat, and she had the phone that she had been texting with right in her lap—for these behaviours to be countered with new technologies of cameras and so forth, that can help make people feel more cautious about their behaviour. It can have people change their behaviours.

These new cameras can pick up when someone is not wearing a seatbelt or when they are using what we are calling ‘portable devices’ when driving, and of course a portable device is anything like a mobile phone, an iPad and so forth. We know that driver distraction is a huge problem and it is a dangerous problem; in fact it is a deadly problem. It is so easy for us to be distracted with our phones, with our devices. We have been trained by our phones to respond to pings, to vibrations, to think that we have got to be on call and grab anything in real time as it appears. We have become incredibly impatient with waiting to respond to any message or phone call that we get. What we know is that in around 11 per cent of road fatalities last year a contributor was people being distracted—that is 24 lives lost last year because drivers were distracted.

What I found even more surprising though was to learn what the figures were for people who were not wearing seatbelts. Thirty-one people died last year because they were not wearing seatbelts. I find that astonishing. I recognise that people can get in their car, be distracted and forget to put their seatbelt on, but there is clearly a cohort of people who are making a deliberate choice to not put a seatbelt on. Having additional penalties and overview of people to encourage them to wear seatbelts while driving is incredibly important. We saw the dramatic decrease in the road toll once we did introduce—and it was a Labor government that did this—seatbelts in this state. I cannot imagine why anyone would get into a car without wearing a seatbelt. It is clear that it is one of the most important safety measures that you can take when you get into a car.

What we are doing today is adding new sections to the Road Safety Act 1986: section 80B, dealing with the illegal use of a portable device; and sections 80C and 80D, which deal with the failure to wear a seatbelt. These are important additions to make to our legislation. While we recognise with the camera work that people are considered innocent until the camera footage has been examined, we have got the opportunity to do this. There is an evidentiary burden put on the accused to show that it was not them in the camera shot. I am very pleased that Victoria Police will have the power to immediately suspend licences or disqualify people from driving in circumstances where they have been charged with committing serious road safety offences.

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (15:09): I rise on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and I note that the opposition are not opposing this piece of legislation. I will continue on from where I think many have left off in discussing road safety issues, particularly around mobile phone use. Seeing how many people these days use mobile phones whilst driving, I think it is a scary, scary statistic. The statistics say one in 42 drivers uses their mobile phone while driving. These are the ones who have been caught; like all of these things, it is the ones that do not get caught that are the higher statistic. But you just drive along the freeways or the roads now and you will see people who are quite comfortable using their mobile phones; they do not have any hesitation about texting, calling, Facebooking. We have seen some horrific scenes. Many would have seen—and I am going off memory on this one, but it was on 60 Minutes—the story around a couple of girls who were Instagramming live when they had an accident, using the mobile phone whilst driving, and one of the girls in that accident was killed.

Whilst the legislation changes everything in there, it needs to be packaged up with talking about education and how we deal with talking to, at the moment, the next generation about using mobile phones whilst driving, but also I am going to say people in this place here. I am sure, I would be confident, that almost everyone—I will not say everyone; there will be someone that has not—would have at some stage used a mobile phone whilst driving. I think it is something that needs to be educated through the system on how that impacts and impairs your driving in our state.

I am in the position now—and others in here are in a similar position, or coming up to it or have already gone past that early stage—where I have got an 18-year-old who has got their licence. I think I reminded her every day when we did her learners for the 186 hours that we were in the car why you do not use a mobile phone whilst driving. In those conversations were things about not drink driving and about other things. But in our education it is instilled in us now about drink driving. The governments of the day from both sides have been very strict on the ‘If you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot’ advertising campaign. We have had some very graphic TAC ads in the past, and it is ingrained in us.

I note the member for Eltham was talking about things that used to happen in the past. I recall being in the car with my father, who was on the wrong side of the road, and saying to him, ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road’, to which he said, ‘I was just checking to see what was coming’—because it was not a negative; it was not a massive thing within our culture to not drink drive. It is a totally different circumstance now, because education has changed, our circumstances change and people are changing—and that includes everything. If you think about smoking, all my friends smoked; nearly none of my friends smoke now. It is about education and retraining, and then that goes on to the next generation.

The reason that we are obviously not opposing this, and the reason we would support some of the areas within this bill, is the fact that changing the way that people can be caught, penalised and worked through that system also alters the way that people start to think about it when they are getting into the car and driving. When you are explaining to an 18-year-old, who up until today—and we are talking about in schools, everything—has been using their mobile phone wherever they wanted, that all of a sudden they have to put it down for, most of the time, a short period of time while driving to McDonald’s to get their Big Mac at 2 in the morning because they just happen to have woken up or, in the circumstances of my daughter, who randomly found a boyfriend in Swan Hill, while on the road driving for 4½ hours, that scares you as a parent. That is why I think this sort of legislation comes back to us as well, to retrain our views, our vision of what we see as responsible driving here in this state.

Having had the pleasure of working in the role that I did in the past, knowing how many people’s lives were saved through wearing seatbelts, knowing how many people’s lives were changed through vehicle safety features, knowing how many lives were saved because of the road conditions, there are so many different things that have been reducing our road toll here in this state. But anything that can continue that education and make sure we can keep people safe on our roads should be supported and should be something that we work towards as a goal, which we join the government in: net zero deaths here in Victoria. It would be an awesome year if you got to wake up on 1 January and say, ‘Last year we had no deaths on our roads’. Obviously we do not believe it is going to happen at the moment, but it is something we would love to wake up and see. The way we are improving that is a lot with safety. A lot of the suggestions, ideas, commitments and ways we have fixed our processes here in Victoria and made roads and cars safer have been through the Road Safety Committee, which was a committee that existed here in this Parliament for many years. That committee formed the views of how we should use seatbelts, make sure that people wear seatbelts and make them compulsory here in our state—changes that have affected and impacted on lives—and it made speed limit recommendations. It changed the way a road can be assessed for what the speed limit should be in specific areas—whether there are shops, houses, schools—and made recommendations and put them out there around speed limits around schools to make sure children are safer. There is a whole world of recommendations, a whole list of recommendations, that this committee made.

I know the member for Eltham again said ‘a policy-free zone’. The first policy we would put forward I think would be one of the most important—to bring back that committee, because it had bipartisan support. It was an opportunity for this Parliament not just to talk in a room like this amongst ourselves and yell at each other and abuse each other but to bring in the best of the best. We could bring in those from the police force who have seen the outcomes of the accidents on our streets. We could bring in the experts on our country and regional roads to talk about the impact of a deteriorating road and how that affects a car, how that affects safety on our roads, what the impact is, how many accidents have been near misses, how many accidents have caused injury and how many have caused death. We could actually bring all those statistics in and do what this Parliament is supposed to do—that is, take that information in a bipartisan manner to make the best laws possible to protect Victorians on our roads. And if the recommendation was around investing more in regional roads—which it was in the final report in 2018 by the Victorian Labor Party, who held the majority in that and supported it—then that should have happened and we should have seen more investments in our regional roads, not a cut of 25 per cent in the maintenance of regional roads here in Victoria but an actual increase to ensure that our roads were safer and that people were safer driving around all of Victoria. We have got potholes all the way through the west, and we have seen example after example with cars damaged. We have got potholes all the way through the east, where we have seen example after example of cars that are damaged. Each of those is potentially coming very close to an accident.

I note there was a recommendation—and I am not saying this would happen across Victoria; I am not going to put that out there at all—and I know some have mentioned it, about making blankets of 80-kilometre speed limits across the whole state. However, what I will say is this government’s reaction to the poor quality of roads, particularly through regional Victoria, has been to reduce the speed limit. In the areas where the road is unsafe they have continued to reduce the speed limit, and I will use Koo Wee Rup Road as an example down in my electorate—or just outside my electorate, but many in my electorate use it. The government continue to reduce the speed limit rather than fix the actual problem of the quality of that road, which is used by thousands of people these days. Not that long ago probably the most traffic Koo Wee Rup Road had would have been when we had the trade on for the cattle auctions down the road and the trucks were going up and down and farmers would come into town to buy their cattle. It has changed. If you go to Pakenham now, thousands upon thousands of people live in that area. Thousands of people use these roads to go to and from work. You change a road’s perspective when you put a McDonald’s on the road—there is a McDonald’s on the road. We now have so many people using those roads with major trucks and infrastructure, and it is a transport hub to make sure people can get from the areas in industrial Pakenham onto the freeway or heading down through to Hastings, to Gippsland or to the city. This road has been neglected for so long, and unfortunately we have seen deaths on that road.

I get frustrated that a commitment was made in 2018 that that road would have the funding to be fixed, but then that funding was cut. The government cut it only to recently reannounce that they are going to be committing to that funding again under a new plan under a new model to see that road fixed for the future. It should have been fixed in the past, and we would not have had the deaths that we have had there out in Pakenham in the past two years. It disappointed me most when the government came out and said their fix for that road at the moment is to reduce the speed limit. If we are going to be serious about road safety, if we are going to be serious about saving lives and reducing deaths in Victoria, then we have to be serious that we take all information on board, that we analyse it the best we can and we work in a bipartisan way, as we have in road safety for many, many years. My recommendation to the government on that, as we are not opposed to this bill, is to bring back the Road Safety Committee. If they bring that back, we will guarantee from this side we will work with them to ensure we try and reach our goal of no deaths on Victorian roads.

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (15:19): It is a pleasure to speak on this bill for many reasons but primarily because I do not think any government in Victoria has done more than our government to improve road safety both in a legislative sense and in an investment sense. Obviously this bill is in relation to several key features, including facilitating the enforcement of distracted driving and seatbelt-wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras and adding it to the list of serious offences that trigger immediate licence suspension and disqualification when charges are laid under the Road Safety Act 1986, and a range of other things, including the Transport Accident Commission, which were in the minister’s second-reading speech. But this bill is fundamentally about every effort to improve road safety. As I said at the outset, that is legislative but fundamentally it is also about investment. The other side can talk about re-establishing committees and a range of other things, anything but actually putting your money where your values are and making the investments and the commitments needed to improve road safety for all Victorians. We have a huge record in that regard. It is not often highlighted, but before we came to office there were 59 dangerous level crossings. Not 56, 57 or 58 but now all 59 have been removed, and we are well on our way to removing 85 under a very competent and very energetic minister. Obviously this was a big, big commitment by the Premier in 2014. It was an iconic part of our brand and our policy commitment to the Victorian people. That is one of the biggest parts of our practical commitment to road safety.

What is the commitment of those opposite to road safety? Is it a Jaguar through your front door? What is the commitment to road safety by those on the other side other than establishing a committee? Fundamentally the Liberal-National parties have failed in relation to investment in road upgrades, in road safety. Not only have they failed on any benchmark but they have failed in relation to our historic high benchmark, our unprecedented historic investment. And I do not need to remind anyone on this side of the house, as some of the ministers did in question time today, that that commitment is not at all matched by the federal Liberal Party, not at all matched by the federal government. They are happy to fund car parks, pork-barrelling as that is. They are happy to fund a whole bunch of other things, but not life-saving road infrastructure.

There is a bunch of different ways you can measure this, but 6 per cent of all new federal infrastructure money came to Victoria—6 per cent. We have 26 per cent of Australia’s population. Depending on what snapshot you look at, if you extend it out to a five-year outlook, we are still well under, about 4 or 5 per cent under our proportion of the population in terms of spend on infrastructure by the commonwealth government. And if you look at the last couple of years, we are about 17 per cent, so a much bigger gap. While I am talking about the whole of Victoria, by 2029 Melbourne will be the biggest city in Australia. What do those opposite have to say about this? What does the opposition in the Victorian Parliament—the same political colour as the government, hopefully soon to be the opposition, in Canberra—have to say about it? Absolutely nothing. They are silently endorsing the restrictions on resources to Victorians in infrastructure, as they were during the pandemic on a whole range of fronts—on JobKeeper, on business supports and everything else. But we will not let that silence, we will not let that act of treachery by the commonwealth government—we have got a Treasurer from Victoria but he is not for Victoria, as the Premier often says—we will not let that overt political ideology where they just hate Victorians distract us from what we are doing.

I could go into a lot of other areas about our investment in roads, both country roads and suburban roads—the new package—and the new way of funding suburban road upgrades, a whole range of other areas, not least of which is enormous expenditure on public transport, which gets cars off the roads. I could go on about that, but I will go on to my favourite topic, level crossing removals. Who would have thought that in 7½ years you could achieve so, so many of them? Kororoit Creek Road, Williamstown North—level crossing removed. On the Belgrave line, Scoresby Road, Bayswater—level crossing removed. On the Belgrave and Lilydale lines, Blackburn Road, Blackburn—level crossing removed. Heatherdale Road, Mitcham—level crossing removed. Can I just remind the house that too many people have died at level crossings, far too many people, both in terms of pedestrians and drivers. On the Craigieburn line, the Buckley Street, Essendon, level crossing has been removed. On the Cranbourne line, Abbotts Road, Dandenong South—everybody now—level crossing removed.

Ms Richards interjected.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: I should say ‘Gone’, member for Cranbourne. Evans Road, Lyndhurst—the level crossing there is gone, as the member for Cranbourne said. Greens Road, Dandenong South—level crossing gone. Thompson Road, Lyndhurst—level crossing gone. It is extraordinary, the commitment, the perseverance, the discipline and the absolutely judicious way we approached this. Nothing will get in our way of saving lives on Victorian roads, running more trains and upgrading the infrastructure for generations to come.

On the Cranbourne-Pakenham line—my favourite line in Melbourne—the Centre Road, Clayton, level crossing is gone. The Chandler Road, Noble Park, level crossing is gone. The Clayton Road, Clayton, level crossing is gone. Corrigan Road, Noble Park—level crossing gone. The Grange Road, Carnegie, level crossing is gone, again in my patch. At Heatherton Road, Noble Park—I think in the Premier’s patch or the Minister for Racing’s patch—the level crossing is gone. Koornang Road in Carnegie—in my patch again—the level crossing is gone. I could go on; I could go on for hours. That is the commitment and the work that we have put in. Murrumbeena Road, Murrumbeena, level crossing—

A member interjected.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: Gone. Thank you, member for—

A member: You have got one friend.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: Poath Road, Hughesdale—level crossing gone. I have got to say the amount of private sector investment that has gone into some of these areas once the government has gone in and upgraded the infrastructure is extraordinary. Literally new bars and businesses have opened up—new restaurants. It is a far easier proposition for the private sector to invest when the public sector has come in. Frankston line—another excellent line that I sometimes use through Ormond station. Argyle Avenue, Chelsea—level crossing gone. Balcombe Road, Mentone—level crossing gone. Bondi Road, Bonbeach—level crossing gone. Centre Road, Bentleigh—level crossing gone. In fact that was one of the first ones because of the hard work and commitment of my friend the member for Bentleigh. Charman and Park roads, Bentleigh—level crossing gone. Chelsea Road, Chelsea—level crossing gone. I am going to have to move for an extension of time. Edithvale Road, Edithvale, level crossing—

A member: Please don’t.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: gone. Eel Race Road, Carrum—level crossing gone. Lochiel Avenue, Edithvale—level crossing gone. Mascot Avenue, Bonbeach—level crossing gone. McKinnon Road, McKinnon—level crossing gone. North Road, Ormond—level crossing gone. The Parkers Road, Parkdale, level crossing is in the planning stage right now. The Seaford Road, Seaford, level crossing is gone. Skye and Overton roads, Frankston—level crossing gone. Station Street, Carrum—level crossing gone. Swanpool Avenue, Chelsea, level crossing—

A member: Gone.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: On the Geelong-Ballarat line, Mount Derrimut Road, Deer Park, is in the planning stage. On the Glen Waverley line, the Burke Road, Glen Iris, level crossing is gone. Toorak Road, Kooyong—level crossing gone. Grange Road, Alphington—level crossing removed.

Ms Theophanous interjected.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: Gone, that is right, member for Northcote. Lower Plenty Road, Rosanna—level crossing gone. Manchester Road, Mooroolbark—level crossing gone. Maroondah Highway, Lilydale—level crossing gone. On the Mernda line, the High Street, Reservoir, level crossing is gone. On the Pakenham line again, Cardinia Road, Pakenham—level crossing gone. Clyde Road, Berwick—level crossing gone. Hallam Road, Hallam—level crossing gone. South Gippsland Highway, Dandenong South—level crossing gone. Furlong Road, St Albans—level crossing gone. Holden Road, Calder Park, is in the planning stages. And on the Upfield line, the Bell Street, Coburg, level crossing is gone. That is just one part of our agenda for road safety in this government, and it took me almost a full contribution just to get through one part. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (15:29): Like all Victorians, I want a safer road network. I want to know that my family, my friends and my community are on safe roads, so the opposition is essentially supporting the government’s position on the road safety legislation. This piece of legislation is seeking to tighten up some loopholes in legislation. It is trying to support the TAC to be a better carer of people involved in road trauma. But like so many things this government does, I call into question the rhetoric. In particular I refer to the second-reading speech of the minister where it talks about the grand ambition of this legislation: that this is going to help reduce our road toll by 50 per cent.

Now, as a tireless country road safety campaigner that I feel I have been over my six-year journey in this Parliament, the rhetoric is beyond belief. The facts simply do not stack up. This government’s commitment to truly making roads safer and more accessible for Victorians just simply is not true. And you cannot go any further than just the bland statistics, the basic statistics, that this government produces. By the TAC road accident toll figures, in 2018, a full two years before the pandemic, we had a road toll down to 213 souls. Since that time this state has committed in excess of $1 billion to wire rope barriers. We heard information from this government that it was going to make roads safer. We heard information from the Monash research institute about this investment in a cobweb of wires along country roads, put out and inconceivably constructed in areas that clearly made no sense to the travelling public or to Victorians at large, this massive investment.

What has happened to the road toll since then? Well, the following year it was 266. It increased. The following year, just before the height of the pandemic, it actually came down to 211. Then in the two years of the pandemic there was up to 35 per cent less traffic on our roads, Victorians in Melbourne were not allowed to travel into country Victoria or anywhere where the deaths occur and in some months of the year there was 60 per cent, or more, less traffic. In fact the police kept people locked in their homes, essentially. The government should have had record lows. But what did we see happen? The first year of the pandemic the road toll went up to 232. The following year it increased again. In fact this year we are, year to date, 7.8 per cent up on the year before. At this rate we are going to have a death toll in Victoria approaching 250 or greater, which is the sort of toll we have not seen for a long time in Victoria, and that is after this government’s alleged commitment to road safety, its commitment of taxpayer funds of $1 billion.

What are country Victorians saying, the people that use the roads? They are saying, ‘A safe road is a road with a good surface. A safe road is a road that’s got clear run-offs on the side of it. A safe road doesn’t have massive trees and branches hanging over it’. I mean, if you go on the Princes Highway West at the moment, as I do every week when I come down to Parliament, in the centre median of this road that technically has not even been officially opened by this government yet, because I suspect it is so embarrassed by the quality and structure of this wire rope cobbled freeway that is already having to be resurfaced—the Minister for Roads and Road Safety has not even been down to it to cut a ribbon—there is a sea of massive dead trees in the middle of it. Any one of those trees could fall at any moment, in any gust of wind, with any of the storms that we have been encountering, onto the road and absolutely take some innocent motorist’s life, some innocent country Victorian’s life, because the road simply is not being maintained.

So it is all very well for the minister to gladly get up before the Parliament and tell us how we are now going to have some new technology employed that will see the government able to essentially fine more people for not wearing seatbelts and fine more people for talking on their mobile phones. While no-one is going to disagree with that, it is seen as a little bit of a cheap shot to think of more ways to tax people and fine people for road safety. But when it comes to actually putting some money into where the community wants it, people want to see money spent on roads that have got holes so big in them you literally can go fishing. We are talking about roads where the edges are so soft, so worn away, so elongated. There are no longer white lines marking the edges of some of our most major roads, where we have massive potential tourist traffic. Along the Great Ocean Road and certainly in my electorate in the Otway hinterlands are some very popular and at times very busy roads that regularly spend months of the year closed down to one lane because there has been a road slip or the drainage has not been maintained.

This is basic road safety that this legislation does not address. It is almost laughable that the minister can claim that fining more people for no seatbelts and fining more people for being on their mobile phones is going to cut this road toll down, because we know over the last five or six years they have spent a billion dollars on one particular technology which they have, in expensive TV advertisements which I am unable to get FOI information on because the government is keeping secret how much they have spent on road safety ads. They have spent a pot or so. We know it is a lot of money, and yet what has happened? The road toll has increased so much that we are looking at a 15 per cent increase in deaths on our roads over the last five years in a period when there was up to 60 per cent less traffic on the road. It makes us wonder how actually committed to safe Victorian roads this government is.

We heard previous government speakers talking about their level crossing removals. Well, look, if only this government had put that much effort into just making straight roads safe and roads in the country safe, and if roads that have got huge overhanging trees, built-up brush and built-up debris on the side could just be cleared and maintained. Most importantly, and everyone in country Victoria will tell you this, you just need to get the drainage right on roads so every time it rains a road does not disappear underwater and every time it rains roads are not undermined and culverts are not washed away. It is just basic infrastructure that seems lost to this government—absolutely lost.

This legislation also seeks to strengthen and improve the way the TAC deals with victims of road trauma and road accidents. I have been working for quite some time with a constituent in my electorate, who just prior to the COVID pandemic suffered great pain and discomfort and quite a lot of injuries from a road accident. Now, that is fine. The system is supposed to stand up for him, but there are actually limits on the TAC system. You only get the support for three years, until you have had your corrective surgery. But this government has failed to correct that policy, when for two years they have shut down elective surgery. I have got constituents who have been desperate for surgery, desperate to get their lives back, desperate to get back on the road and operating in a functional way, but they are unable to. They are unable to operate because this government—

Ms Settle: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, I am not sure what elective surgery has to do with the road legislation before us.

Mr RIORDAN: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, elective surgery has everything to do with this, because you cannot fix most of the ills of a traffic accident without surgery, and the surgery can often mean spinal surgery, leg surgery, hip surgery or arm surgery. It is very important.

Ms Settle: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, road trauma is not elective surgery but rather emergency service surgery. I find it peculiar that elective surgery should be acquainted with trauma and road trauma.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Taylor): I am ready to rule on the point of order. I uphold the point of order. The member to continue in the context of the debate on the bill.

Mr RIORDAN: I would just point out to the member for Buninyong that if she seriously thinks that someone who has been in a massive road trauma accident only goes to hospital once, then that actually typifies the ignorance that this government has towards the needs—

Ms Settle: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is disrespecting the Chair’s ruling.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Taylor): I have ruled on the point of order. The member for Polwarth to continue on the bill.

Mr RIORDAN: Thank you, Acting Speaker. Unfortunately people are not magically cured with one ambulance ride after road trauma. They in fact can spend many months if not years in surgery being repaired from the damage. When you have not been able to get surgery for two years, you very much suffer from that.

Ms SETTLE (Buninyong) (15:39): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Of course the objective of this bill is really to make sure that we can cut the road toll by 50 per cent by 2030. I just want to take a moment to pause when we think about that. The use of the word ‘road toll’ perhaps belies the pain and agony that these road traumas can cause. I think it is well for everyone in this house to remember that the toll is in fact a life. It is a family member, it is a partner, a husband, a friend. We would all do well to remember that.

This legislation in particular is looking at distracted-driving and seatbelt-wearing offences. The distracted driving—I am the mother of two boys. They are 20 and 18. The 20-year-old is driving; the 18-year-old is not yet. It was pretty terrifying watching them drive off on their own for the first time, and sadly, young men are too often represented in statistics around road trauma. So anything we can do that might in some way decrease those numbers—the numbers of people who lose their lives—is incredibly important.

We know that people are not wearing seatbelts. The seatbelt laws came into effect in 1970. Interestingly enough, I am old enough to remember the world before seatbelt laws. My mother talks about trying to do the right thing. I do not know if anyone else in the house remembers those sorts of bouncy things that we put babies into. My mother, in trying to do the right thing, used to slip the wire bit into the front seat between the seat and the back to try and secure me in a car. That fills me with horror as a mother to imagine that now, but I know that my mother was doing it with the absolute best intent.

I find it pretty extraordinary that 50 years on there are people that are still losing their lives from not wearing their seatbelt. In 2021, 31 people died not wearing a seatbelt. On average, 23 people a year are killed not wearing a seatbelt, and rather distressingly for me, 69 per cent of those are on regional roads. There has been lots of research done by the TAC into why people do not use seatbelts, and I think it is that thing, you know, it is just a short journey, you will not get caught. Sadly, too many people are hopping into their cars on regional roads and not buckling up. There was a massive campaign in 1969, Declare War on 1034—1034 was the road toll back in 1969. A year after that campaign was launched it did, sadly, increase to 1061, but again let us not call them road tolls. Let us call them what they are, which is people who have lost their lives on the roads.

The member for Polwarth sort of seemed to take up this line about ‘All the government is doing here is fining, fining, fining’. This seems to be something that is coming from the other side. It is really important to understand that what this is about is trying to change behaviour, and sadly, fining is a way to make people change their behaviour. I did tell a story in this house recently about my 20-year-old parking on a clearway and getting a $300 fine. Well, he has never, ever done that again and he will not, because he learned from that fine. I refused to pay it and made him pay it. So fines really do have an impact, particularly on that age group.

The seatbelt enforcement is an incredibly important part of this—and of course mobile phones. The world continues to change and we here in this place have as one of our responsibilities to make sure that legislation keeps up with change. We cannot just rest on our laurels and think that everything has been done that needs to be done. Mobile phones came along and they have created some enormous distraction for drivers. What is happening in this bill really is around allowing for the use of cameras to identify people that are using their mobile phones or not wearing their seatbelts to fine them to change that behaviour, so it is worth remembering that consequential change.

When we had a briefing, we had a long discussion around this bill, and I know that a lot of people use their phones these days for Google Maps. Certainly I do. It was something that came to light in conversations around this bill. But it is really around touching your phone. There is nothing to stop you from having your phone direct you, but it is really, really important to have that phone in a mount. What you cannot do is touch that phone. Do not leave that phone in your lap. Do not touch that phone. Put it in a mount and then by all means use it. I rely on Google Maps to get home every week after Parliament, and she takes me on many weird and wonderful ways. I have discovered parts of Melbourne I never knew existed. But it is important to not touch them; that is the really important thing to remember about it.

We have committed approximately $34 million over five years to roll out these cameras, and it is important to know that initially there will not be fines in the first three months. This is really about trying to change behaviours. It is about giving people a chance to understand how dangerous this activity is and to change their behaviours, so there will be a brief period where those fines will not be issued and people will be sent warning letters. I hope that people take on board that warning.

The Monash University Accident Research Centre estimated that a mobile phone enforcement camera program could prevent 95 casualty crashes a year. I was distressed to hear the member for Polwarth sort of try and diminish this bill as just revenue collection, some way to get fines, when indeed august bodies like the Monash University Accident Research Centre are telling us that it has the potential to save 95 lives in a year—casualties of 95 crashes a year. This is not about revenue collection, and indeed in the first three months there will not be revenue collection. This is about trying to change behaviour. It is extraordinary when you look at the seatbelt campaigns. You know, in the 1970s nobody wore seatbelts. I would not dream of getting in a car without putting on a seatbelt now. It is so automatic. It is as automatic as turning the car on. We really need to make sure that not using your mobile phone, not falling prey to distractions as a driver, becomes just as normalised as seatbelt wearing is to all of us.

This government obviously has been very, very committed in this space, and in fact just today the 2022 TAC community road safety grants have been announced as beginning. This government is giving community groups across Victoria the chance to receive grants of up to $30 000 to address local road safety issues. Applications for the 2022 TAC community safety program are now open and close on 2 May. This is a really important way of trying to address some of these issues, because of course communities know best. Localised communities will know what the local road safety issues are and can get a grant and try and make a change and really help us to get on our road to zero.

‘Road to zero’ is not just one of those phrases that should be thrown around. As I say, it is very much somebody’s life. It is interesting, because the word ‘toll’ sounds like a price that has to be paid, but we do not have to pay the price. We do not have to lose lives if we can encourage people to think before they take part in any sort of risky behaviours, like using their mobile phones. So let us not pussyfoot around this and use words like ‘toll’; let us talk about life saving. This bill at its heart aims to save lives through really making people aware and trying to change behaviour around distracted driving. As a mother of two young men that are now on the road I am delighted that this government continues to make roads a safer place for all Victorians, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (15:49): I am delighted to rise to make a contribution on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and as we have heard from earlier speakers this bill seeks to enable better enforcement regarding distracted drivers and non-seatbelt-wearing motorists by giving formal status to images from new types of road safety cameras. I think this is a step forward, particularly on the seatbelt side of things. I am amazed that people still continue to not wear seatbelts, but anyway that is another story. We are not amazed that there are a lot of people using their mobile phones while they are driving. The bill will also 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. The bill will also alter the transport accident scheme by making various amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986.

By way of background, recently the government has been conducting trials of this new technology to detect usage of mobile phones and people touching their mobile phone as they are driving along. As we have heard from others, sometimes it is for Google Maps, sometimes it is for texting and other reasons, but we all know it should not be occurring. It is certainly making our roads far more unsafe. And of course there is the incorrect usage of seatbelts. The trial ran for three months and scanned over 600 000 motorists. This three-month trial found one in 42 to be using their mobile phone, and that is a number that we all know is way too high. As a result of the trial the government is seeking to provide evidential status to images from the new camera and penalise motorists from 2023. We have spoken about fines, but it is still only one way of trying to change attitudes in motorists. Yes, it does work in some ways, but the big stick is not always the way. There are other ways that we can improve safety on our roads.

This forms part of the government’s road strategy to reduce the road toll that certainly has escalated under this government. When motorists are identified by this technology with mobile phone usage or incorrect seatbelt use it will go to a trained individual—I am pleased to see there will be proper checks and balances in place—for verification as a protection against technological error. Do not get me wrong: on this side of the house we do support new technology and ways to make roads safer, but fining people is not the only method to try and make sure that people start to do the right thing.

We have seen in regional Victoria the massive increases in wire rope barriers, for example, which I have spoken about in this house when we talk about safety barriers. For some, and particularly motorcycle riders, it is actually more dangerous on some of our roads than it previously was. As a keen motorcycle rider myself, I know firsthand that the risks of severe injury or death have increased for motorcyclists since the Labor government rolled out hand over fist some of these wire rope barriers. There are places where they should exist and do exist and are in a great spot, but there has been an excessive amount of wire rope barriers that have been rolled out, and as I said, for motorcyclists it has made it less safe. We cannot keep hearing this spin about how we want to make our roads safer and all these ideas that the government have when at the same time they are making it unsafe for particular users of the road—as I highlighted, motorcyclists. So in some ways it is misleading to say that we are making all our roads safer. We are not. The government stands in this place and says it is throwing this amount of money at this or that amount of money at that. Now, just because you are throwing a heap of money at something—or Victorian taxpayer money at something—does not mean you are solving the problem. In some cases, as I said, it is making it worse.

This bill adds to the list of serious offences for which VicPol may trigger on-the-spot fines and licence suspensions, which also allows more consistency in the legislation. Previously individuals involved in hit-and-run incidents could have their licence revoked on the spot by Victoria Police. The Transport Accident Act has been amended to ensure drivers convicted of manslaughter, murder or culpable driving will not be able to receive death benefits if they survive and are charged with an offence mentioned.

My understanding of this bill also is that currently cyclists who are injured by a car door opened by a driver are covered by the TAC but cyclists injured by a car door opened by a non-driver are not covered. That is my reading of the bill. I know this firsthand, as many nights I have cycled home from this place over the many years only to find a taxi roaring to a screaming halt in front of me and people diving out of every door possible without looking at who is coming along behind. It is quite an interesting aspect at 11 o’clock at night trying to get out of the way of people who are bailing out of a taxi, and this legislation, if my reading of it is correct, will actually support cyclists, particularly if they have been car doored by somebody who is not the driver.

I also want to touch on the funding that this government cut, the country roads and bridges funding, when they came to power—again, funding that is absolutely critical in our regional areas, on our regional roads. Country roads and bridges funding was a great opportunity for local councils to really dip in and fix roads and bridges that their current budget, their roads budget, does not allow them to fix, because many of our local authorities have many thousands, tens of thousands, of kilometres of roads. That Country Roads and Bridges Fund was a great pool for them and a resource to draw on to fix problem areas that were just out of reach for a local government authority, and it is really disappointing that taking that country roads and bridges funding away has clearly contributed to making our roads more unsafe. Certainly a massive cut by the Labor government to road maintenance funding is completely obvious when you come to areas like the Ovens Valley and you see some of the roads that we drive on. In fact some of our roads have had a speed limits put in place—80 kilometres—because the government for Melbourne has cut that road maintenance budget and there just are not the funds to go ahead and fix that road when that road is unsafe. We say the budget should be restored and those roads should be fixed—not just a measure of cutting it back to 80 kilometres an hour.

Of course I want to raise the government’s lack of commitment to the former Road Safety Committee. Every time this Labor government comes to power they abolish the Road Safety Committee, which was a bipartisan opportunity to genuinely work with both sides of the house to improve road safety. The government cannot claim to be committed to road safety, but it is committed to more spin and more TV ads about how much taxpayer funds are being spent—not to how or if the problem is being solved.

Within the bill, clauses 3 to 5 allow for new camera technology to receive evidentiary status, clauses 6 and 7 are about the changes to offences for which on-the-spot licence disqualification may be conducted by senior police officers and clauses 21 to 23 address inconsistencies in weekly benefits in the rare cases where an individual receiving benefits is involved in a secondary accident. Now, all of those are significant and important in this bill, but again, we cannot stand in this place and say, ‘We’re fixing the problem’, ‘We’re throwing X amount of dollars’, ‘We’re building wire rope barriers’, ‘We’re putting in safety cameras’ or ‘We’re going to fine people more’—the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Let us see what happens to our road toll as we move towards Easter and the school holidays. Our regional roads will be full of metropolitan drivers, and we welcome them with open arms to come to our regions and enjoy what we have on offer, whether it is in the north up in my patch in the Ovens Valley or whether it is down in the Western District or over in Gippsland where they get to enjoy what we have on offer. We encourage them to come, but at the end of the day we need to keep our roads safe and keep investing in our roads to make sure that they are safe for those people who travel on those roads. And I note the Minister for Roads and Road Safety said in this place that Victoria has the smoothest roads in the country. Well, clearly he has not travelled along the Great Alpine Road or the Murray Valley Highway or the Benalla-Tocumwal Road or even the Wangaratta-Whitfield Road. As I said, as we head towards the school holidays it is really important that we keep working towards methods that will actually keep the road toll down, not just saying, ‘We’re spending this and doing that, and that’ll do’—that is just a bandaid effect. With those comments I want to commend this bill to the house and hope that into the future we get some genuine outcomes on road safety.

Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (15:58): I am grateful to have the chance today to contribute to the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I have to admit I was steeling myself a little bit for this debate; on a topic like road safety there are always so many heartbreaking personal stories. Every life lost on our roads is a tragedy. Every life lost leaves behind a family, children, parents, partners and workmates whose lives will forever be impacted by grief. Every serious injury represents a life transformed, sometimes beyond recognition, by disability and trauma.

Victoria has led the nation and indeed the globe when it comes to road safety. We were the first state in the world to introduce mandatory seatbelts in 1970, and we led Australia in legislating random breath testing in 1978 and the introduction of speed cameras in 1986, when I was born. Many of our hard-hitting prevention initiatives have been adopted internationally. As a result, over the decades we have made our roads safer for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists and seen a substantive reduction in lives cut tragically short. However, the heartbreaking reality is that we continue to count the road toll each year—last year that was 232 people who did not come home. For this government there is no number of lives lost on our roads that would or can be acceptable. It is why we must always and continuously work towards zero.

Here in Victoria we have a road safety strategy which aims to reduce the road toll by 50 per cent by 2030 and that puts us on the path to eliminating road deaths by 2050. The amendments contained in this bill contribute to this important work. Improving road safety is a complex job. It involves all levels of government, multiple agencies and departments, and there are a number of interconnecting and powerful tools that we can leverage as a government to reduce the road toll and support Victorians impacted by road incidents. At the heart of our work is promoting a culture of safe road usage through our licensing system and education initiatives.

Ultimately we each have a responsibility when we get behind the wheel to follow road rules and drive to the conditions. In those split-second decisions we need people to do the right thing. But sometimes they do not, and we know that. In 2021, 31 people died while not wearing a seatbelt. In 2020 an investigation found one in 42 drivers to be illegally using their mobile phones while driving, with the real number expected to be much higher. Driver distraction is said to account for about 24 lives lost each year and over 400 serious injuries. These numbers are substantial. What they represent in terms of lives, families and trauma cannot even be quantified. Those few moments with our attention away from the road can have devastating consequences. It is why our road rules system and its enforcement are life-saving aspects of our work to end road deaths, and it is why this bill makes amendments to improve compliance.

The bill makes changes to support the use of new automated detection cameras which can detect drivers using mobile phones or not wearing seatbelts. Our government has already committed around $34 million over five years to roll out these cameras, and these legislative reforms mean that the images they collect can be used as evidence. The logic behind this is nothing new. Automated camera-based enforcement, in conjunction with police enforcement, is already working in Victoria to address other high-risk behaviour, like speeding and red light running. The data shows that 99 per cent of people passing road safety cameras do follow the road rules and that the cameras do deter dangerous driving. In terms of cameras detecting mobile phone and seatbelt use, the Monash University Accident Research Centre has estimated they could prevent 95 casualty crashes per year. That is 95 lives saved, 95 families that do not have to suffer the horror of their loved one not coming home. Cameras work.

Any argument that this is just a revenue-raising exercise not only is deeply cynical but totally misses the point. Fines are an effective deterrent, and people are only fined if they are breaking the law and putting people at risk. As with other camera-detected road safety offences, drivers will have options to seek a review of any fine issued by the new cameras. We will also be partnering with the TAC on community awareness campaigns, and the first three months of operation will see warning letters sent to people caught on camera. The bill also improves safety on our roads by addressing gaps in the current legislation, adding hit-and-run and other serious offences to the list of offences that may trigger immediate licence suspension or disqualification.

Road safety is something that my community are very conscious of. In the inner north our suburbs are a mix of local streets, cycling paths, two train lines, two tramlines, buses and major arterials into and out of the city. There are significant needs in terms of balancing the various users of our roads and paths, and scarcely a week goes by when my office is not contacted about things like speed limits, maintenance, pedestrian crossings, footpaths, intersections and parking. Many of these issues come under the responsibility of local government, and several have been points of contention between me and council as I have sought to encourage them to listen and to act on the feedback of residents. It does not always end up that way.

Since coming into government in 2014 this government has invested more than $34 billion to build new roads and make our existing roads safer, as well as $1.7 billion in road safety initiatives. Locally that includes our glorious Chandler Highway bridge, which now extends majestically over the Yarra, with six lanes instead of two, giving relief, safety and precious time back to the 44 000 drivers crossing it every day. Up in Thornbury we have seen critical improvements in pedestrian safety along Normanby Avenue, with new solar-powered electronic speed signs which flash during peak school hours, reminding drivers to slow down. In Alphington and Fairfield there are big improvements to cycling infrastructure. Our trial bike lanes on Heidelberg Road are in place, and I look forward to hearing more feedback and data about them; VicRoads has installed new wayfinding signage and road markings around St Georges Road, Station Street and Victoria Road; and we are in the process of finally connecting Alphington to the Darebin Yarra Trail.

When it comes to road safety my philosophy is that locals know best. They use our roads daily and they know where the pinch points are. I have been extremely grateful to be able to work closely with many residents in my community to identify and secure improvements. Recently this included the Bell Street bridge in Coburg. Over the past year I have been working with locals to raise awareness of the safety risks to road users and pedestrians along this bridge and its surrounds. The Bell Street bridge precinct is a high traffic area with six lanes of arterial road incorporating two intersections at Elizabeth and Nicholson streets, slip lanes, a tram terminal and a crossing bridge. There are narrow footpaths, sloped guttering, uneven surfaces and a lack of barriers separating pedestrians and vehicles—all contributing to a heightened sense of risk. A local petition calling for a safety review has garnered over 1300 signatures, and this year residents and I were successful in pushing for some really important initial safety improvements. This includes dragon’s teeth markings and slow-down line markings to provide visual cues to drivers to slow down and keep to the centre of the lanes. We have also installed new pedestrian warning signs on approach to let people know this area requires high alert for motorists. There is more to do in this precinct to make it modern and accessible, and last month I brought the Minister for Roads and Road Safety out to take a look himself. I am looking forward to building on our collective efforts here.

Of course we cannot speak about road safety without reference to our extraordinary program of level crossing removals. This has been a massive success in Grange Road in Alphington, and we have four more underway in Preston that will make our roads, footpaths and cycling paths safe and accessible for everyone. I look forward to supporting even more dangerous level crossings being removed in Northcote.

Before I close I would like to turn just to the final amendments in this bill, namely improvements to the TAC system to better support Victorians when they and their families have been in an accident. Victoria’s transport accident insurance scheme already provides world-leading care and support to victims of road trauma, but those with lived experience have identified ways we can improve the system, and we have listened. In addition to some changes to the administration of the scheme, the bill addresses some anomalies and inequalities. It increases the age of a dependent child from 16 to 18, expands the definition of ‘immediate family’ to include grandchildren and provides children who lose both parents in one accident the same compensation as those who lose them in separate accidents. It also ensures those who have done the wrong thing do not derive benefit from their actions, so someone who has been convicted of murder, manslaughter, culpable or dangerous driving causing death or child homicide cannot access dependency benefits or compensation. We are also better protecting Victorians by increasing the level of deemed lost earnings for older workers and those whose preaccident earnings capacity cannot be determined. This is an important bill that will save lives and make our roads safer for everyone. I commend the bill to the house and wish it a speedy passage.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:08): This is a bill about road safety, but if we really want to talk about road safety, we need to talk about the elephant in the room—the deteriorating, dangerous condition of rural and regional roads. Everyone I speak to in South-West Coast, whether it is local councils, farmers, residents, bus drivers, truck drivers or grey nomads, all say the same thing: ‘Fix our roads and fix them properly’.

Road safety is of critical importance, and this bill does a number of things that no-one would argue with. Distracted drivers cause accidents. People not wearing seatbelts—astounding. I do not think anyone in this house has said anything different. It is just such an automatic thing to do when you get into a car to put your seatbelt on. I still do it even if I am in a paddock, because it is just what I have done every time I get into a car. So it is good to see that we have a bill in the house that will hopefully improve the road safety issues, but I totally think we are ignoring some of the issues here.

Some of the evidence does say that road safety is not around roads being bad, but I struggle to believe that. When I talk to the Australian Road Research Board, they talk to me about how we assess accidents and the ways our police have to assess a scene. It is not actually capturing the information that we do need to be able to determine an incident. If you have travelled on the country roads, like I do obviously every day, you have seen the crumbling shoulders and you have seen the size of the potholes. It is no wonder that if you hit a pothole doing 100 kilometres per hour, which is the road speed, it does distract you; it does make you get very nervous—you can see somebody having an accident 100 metres down the road because they have lost control of the car. But that is not how we assess an accident scene. We do not go back 100 metres and say, ‘That pothole, that crumbling shoulder, that lack of white lines is probably what resulted in the situation of someone being severely injured or even dying’. So I think road safety is important, obviously, but road surfaces cannot be ignored. My one plea to the government, through the Chair, is that in the May budget decent funding gets put into regional roads so that the roads can be fixed properly, once, so we do not have to go back weeks later—weeks is exactly what we see, actually; sometimes months—and have to fix the same bit of road. It is a waste of taxpayers money.

You know, if you look at the Auditor-General’s report of 2017, they said that in five years time 90-something per cent, I think it was, of the roads in the regions will be in a poor condition. Well, we are pretty much there now, and that is because there are no processes in place. There is no supervision of the works. There is no accountability. There is no monitoring of the works. Now, it is not that hard to build a road. We have got the technology. They do it in South Australia, they do it in the Northern Territory, they do it in Germany. We can do it in Victoria, but we are not.

South-west Victorians, along with all regional Victorians, are sick to death of seeing the money that goes into the city to build tunnels and to build infrastructure—the waste of those projects when they go over budget. The wasted dollars that we are seeing and the over budget amounts going into Melbourne projects is $24 billion. When regional Victorians see that they just think, ‘How many roads could have been done well, once, with that money?’.

I think safety is something none of us are going to argue about. None of us are going to want to see our children, our friends and our kids on school buses at risk. But you are seeing school bus drivers, like in my area, not wanting to take on the role, terrified of the responsibility they have—because roads like the Woolsthorpe-Heywood Road are just too terrifying when you see how deep the shoulders are, and I am talking probably a foot at least in some places. When you are on a road that is B-double permitted—and they have a right to be there—but there is not even room for a white line down the middle, so mums and bus drivers and dads are taking their kids to and from school with B-doubles coming at them, it is actually terrifying.

I remember when one of my sons started driving we were going along the Hamilton Highway on the way to Melbourne. He hit a pothole at 100 kilometres an hour, and he absolutely—I do not know how to say this without using an inappropriate word—got a very big fright and swore and said, ‘Gee, these’—

Mr Eren: He crapped his daks.

Ms BRITNELL: That was it, but I was not going to say it. Thank you very much, member for Lara. Can they put that in Hansard for me? Can I quote you? He crapped his daks. He absolutely did. He was 21 at the time. He was quite late getting his licence, and he just said, ‘Mum, these roads are horrendous’, and I thought, ‘Wow, you know, this is what people contend with every single day’—but it is not until you get behind the wheel, as he had just done, that you realise how bad it is. So I invite—and I do this very regularly in the Parliament—the minister for roads, through the Chair, to come to the regions, drive our roads, talk to the mums, talk to the families and see that what we need is the roads fixed properly. It is a basic fundamental right.

Now people are discovering the beauty of the regions and moving to the regions and holidaying in the regions they are discovering that, but they are also worried about how to handle driving on country roads. So we have got roads, like I have said, the Woolsthorpe-Heywood Road, the Caramut Road, the Warrnambool Hopkins Highway—the road to Mortlake, that is—and the Henty Highway, the highway either side of Heywood. In fact somebody said to me once: ‘Which roads need fixing?’. I said, ‘It’s probably easier for me to tell you which roads don’t need fixing’, because it is just so bad right across the region.

We see a billion dollars going into wire rope barriers. They are an appropriate tool in appropriate places, but when you have got a bucket of money that has got to be spent on wire rope barriers that has got a billion dollars in it and a bucket of money that has got very little in it that can only be spent on road surfaces, the two do not marry up. I remember being in the member for East Gippsland’s region when I was the Shadow Minister for Rural Roads. I saw the roads that were having wire rope barriers put on them, and the surface work was not done first. Now those roads are crumbling because they do not have the foundation in place to support the wire rope barriers. It is illogical. I mean, you can just see the amount of mess on the sides of the roads where these barriers are. There is just not the money to fix them, because that comes out of the other bucket of money that has very little in it.

In the 2010–14 Parliament, when we had Denis Napthine and Ted Baillieu in charge, we saw the country roads and bridges program. The councils to this day say to me, ‘Roma, that was great. We could fix the roads properly. We could tell you where the money needed to go. We understood our region, so we determined where it was best spent’. That is the sort of project management that we want to see back. We do not want to see the country ignored, and we do not want to see all the money going to the city. It has got to be fairer and more equitable.

My hope is that in this May budget the Minister for Roads and Road Safety puts enough money into regional roads so that we can get our roads up to standard. We are sick to death of seeing the waste. We are sick to death of them falling apart with the first rains of winter and being told that it is an unusual winter. As I keep saying, in western Victoria we grow grass well and we feed cows well because we get a lot of rain. We know that that is going to happen every year. The government are just not putting enough money into fixing these roads and doing it well once.

Roadside vegetation management is another area. If you let the vegetation get away, then water is captured on the side of the road, and if you have not got the road camber right and you have got flat ground on either side and it is not graded and it is not managed, you get water undermining the road and it falls apart. This is really basic sort of stuff. Many farmers do this every day on their land. They say to me, ‘Roma, why aren’t they grading the side of the road? Why aren’t they doing it well once? Don’t they know how to build roads anymore? Don’t they understand it?’, and I say to them, ‘I’m saying that in the Parliament all the time. They’re just not interested in prioritising the country’. And they say to me, ‘Well, Roma, go down there and tell them this: fix the bloody road and fix it well once’, so I have delivered that message.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members about using parliamentary language.

Mr EREN (Lara) (16:18): Can I just say that I am delighted to be speaking on this bill today. It is a very important bill, the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I would like at the outset to congratulate the minister responsible for it because we know that every life lost on the roads is a tragedy. It multiplies the tragedy in the sense that all the relatives of the deceased obviously suffer for a very long time after a terrible accident.

Having said that, with this bill before the house, I got a phone call from my youngest son. We have five children, and our youngest son got his licence today.

Ms Green: Hear, hear!

Mr EREN: Thank you. I was very happy with the fact that he got his licence, but at the same time there was a bit of trepidation from knowing that new drivers on the road are the most at risk in terms of driving on the road. I was happy and excited but also a bit afraid. It is very much a dangerous thing. Once you get into that vehicle and you head off onto the road, anything could happen. We know that accidents do happen on the roads. Unfortunately, to date some 69 people have perished on our roads, and that is an absolute tragedy.

Being a former chair of the Road Safety Committee, I know there has been a lot of discussion about that committee and the important work that we did back then. We managed to implement some very important recommendations to government, who have taken on board those recommendations as a result, obviously, such as when we first discovered electronic stability control, for example—where if you run off the road, the car, even if you slam on the brakes, automatically corrects itself so that you do not run off the road—and side curtain airbags. Every passenger vehicle in Victoria that is registered must have these two technologies on board. We examined how many lives would be saved as a result of these technologies. Over 100 lives a year were saved as a result. If every car had electronic stability control and side curtain airbags, they are more likely to survive that crash. So there were many important decisions that we made, and obviously as a government we have been concentrating very much on trying to make the roads as safe as possible. Some of the technologies coming on board, not those two that I have mentioned but the lane departure warnings, the brake assist—all of these things that are coming on board the car. I suspect that there will be autonomous driving within probably 10 years. At some point, you know, you will just say the words to the car ‘Take me to this location’, and you can relax and the car will take you to that location. I reckon we are about 10 years away. There are some high-end cars that are able to do it now.

Even then there are certain accidents that will occur on the road, even though the technology on board will be superior. So we hope that by implementing some of these laws that we are bringing in today we will halve the road toll by 2030. All we can do is make sure that we home in on what is required. We know that this legislation that we are talking on today has already been implemented in New South Wales and Queensland, and there is some good data that we have looked at, obviously, since they have implemented this important technology of cameras detecting people not wearing seatbelts or indeed people that are actually occupying themselves, distracting themselves, with their technology on board cars while driving.

I remember a story on one social media post that this guy was travelling down a road doing well under the speed limit, and he noticed a camera on the side of the road. He went past it and he noticed the flash and he said, ‘I wasn’t going over the speed limit’, so he did a U-ey, went back and he did it slower, well under the speed limit, and this flash went off again. He thought, ‘I’ve got them now, they’re getting me unnecessarily. They’re trying to cheat me’—revenue raising and all that sort of stuff. Then he went to the car and he said, ‘Look, I went past. I was well under the speed limit and the flash went off’, and he said, ‘Sir, this is a seatbelt camera, not a speed camera. You don’t have your seatbelt on’.

I think I have mentioned before: you do not have to pay a fine, actually—do not break the law. Do not speed, have your seatbelt on and do not distract yourself with the phone and you will not get a fine. It is fine. We do not want your money, we do not need your money, what we need is for you to be alive to add value to our economy. You know, every person that is deceased on the roads unnecessarily is a cost to not only the psychology of the families but also a cost to the economy. So what we want to do is have preventative measures in place, and we know that fines do work.

Some of the opposition members have talked about revenue raising. Well, it is very clear in this bill there will be a lot of advertising campaigns warning Victorians about this technology coming on board, warning Victorians that there will be camera technology to detect if you are actually on your IT—computers or phones or whatever—in the car whilst driving, and if you have not got your seatbelt on you will be caught. Further to that—because it is not around revenue raising, because we do not want their money, we want them to be alive—in the bill it says that you have got three months grace. If you are detected by one of these cameras whilst it is operational, you will get a warning letter.

I think that is quite fair; there is nothing wrong with that. If we are advertising that the technology is coming on board, if we are warning people with a letter saying, ‘You have been detected breaching the law; don’t do it again’, and they do it again, then I am sorry, they are going to have to pay the fine. We do not want to issue the fine, but—

Ms Green interjected.

Mr EREN: Exactly. This is about saving lives, and that is what we want to do.

I do want to mention the TAC. The TAC, a wonderful organisation that has moved now to Geelong obviously, is doing a great amount of work trying to educate the public about inherent dangers. I suppose you save more money saving lives than having people perishing on the road, so you invest a fair bit of money trying to educate people to do the right thing on the road. I congratulate the TAC. I will not go through it—I think the member for Northcote went through all the implementations of the TAC in relation to all the changes that it has made and its assistance to government with appropriate advice in changing the rules and regulations on road laws, which go a long way to protecting vulnerable people particularly and also some people out there that flout the law and think that if they are in a car they can drive any way that they like and hurt anyone that they please. Well, no, they cannot; they have got a responsibility to the broader society when they are behind the wheel. This bill that is before us goes a long way, hopefully, to educating further those people.

I drive along the Geelong Road and Princes Freeway often, and unfortunately there are so many people, particularly the young cohort, that are engaged with their phone whilst driving. Whether it is juggling their food and trying to look at their phone—your social media is not going anywhere. I do not think they know the dangers of driving whilst not looking at the road. Especially if they are in a car that has not got the technologies to warn them if there is something ahead, if they have not got brake assist and they have not got lane departure warnings—they have not got any of that technology—it is Russian roulette. It really is.

I think that in the sense of trying to change the culture through fines, as the member for Buninyong mentioned before, yes, they are harsh fines, but they have to be because that is sometimes the only way people learn to do the right thing. We do not want their fines, as I said before; what we want is to save people’s lives. This technology will hopefully go a long way to teaching people that they must wear their seatbelts and teaching people that they must not engage with their technology whilst they are driving, and that is a totally reasonable proposition from the government. As I have said, there are plenty of advertising warnings and there is a three-month grace period for those who actually breach these road laws, and that is only fair. I commend the bill to the house, and I really wish it a speedy passage.

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (16:28): I rise to make a contribution on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I note that we are not opposing this bill as its aim is to introduce measures that will assist in bringing down the road toll, and I do not think any MP in this chamber would argue with that general philosophy. The suggested changes are generally supported, but I cannot help but think that this government overlooks one of the major areas that needs improvement. I will get onto that a little bit later.

But firstly, there are provisions in this bill that cover new cameras that will better detect people not wearing seatbelts, people on their mobile phones—previous speakers have covered off on that. Actually I was reading in the minister’s second-reading speech that there is data around to suggest that one in 42 people are using their mobile phones while driving. I can assure you when I am driving home on the Monash this Thursday afternoon in gridlock I will see a lot more than one in 42 people who are holding their phones—and I am assuming others are on their phones because when you are in gridlock I do not think that there is any other reason to be staring at your crotch, but a lot of people seem to be doing that and I can only assume that they are looking at their mobile phones. I am sure that this new technology is going to put a lot of people under a much higher level of scrutiny in relation to use of their mobile devices, and that will inevitably help make our roads a lot safer.

The other element of this bill that is worthy of mention and another element that I agree with is the list of offences that may trigger an immediate loss of licence. These are at the more serious end of our road safety laws. Culpable driving is one—hit and run incidents. I cannot help but think that the horrible, horrible experience with Mr Pusey has brought on some of these changes. They are changes which I endorse and that I think are certainly a step in the right direction. People who offend in this manner at the extreme end should not be allowed to then continue on and get straight back behind the wheel. The loss of their licence should be immediate.

What I want to touch on around road safety more generally is the condition of our roads. This is an area that I believe requires the most attention when we are talking about getting the road toll down. The minister recently stood in this place and said our roads are safer and smoother. That is not accurate. Our regional roads are not safer and smoother, they have never been worse. Indeed in her contribution the member for Eltham stood in this place just before and reflected on a text from her mother who drove from Traralgon to Eildon, I think it might have been, and said, ‘The roads were great. I’m not sure what the Nats are complaining about’. Well, the fact that she never drove through a seat that is held by the Nats is one point I would make. But that is not accurate. I would like to get her mother’s thoughts on the Princes Highway between Stratford and Bairnsdale, on the Monaro Highway, the Bonang highway, Bengworden Road, Paynesville Road—I could go on and on and on—roads that are falling to bits at the moment.

When I got the response back from the minister after I queried the issue around our roads being safer and smoother, the ministerial response I got back stated that it was extreme rainfall and wet weather that were the major causes of this. Having been in the minister’s position, I know you get a lot of correspondence put before you, and you have got to sign off on a huge amount of letters. I am not sure he would have read that letter that he signed in its entirety, because the wet weather is not the major reason. There are two reasons for that. We have had a wet summer—granted—but the problems that we are having with our roads in rural areas were well advanced before we had a wet summer. The roads were falling to bits well before the extended high levels of rainfall that we have had.

The other issue is that we have a situation where we are not building roads to be able to cope with rainfall. Our roads have got to be built generally to a higher standard. The wet summer that we have endured, which the minister stated was the reason that our roads are falling to bits, was well and truly forecast. Every warning that came out from the bureau indicated that we had a wet summer ahead. If you are going to have a wet summer ahead, what would possibly be the first thing that you would do if you were a roads authority? You would address the table drains to let the water get away and escape. You would think that we would have a bit of a blitz on that. But no, we did not. Our table drains on our rural roads have been chock-full of debris—some of them on the Princes Highway and our major arterial roads I do not think have been cleared for over two years—and water just cannot get away. When you have got your table drains clogged with debris and then the roads flood a lot more than they would normally otherwise flood and the road surfaces fall to bits, you cannot say it is the heavy rainfall—it is lack of maintenance. It is the roads not being built to that standard and quality, and it is the infrastructure, the table drains not being maintained to the level that they should be.

I really want to make the point that we must be building these regional roads to a higher standard. So many times in the last six months roadworks have been done only to fall apart not even three months later. Sometimes in a matter of less than a month we have to have road crews back fixing the road shoulders and fixing the works that they have done because they were not done to a high enough standard. Just this weekend when we got rain there was a pothole between Bairnsdale and Stratford. Fair dinkum, you would not want to walk into it—you would disappear—but six cars suffered significant damage that we know of. That can happen from time to time—you can get a big pothole that comes along quickly—but it is just happening too frequently and on far too many different roads in our region. The six people that have been to my office yesterday and this morning—I just checked at lunchtime with my electorate officers—I can assure you are not living in fantasy land as the member for Eltham indicated earlier. She spoke about her mother having a lived experience. The six people that have been in to my office yesterday and this morning with vehicles that have had to be towed away by the RACV have been having a lived experience of our road situation as well.

You have only got to drive the Princes Highway east to see the hundreds of locations where water cannot get off the road. Even when we get small amounts of rainfall the water pools in the low points and cars that are travelling along that road are aquaplaning because the camber of the road does not allow the water to run off. Then when it does run off the table drains are that full of debris that the water flows back over the road surface. Here we are in the chamber talking about road safety, and these basic measures in relation to maintaining our roads and maintaining our infrastructure are not being addressed.

Over recent months I have stood in this chamber and I have mentioned, as I have said, the Princes Highway and Bengworden Road. I have mentioned the Great Alpine Road, Paynesville Road, the Monaro Highway and the Bonang Highway and the parlous state that they are in. We are not talking one or two potholes here; we are talking large areas of broken surface. The Monaro Highway that connects Victoria to the ACT is an absolute disgrace on the Victorian side. It has massive potholes and broken surface metres in diameter in about 20 different locations, but our roads are meant to be smoother and safer.

When asked, Regional Roads Victoria say they are pressed for funds. I have contract workers that I know who come to me—we live in the country, we talk to these people, we have a beer with them on Friday night at the pub—who tell me that they are building roads to a standard they basically know is not going to stand the test of time. Until we get serious about these matters, we are just not getting serious about road safety. If we can build our roads to higher standards with a greater level of investment, the minister can then truly come into this chamber and say that this government is investing appropriately to make our roads smoother and safer. But to say that at the current time is just not the case, and that is the biggest issue we face in relation to road safety in regional Victoria.

Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (16:38): I rise today to make a contribution on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and I echo the sentiments in the contributions made on this side of the house so far today. Each year here in Victoria and across Australia we see the toll of accidents on our roads. Every single digit is someone’s loved one who cannot come home. It is a family member or someone that someone loves. This is why this single piece of legislation on road safety is critical and, as I said, very important, because it is our government that is looking out for and protecting the lives of Victorians on our roads. I want to acknowledge the government’s continued commitment to tackling and taking action to improve safety on our roads, including the contribution made by the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in this space. Of course we are also providing care and compensation to those who have tragically been injured in transport accidents. Our government will keep doing more when it comes to road safety because saving lives and preventing serious injuries is absolutely a priority for our government.

The member for Northcote raised the issue of level crossings and how important in saving lives removing level crossings has been. Just in the electorate of St Albans I think most people have heard some stories in relation to the notoriously dangerous level crossing at Main Road in St Albans and also the Furlong Road level crossing. We saw as a community so many deaths and so many near misses occurring on those two level crossings. Over my childhood and growing up in St Albans we heard many promises made in relation to removing those level crossings. And it was the Andrews Labor government in 2014—the minute we got elected we wasted no time, removing one of the state’s most dangerous, deadly level crossings that was the Main Road level crossing. Today we see no more deaths at the Main Road and Furlong Road level crossings, and that is thanks to the Andrews Labor government. They are very important projects that have had such an enormous impact on the lives of so many in St Albans but also for our emergency responders as well.

Of course we did not stop just at Main Road and Furlong Road. We have continued our level crossing agenda with the Fitzgerald Road level crossing in Ardeer, and it is great to see the overpass bridge being constructed at the moment together with the two additional crossings along Neale Road in Deer Park and Robinsons Road. And further along the track it will be level crossing free, making it safer, much more accessible and with fewer delays for commuters and emergency services vehicles as well. This really makes a huge difference. It has saved lives already, and it is fantastic to see that program successfully rolling out in Victoria.

Now, talking a little bit about texting and driving, we know we have seen so many fatalities and incidents occur when mobile devices are used in vehicles while driving, and this continues to be an increasing trend and a rising concern. As the TAC messaging says, when you are on your mobile you are driving blind, and everybody hurts when you drive distracted. Research shows that if you use your phone while driving your risk of having a crash is between twice and 10 times the risk of other drivers. It can hurt you, your passengers, your loved ones and other road users. That is really something to consider: the minute you actually sit in the driving seat you are responsible not only for your own safety and your passengers but also other road users as well. It is a mammoth responsibility, driving a car, and especially for young teenagers this is a real issue. Distractions in the car and mobile phones continue to be issues, so this continues to have more impacts.

We have seen so many reports from first responders who have to deal with the aftermath of a crash and have to deal with family members and innocent lives that may be lost. If you are injured, there are the hospital and rehab workers and other staff and the time that it takes for you to be rehabilitated in some way—and those who are permanently injured as well. These amendments and this bill recognise the dangers of driver distraction and the fact that police on the ground can only do so much, and that is why enabling camera detection of drivers using portable devices while driving will assist our state to make meaningful inroads towards stopping this dangerous practice.

Yes, that is one way, and it is a strong way and of course there will be infringements and strong fines associated with this, but they go back to having that responsibility. The minute you enter a vehicle as a driver that needs to be first and foremost on your mind. We have seen the analysis undertaken by Monash University Accident Research Centre estimating that an automated mobile phone enforcement camera program could prevent 95 casualty crashes per year, and that is a significant amount. It is not just a number; it is people’s lives—families, friends—and those are innocent lives as well. So this is why reducing driver distraction and increasing compliance with seatbelt wearing complies with priority initiatives under the Victorian Road Safety Action Plan 2021–2023.

The bill will add offences relating to driver distraction due to the use of mobile phones and other portable devices to the range of numerous offences that can be detected using automated enforcement technologies, and I think that is a really important step because it is very clear. Again I go back to younger drivers that continue to be distracted—but not only younger drivers, older drivers as well unfortunately. Whether it is a mobile phone or whether it is just being distracted in a vehicle, this can have severe consequences on a community.

So this bill is critical to tackling the rise of mobile phone use while driving and to updating legislation to reflect changing road safety technologies. The deployment of this technology will save lives, as I have said, and reflects the new efficient and effective methods available to make our roads safer in Victoria. I am very happy to see these changes that have been made by this government putting the safety of Victorian road users front and centre, and that is what is critical. Again I want to thank the Minister for Roads and Road Safety for his work on this important legislation, and I would also like to thank the Transport Accident Commission for their tireless work, advocacy and support for preventing road accidents, and that is what is really important—preventing road accidents before they actually happen. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (16:48): I rise today to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and as has been comprehensively covered by my good friend and National Party colleague the member for Euroa, this bill has a number of objectives which are around enabling better enforcement of distracted driving and seatbelt wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras, and adding 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. The bill also intends to alter the transport accident scheme by making various amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986.

This is something that is to support a pilot which has happened across Victoria where camera trailers have been tested around the state which take multiple images of drivers and then run over some AI which ascertains whether somebody is wearing a seatbelt or not, if they have a mobile phone sitting on their lap or if they are handling it, and then from that those images will be scanned. The ones where it is found that there could be someone doing the wrong thing are then handed over to a human for interpretation, and if it is found that somebody has got an image which shows they are holding on to a mobile phone or have not got their seatbelt on then a fine will be issued, and the usual processes around that will be applied. Of course we know that driver distraction is a cause of many of the accidents that we see right across the state of Victoria.

But there is something that is often raised with me, and that is around how the state of our country roads is contributing to accidents and to people being unable to drive to the speed limit. We have seen the road conditions result in speed limits being reduced temporarily due to potholes, crumbling edges and undulating surfaces, but also we have seen permanent speed limit reductions put in place. Now, something that we often hear is that we must have our cars roadworthy, so why shouldn’t we have our roads car worthy?

Certainly in many areas of my electorate, where we rely so heavily on our road network to get from point A to point B, whether that is about getting to school safely or getting to footy and netball training—you might want to get to work or even just go to a medical appointment—we need to travel by road. We do not have alternatives readily available to us in the west of Victoria. We do not have a passenger rail service aside from the Overland, which runs twice a week between Adelaide and Melbourne, so it is either you drive yourself, you get a lift with a friend in a car or you jump on a bus if you are fortunate to be able to make your times connect properly. One of the biggest challenges that we see across the region is that this is putting local lives at risk.

In my electorate of Lowan just last week I undertook a mobile office, where I take my office on the road to make sure I can get into my communities and people can raise their issues with me. They can point out other issues that we have got, or sometimes—quite often—they show me something they are quite proud of that they have taken the initiative on to make their region a better place to live, work and do business. Just last week I was in the fabulous town of Rupanyup, and a number of locals raised with me their significant concerns around the speed limit of the Wimmera Highway in Cromie Street, in the main street of Rupanyup. From the northern entrance to the town the corner has a very odd camber to it where it actually pushes the grain trucks which come into town from that direction right off the road and into an area in front of the post office, where cars can be parked, and if somebody is getting out of a car at the wrong time, it can be an absolutely terrifying experience to have those near misses of a large B-double truck or sometimes an A-triple coming incredibly close to these vehicles and pedestrians in the area.

This is also a road which houses the maternal and child health centre, a kindergarten and the school drop-off area for neighbouring schools—there is a community school bus. That is where the kids are dropped off, and that is when it is particularly dangerous—there are a lot of kids around, parents are parking their cars to pick up their kids, and it is just too fast to have a 60-kilometre-per-hour speed limit. The locals would like to see the speed limit reduced in that community, and I would urge the government to review the speed limit—it is something they have been calling for for a long time—and also review the incoming northern road as it comes in and to fix up that area so that trucks are not bolting down and getting off balance when they come into Rupanyup.

A similar issue was raised up at Rainbow—a fabulous community up there. They really are the salt of the earth in that region. They do a great job in creating a fantastic heartbeat and community that you do not see in all other communities. Taverner Street is one of the main roads through Rainbow; it links in from the south through to the northern edge of town, where the gypsum pits are. Over the gypsum season we can see up to 300 trucks a day travelling along this road, and again in a similar scenario to Rupanyup this is a road where there is a school on it, there is also the kindergarten and we have got a lot of other pedestrian and cycling traffic that goes along this road—a lot of residents as well.

Again the community are really calling out for the speed limit to be reduced in that area. Peter Gosling, who does an enormous amount of work for that community, recently did a bit of a test and found that if you reduced the speed limit by just 10 kilometres an hour, it would only add about 55 seconds onto the travel time. Now, this is not targeting the gypsum pits or the trucks that travel along there. The gypsum pits offer a fabulous business, and we need to access gypsum to get the maximum value out of our crops, the maximum growth. We are not condemning the truck industry, but I think everyone accepts that we need to make this road safe, and this is a simple way to do it.

Road conditions are also an issue in our area particularly when it comes to the Mount Zero Road at Halls Gap. This is an unsealed road, but Google Maps puts it as a main way to enter Halls Gap from the Western Highway, from the Horsham direction. This road is very slippery. It is totally unsealed. The locals have got a collection of hub caps that have been lost along that road, and there have been multiple accidents on this strip, including I think the latest rollover that I am aware of, which was back in November of just last year. It needs to be sealed. It would close off of course that tourism route—the route linking Halls Gap around past Heatherlie Quarry and Plantation Campground right through Roses Gap and Mount Zero through to Hollow Mountain and the fantastic rock climbing that should be available in that region. It needs to be managed a lot better than it is. That is something again I urge to government to address.

As we know, the priority has not been about managing our roads appropriately in the country. Just last budget we saw from the state Labor government that the road asset management line was cut by 25 per cent. This puts enormous pressure on VicRoads to be able to manage and maintain our country road network—when they are simply not given enough money to do their job properly. Speaking to people within VicRoads, they know they have got a lot more work to do when it comes to making our roads safe and building better roads, but until Labor stop the cuts and start giving VicRoads the budget that they need to do their job we are always going to be putting country lives at risk on our crumbling country roads.

I would like to just run through a number of other roads which I really urge the government to prioritise for funding in the upcoming budget. I will just list them off. I have mentioned them before, but I would like to get them on the record today. They include the Glenelg Highway, particularly around the Muntham hills, an area which has had some significant roadworks done in recent years but it is already falling apart. I spoke to Kristy McDonald of Casterton recently, and she said she is so scared of driving in that area. The way the undulations are, it either bounces you off the road or bounces you into incoming traffic. She will not drive a sedan on that road anymore. She only feels comfortable driving in a four-wheel drive and at a much, much-reduced speed.

Dunkeld-Cavendish Road is, again, another road that needs significant works. The drop-offs on the edges are significant. You could lose a whole wheel in some of those holes. Birchip-Rainbow Road—the drop-offs on the edges of that road are about the equivalent of a Coke can. They are incredibly deep. Again, it is only a single-lane road. It is a highway and a major thoroughfare for trucks heading in and out of Rainbow. Donald-Murtoa Road has got a permanent speed limit reduction now to 80 kilometres per hour, and it is so dangerous. There have been a number of accidents. It needs to be fixed. The Hamilton Highway at Mortlake, again, has undulations and potholes and cracking surfaces. There is the Western Highway, the Henty Highway, the Wimmera Highway and single-lane bridges that we have got as well at Rainbow Road, Warracknabeal, and Fyans Creek Road at Halls Gap.

What I would I like to see from the state Labor government when it comes to this year’s budget on the first Tuesday in May is that we reverse these drastic cuts we have had to the road asset management budget. We have simply had too much money cut out of VicRoads, and they cannot maintain our roads effectively. When it is our number one way of getting from point A to point B in the country, the Labor government must make sure they— (Time expired)

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (16:58:228:): It is an absolute pleasure to rise this afternoon to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and from the outset I will have everyone in the house know that I am a massive supporter of this bill. It makes total sense. There will be people that talk about their freedoms and whatnot, but driving a car on our roads is a privilege. When you have been on the other side of the coin, so to speak, when you see people who are no longer driving their car but they have exited their vehicle through the windscreen, there is no talk of freedoms or that the laws are too harsh. They are usually asking for their mum or dad or ambos or someone to help them. So anything that can prevent that, in my mind, is an absolute thing that everyone should support.

The primary objective of this bill is to support the delivery of the road safety strategy and the government’s aim of reducing the road toll by 50 per cent by 2030 through measures that have been outlined here today, but I will go through them again. There are two main objectives: enabling better enforcement of distracted-driver and seatbelt-wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras; and adding 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. This bill is also intended to improve and make the transport accident scheme fairer by making various amendments to address identified anomalies in the act itself.

Now, it is fair to say that we were one of the first jurisdictions—I think the first jurisdiction in the world—to introduce mandatory seatbelt wearing in 1970, and we have come a long way since then in technology in cars to the point where now we are seeing cars that virtually drive themselves, with the underlying instruction that the driver must be at the wheel at all times. We have seen airbags, we have seen pyrotechnic pretensioners on seatbelts—all the things that as a vehicle rescue technician make your life really hard but are fantastic for the safety of the occupants of the vehicle. The thing about wearing seatbelts or having seatbelts in cars and all this other paraphernalia that is not automatic is that the person must actually engage those safety features. So many times on the Mornington Peninsula, in the south-east, in Frankston, it was so sad to attend a vehicular accident where someone had exited the vehicle—and if only they had put their seatbelt on, they would have had their life saved or they might not have been degloved by a windscreen and they might not have had to spend years and years in rehab, costing ratepayers and also taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars just because of bad decisions.

Now we are seeing a similar type of result from people using mobile phones. We live in a time where people are basically taught that if you cannot do five things at once, you are not using your time efficiently. There are a million books out there on Audible and there are a million books out there in a bookshop saying how you should be able to do this and that and that this is what success means. That is part of what drives our youth as well, with social media, to be addicted to these screens. The issue is that they just cannot put them down, even when they are driving, because they are taught from a young age that this is part of them and they can have conversations with people, they can do a job—we have all walked into a retail store and wanted some help and had someone behind the desk on their phone texting their mates about what they did last night. I guess there is a bit of a generational gap between my generation and the younger generation where people believe that that multitasking can occur successfully. Unfortunately when driving vehicles it does not work that way.

As regards seatbelt wearing we saw that 31 people died while not wearing a seatbelt in 2021, which is 13 per cent of the road toll. But we have also seen many, many people distracted by using their mobile phones and having huge accidents, and that might not be an accident where the person is trapped in their car and has injuries—it might not affect them—but it could be the person on the bike, the pedestrian or the person with the pram. Unfortunately it is hard enough sometimes to avoid accidents when you are doing the right thing on the road without being distracted, but it is too little too late when people realise that they needed to focus on the road and look for the thing coming for them, the other person on the road that was behaving like an idiot or the other person that went through a red light or did not know they were distracted themselves.

We are led to believe, through data given to us by the Monash University Accident Research Centre, that distraction is estimated to contribute to around 11 per cent of road fatalities, amounting to 24 lives lost every single year. Driver distraction is also estimated to change the lives of around 400 people each year through serious injuries. In 2020 an investigation found that one in 42 drivers were found to be illegally using their mobile phones while driving. I come from a generation where there are all the excuses in the world for using those mobile phones, but I think this is where the rubber hits the road—no pun intended—and now there is no excuse. There never has been an excuse, but now it will catch up with you. There is now the technology available that can scan and identify people that are using their mobile phones, or indeed not even wearing their damn seatbelts, and can fine those people quite significantly, which I totally support.

The amendments in part 2 of the bill will enable the images captured by the new cameras I have just spoken about to be used as evidence that:

… the driver of a motor vehicle was, while the vehicle was moving or stationary but not parked, touching a portable device, or had a portable device resting on their body or on clothes being worn by them or on an item in their lap …

and that the driver or passenger of a motor vehicle was, while the vehicle was moving or stationary but not parked, occupying a seating position in the vehicle fitted with an approved seatbelt and the driver or passenger was not wearing the seatbelt or was not wearing the seatbelt properly. That evidence is relevant and:

… without prejudice to any other mode of proof and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, proof of the relevant fact on the relevant occasion.

So for the laypeople in law, that is essentially saying that these almost operate the same as a speed camera: if the evidence is there with no relevant evidence to the contrary, you will receive that fine and be found guilty of that offence.

As I have said previously, anything that enforces or strengthens licensing powers to make people safer in their vehicles is a really good thing. We have heard people on both sides of the chamber today talk about the effect of lowering speed limits, which does actually have that effect as well; we have heard people talk about drink driving, fatigue driving and drug driving; and we have heard people talk about obviously more things pertinent to this bill like seatbelts and not wearing seatbelts and also the use of mobile phones in cars. It still to this day is quite shocking to see people pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, though, and that is something I would like to reiterate. Those incidents just tear your heart out when you see people that have been distracted involved in an incident—it could be one car, could be two cars, could be multiple cars—where they were not wearing a seatbelt. It is the most fundamental safety device, but it involves having drivers engage their brain to engage their seatbelt and make sure that it saves their life—because they really are life saving. It is so sad to attend incidents where a very, very simple device—which is what a seatbelt is; it is a piece of fabric with a centrifugal clutch that arrests the forward movement—could have saved a person’s life.

As I said at the outset, we were the first jurisdiction in 1970 to introduce seatbelts. We were fairly progressive with it, and we have not looked back since. Even parliamentary cars and VicFleet cars have to these days come up to the 5-star Australasian New Car Assessment Program ratings, and there is very good reason for that, because these devices do save lives. In saying that, though, before I commend this bill to the house, anything that brings awareness, whether it be with a stick or carrot, that people need to be off their mobile phones when they drive is a great thing. We have heard about different types of devices and apps and whatnot that can do this, but really, apart from an education campaign, what it comes down to is an enforcement campaign, because we are not talking about people doing something small here that they might be punished for. This is a life-saving law, and I commend the bill to the house for that reason.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (17:08): The coalition is not opposing the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 that is before the house, as has already been canvassed. While this legislation goes part way to addressing road safety issues, there is a lot more that the government can be doing in this space, which I will address a little bit later. The objective of the bill that we have before us is to enable better enforcement of distracted-driving and seatbelt-wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras, and that is something I actually look forward to seeing—what we get when we look at those images—because at this stage we have not been able to view anything like that. But as artificial intelligence moves on, progresses and advances all the time, we can expect that it is going to be used in a variety of ways, and this is one way that it can be usefully utilised. Also, this bill adds 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. For public safety and for other road users this can be a very useful component. In addition, it will make some amendments to the transport accident scheme by making various amendments to that relevant act.

I think the government have a lot to answer for at the moment with regard to road safety, because if they have a look at the road toll, it is actually heading in the wrong direction, so their record is not great. For the year 2020 there were 211 deaths, and last year, in 2021, there were 232. That is up 10 per cent, so that is not heading in the right direction. We have had an ordinary start, in fact a dreadful start, to 2022. Already 69 lives have been lost, which is up another 7.8 per cent from this period last year. So the road toll is absolutely heading in the wrong direction and is something where the government really needs to get a grip on it and understand all of the factors that are at play here. As I said, whilst this legislation is going to go part way, it is not going to go all the way and really drive down those numbers even further to some of the lower levels that we had in previous years.

We are all in this chamber, and most people in Victoria would be, aware of dangerous driving and the factors that make drivers on the roads even more dangerous—distractedness, speeding drivers, drivers under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. It is pleasing to see that booze buses are back out, but the drug buses are not out in as much force as they could be. In my area in and around Hume the police officers had training early on in this and were able to roll this out, the drug driving, a lot quicker than in many other areas around the state. I really urge the government to do further work in this area, because people driving on drugs—if they are only going to be picking up .05s and not getting that—pose a risk.

Reckless driving, distraction, mobile phones, chatting sometimes—I have seen people moving their head, talking to their passenger, looking over at the back when they really should be concentrating on the road. Many people have talked about the use of mobile phones. In country Victoria we have other components that play into difficulties with driving. We have loads of animals on the road, particularly in my electorate, which is heavily forested with a lot of bushland. We have an enormous number of kangaroos and wombats. We have deer on the roads, so at night you really need to be careful. In some areas there is probably room for better signage. I have also seen, quite disturbingly, overtaking on double lines. Not so far from my place recently, in fact only a few kilometres up the road, on one of the few decent patches on the Melba Highway there was a fatality. I understand that the young female that was driving overtook on double lines. I have seen in an overtaking lane a third vehicle go out and overtake the cars in the overtaking lane as well, so you had three lines of traffic heading south. That was really disturbing, and everybody had to slow right down because it was really dangerous. So we have some dreadful driver behaviour out there that really does need addressing.

Now, what the government can do further in this area is to make improvements to the roads. I have had lots of reasons to drive around the state recently, and I have noticed that the Calder to Bendigo and the Ballarat road to Geelong are all in much better shape than a lot of the roads in my electorate. My electorate has a lot of tourism. It has a lot of heavy vehicles. We have freight. We have horse floats, lots of people towing caravans and motorbikes—so many different types of traffic—and coaches, and the roads are in pretty ordinary condition. We have also had a heavy reliance by this government on the wire rope barriers, and I want to just reference the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report in June 2020 about safety on Victoria’s roads and the regional road barriers. They were not as cost effective as VicRoads and TAC intended:

The Towards Zero Strategy states that flexible barriers have been shown to reduce run-off-road and head-on serious causality crashes by up to 85 per cent.

But they have no evidence to support this. Now, the Auditor-General’s report was really quite scathing on what was being done, and I put to you that there was quite a lot of money wasted at that time. In my own electorate, between Yea and Molesworth we had some 8 kilometres of centre wire rope barriers. It was at a cost of $18 million, then it was $18.5 million. Once the speed limit got back to 100, it was about three weeks later, and then they reduced it again to 80 and they virtually resealed it. So we have never been able to understand the exact cost of the implementation.

Now, there was signage that was put up at Limestone and at the other end near Yarck that cost $530 000, and it is barely used. It is advertising now or alerting people to planned burns and that school’s back—and there are no schools in that general vicinity either. But the government wasted an enormous load of money there, and it should have instead been sealing shoulders and fixing potholes. Recently between Dixons Creek and Glenburn there were—I took photos—nine ‘Reduce speed’ and ‘Rough surface’ signs. I could not take photos of all of them because some of them were on double lines as well. That is just not good enough. The government needs to invest in our roads properly—properly invest—not make cuts to the budget, which is what we have seen happen so far. It is really quite appalling. People in the country area know they play second fiddle to major projects in the city, and they see those projects blow out by billions—some $24 billion—and that could have been used to properly fix a lot of our regional roads. So there are things that I call on the government to do. In the next budget I would like to see that road funding in regional Victoria is increased and that we have proper treatment of our roads, that we have the shoulders sealed.

In addition, I have been calling for years now for electronic signs to be installed outside Wesburn Primary School on the Warburton Highway. The government needs to pay attention to that. There is a bridge at East Warburton that needs to allow pedestrian access for the safety of the students so they do not have to go on the road at that particular point. There is a lot that the government could be doing. Heidelberg-Kinglake Road is a very steep, winding road with very sheer drop-offs. Far too many trucks use that road. The government needs to really work out what strategy it is going to put in place to make that road safer and to keep those trucks off the road.

Kinglake itself is subject to very heavy fog and low-lying cloud, and for years, again, I have been calling for fog lights to be installed there, like they have on the Calder. Now, we have had instances where school bus drivers have not been able to see oncoming traffic because the fog has been that heavy. We had a dreadful incident, the helicopter tragedy last week, that may have been related to heavy fog and low-lying cloud. This is an issue for the people living in Kinglake. Every winter, and even in periods not in winter, they are subjected to this. So the government needs to look at installing fog lights on the main road through the Kinglake Ranges, and as I have said, it needs to work out how to get the trucks off Heidelberg-Kinglake Road, because this makes it very dangerous for the users who use that road every day heading between Kinglake and St Andrews and further on. The government tell me that there are things that they can do, but they actually have not outlined exactly what that is. People in those areas want to know exactly what is intended, and I call on the government to make that clear.

Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (17:18): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I acknowledge and am delighted to hear that those opposite are not opposing this bill. It is good that road safety is something that unites us.

This bill is a significant step in this government’s commitment to reducing deaths on our roads to the only acceptable number, and that is zero. I have been really interested to hear some of the debate about ensuring that we do not really think of it as a road toll but as people, because we are very conscious that this is what the focus is on—it is the people of the Victorian community that we need to keep safe—and the importance of government taking action. That is what this amending legislation before us today does. By committing to addressing non-compliance with seatbelt wearing and driver distraction such as with mobile phones, this bill is definitely a step towards making Victoria’s roads safer and keeping road users free from harm. It has been really important to hear the contributions, and several people have spoken about the importance of demonstrating the right behaviours when we are teaching young people to drive—I have been fortunate to have been involved in teaching six people to drive—and what that means when we do have those conversations about distraction but more importantly how we behave ourselves and what model we provide to the young people in our lives and the young people around us. It is crystal clear now, the science is crystal clear, that the consequences of that sort of distraction—what people might think of as having their eyes away for only a moment from the roads—are just tragic. The repercussions can be immeasurable, and it is really important for us to be able to focus our attention on making sure that we do have an approach that does look at the best science and the best research.

The amendments in this bill will enable camera detection of driver distraction, portable device offences and seatbelt-wearing offences. This is absolutely designed to address and reduce the significant causes of increased crash risk and road trauma. Subject to the passage of this legislation, cameras will be rolled out in early 2023 and preceded by an extensive communications campaign during the rollout, which will include warning letters being sent to offenders instead of fines. Increasing compliance with seatbelt wearing and against driver distraction is being prioritised under the Victorian Road Safety Action Plan 2021–2023.

I want to especially take the opportunity to acknowledge the impact that not just driver distraction but driver trauma can have on our emergency services. I am always pleased to have the opportunity to hear a contribution from the member for Frankston. We also have on the side the member for Melton and the member for Bayswater, who have extensive experience in emergency services and responding to the trauma that they have seen. I would like to take the opportunity to thank our emergency services for the work that they do, recognising that it is not just people who are working in emergency services but also so many others who act out of altruism to respond to what people see on the roads, but really the onus is on the operator to prevent trauma.

Like similar schemes, drivers may ask for reviews or choose to have any matters determined in court. This bill proposes that images from a camera can be used as evidence of the fact that the driver of the vehicle was using a device—a mobile phone. This bill will enable the use of camera images in subsequent court proceedings for the offence, and the same will also apply to the wearing of seatbelts. The evidence is clear: you are more likely to finish in a serious road injury or fatality when you are distracted by a device. It is a factor in 11 per cent of fatalities and 5 per cent of serious injuries on our roads each year.

I do want to take the opportunity to thank some important organisations and particularly acknowledge the Road Trauma Support Services group, an organisation that came to my attention many years ago through Christine Harrison, and the work they do in educating road users, particularly focused on young road users, about what the implications are of distraction, as we are talking about today, and other driver behaviours and the importance of being focused on the task ahead—or the task in front—which is actually driving safely. Just 2 seconds of driver distraction can double the chances that your morning drive to work, to the Parliament, to school, could result in injury and/or death, and you are 10 times more likely to crash when texting, browsing or emailing on a phone. These are amazing statistics. That data is compelling, it is absolute, and I think that is why we have such widespread support for action. It is something that, as has been demonstrated in the contributions today, many of us see, but I am sure it is something we are all conscious of—pulling over to the side of the road and taking the time to put phones, as the minister identified, in the glove box or taking whatever action you need to to change behaviour to make sure that we temper what we do and focus on getting safely to where we intend to be.

As I said earlier, I would like to acknowledge and thank the police, emergency responders and members of the public who attend horrific scenes that are obviously the subject of this legislation. In their line of work and in their commitment to respond to some of the most intense and harrowing scenes imaginable, police, first responders and emergency services are part of that primary group of people who are affected by road trauma. And actually it is knowing the kindness and altruism of people across Victoria and in my electorate of course that we know that the genuine gestures of heroic responsibility do not need to be undertaken by a professional responder. But they are agonising scenes that are etched in the mind of whomever is faced with that trauma. I think we all acknowledge fines are annoying, but perhaps we ought to be conscious of what the alternative is to a fine. So this government is committed to addressing road safety issues with this evidence and empirical science.

I would like to take the opportunity to perhaps follow on from the contribution the member for Oakleigh made earlier, where he was listing the importance of the level crossing removal program and what that means for safety across Victoria. I can take the opportunity to speak about the community that I represent and serve and how level crossings in Thompsons Road and Evans Road both are gone and part of our history and what that means for the safety of the users on the road, what that means for people being able to get safely from one side of the community to the other. Particularly Evans Road was interesting, because the road itself was shut down because of a tragic accident that happened at that level crossing. It was closed for many, many years before that level crossing was removed, and in the closure was an acknowledgement that the trauma that had been experienced by community members was too great. So to have that road closed was really significant. I am very pleased that that level crossing has gone, and I am delighted that we will be getting rid of Camms Road soon. Work is underway there.

I would, though, like to take a moment to thank particularly the constituents of Cranbourne who have raised issues of road safety, particularly with my office, and namely the unsafe behaviour of a fraction of drivers on our roads. It is something that I know is really important to the community. Particularly I would like to be thankful for Justin from Cranbourne, who has raised issues. Know that these are issues that we do take very seriously. It is reassuring to know that the statistics and stories of those who have spoken up overwhelmingly point to Victoria’s strong and outspoken condemnation of dangerous behaviours such as those that are addressed by this bill, so I want to take the opportunity to thank people who have contacted me, because I think, again, it demonstrates that it is the safety of others, often children and families in the community, that is very much the focus of the attention of this chamber—our government—and also the people in our community. Measures such as this and the ongoing efforts of Victoria Police will act upon this community’s persistence, and that is the measure of a government that is taking action, not observing a problem. I commend this bill. I am very grateful to the minister for bringing this to us, and I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:28): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. As the member for Cranbourne indicated, this is largely an area of bipartisanship when it comes to road safety, and certainly as to the detail of the bill I am happy to confirm that the opposition will not be opposing the legislation. There is not so much bipartisanship on the issue of our roads more broadly, and I will come to that.

While there are a couple of different parts to this bill, the main element is of course the introduction of new road safety cameras that have the ability to detect basically whether people are using a mobile phone. This is, I guess, an issue close to my own heart for sometimes all the wrong reasons. I am not going to stand here and claim to be a saint when it comes to those issues. I noted the comments of the member for Frankston earlier about the push for all of us to be more efficient, and as an MP, I dare say as a country MP, it is a particular issue. I estimate that in normal times pre COVID and probably in the last couple of months as things have got back to normal, I probably spend an extra 10 hours on the road. I spend at least 10 hours on the road a week, and that is 10 hours I do not have to read, to assess reports, to deal with emails and to do all those things that perhaps particularly city MPs, who do not have to travel as much or at least as far, have more time for. It is an issue that vexes me a lot, and certainly it does tempt you to be doing things that you should not be doing. I, for one, look forward to the autonomous vehicle; I think I will be able to get a hell of a lot more done when it comes. But it is an important issue. Looking at your mobile phone, sending messages, checking emails or whatever while you are driving is obviously a seriously dangerous thing to do, and I am sure we have all done the wrong thing from time to time and given ourselves scares as well. It is one thing I try to avoid.

This legislation will introduce the ability to use these new cameras. I am comforted that there is not a pure reliance on the artificial intelligence technology which will detect whether people are indeed using a mobile phone, but where that technology identifies that there will then be a human review of the images as well to see whether someone has done the wrong thing or not. I believe that the report that related to the trial that has been done of this technology has not yet been made public. I think that is something the government should do. There is a tendency in the public sometimes, particularly when it comes to speed cameras, to see them more as revenue raisers rather than road safety devices. This additional measure needs to have the best possible public confidence, and releasing all the information that relates to the trials and to indeed how the technology works would be a wise move on the government’s part to engender that confidence in the community. We have seen in the past faults with speed cameras, red-light cameras and the like that have caused some concern, and of course we have seen big issues in the fines department—though that is a separate issue. But that is something that I think the government should be doing.

There are a number of other elements to the bill that other members have touched on. I will not necessarily go into those now. I do just want to speak, though, a bit about road safety and roads in general. It is critical of course that we do what we can to improve road safety and get the road toll down. What I am concerned about that has been grossly overlooked by this government is the condition of the roads themselves, and that is an issue that has been consistently the number one issue in Gippsland South since I was elected in 2015. It is absolutely up there again at the moment, the last 12 months or so, partly due to obviously the last couple of wet seasons that we have had; that certainly has made the roads break up much faster. But there is no question that the roads in country areas are falling behind, and it is an issue that comes to me extremely regularly from my constituents. It is the one that they stop you in the street about, it is the one that they comment on social media about and it is the one that they send you emails and ring the office about. I get regular complaints, and they are genuine.

In that context I was interested, in listening a little bit earlier, to hear the member for Eltham basically saying that the concerns that we have raised in the past are wrong. She used the lived experience, I think she said, of her mum, who sent her a text and said she had driven from Traralgon to Healesville and ‘The roads were great, and I really don’t know what the Nats are going on about’. Indeed the words she used were that The Nationals are raising ‘imagined fantasies’. Now, that is going to go down well in my community and indeed the communities around country Victoria if government members think that the poor states of our roads are ‘imagined fantasies’. It is extraordinary that a member of the government would say that.

When I first got elected in 2015, I remember the state Labor government then making a 10 per cent cut to the road maintenance budget. We have seen this year in the most recent budget a 25 per cent cut. We might remember, those of us who have been around a bit—and indeed the member for Mornington is sitting here—us asking questions in PAEC of the then minister for roads, who promised $1 billion for country roads over eight years. When we challenged him on that in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee process he was unable to show where that $1 billion ever actually came up. That is because it was largely a fantasy. We have seen that, yes, the spending on roads has increased from time to time since those budgets, but the most recent one again is another cut.

We also of course saw the abolition of the country roads and bridges program, which actually did a lot of good for our small rural shires in particular. They were getting a million dollars a year to upgrade local roads—the roads that people live on, that the cattle trucks and the milk tankers go down. That was a huge loss and a completely unjustified cut by this government.

I want to mention too that there was some significant work done last year—and it was pretty much all funded, or largely funded, by the federal government—on road safety across the state, some of it in my electorate, most of it going towards road shoulder sealing. I have raised this a number of times in this place, most recently with an adjournment, because what happened with that funding is the shoulders were sealed but they almost immediately began breaking up. So I raised this with the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and I know the member for Gippsland East and others have also raised it, because that was another frustration. There were many in my community who were rapt, including me, that these shoulders were going to be sealed on some of our main roads, particularly around Sale, and I might mention Bengworden Road, Rosedale-Longford Road, Longford-Loch Sport Road, Seaspray Road and Traralgon-Maffra Road as well. Many of these were done, but they almost immediately started breaking up, resulting in potholes and the like.

I got a response from the minister to an adjournment on 8 March where he basically said that with the money they had they went for the longest possible distance that they could do the sealing, which may be a noble aim, but that in doing that weaknesses in the existing pavement are expected in works such as these. So basically the government knew that there were going to be failures with these roadworks and went ahead anyway, and that is consistent with what I have heard from many of the contractors. Many of the contractors who had those jobs told Regional Roads Victoria, ‘This isn’t going to work; you need to actually change the camber of the road totally, or you need to use different materials’. But they were told, ‘No, we’ve got the money now. We’ve got to spend it. Go ahead’. And we ended up with these incredible failures on the roads, which is just not good enough. I am not sure whether to give the minister a 10 out of 10 for honesty or a one out of 10 for the failure of actual management of our roads, because it was a disaster and it continues to be a disaster. Regional Roads Victoria is now going back and having to fix up all these potholes and mistakes on the side of the road that have occurred from mismanagement.

To suggest that the poor state of our roads is an imagined fantasy is a fantasy in itself. The member for Eltham and other government members should get out and see the state of our roads. Then they will understand that road safety is not just about new cameras.

Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (17:38): I am very pleased this evening to have the opportunity to contribute to debate on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. This is a bill, of course, a significant and important piece of legislation, that goes to road safety within our state. We know that the Andrews Labor government is committed to reducing our road toll within this state, and we know that one life lost is one life too many. This government is committed to investing in those projects, those initiatives, bringing pieces of legislation before the Parliament such as this one that go to making sure that those that use our roads each and every day, no matter where they live, are as safe as they can possibly be.

I know that a number of members this evening and throughout the course of the debate today have spoken at length as to why these matters are important, but we know and understand that road safety is indeed a shared responsibility: a responsibility between road users, local communities, local councils, us as a state government, indeed the federal government, pedestrians and those that really work hard in road education, whether that be a whole range of initiatives and programs that run through many of our primary and secondary schools, whether it is bicycle education, education around learning or getting your licence for the first time—programs, investments and initiatives that are important.

I have also heard this afternoon through the course of debate about the work of our emergency services. I want to take the opportunity, as other members have done, to acknowledge and thank all of our emergency services, that do an incredible job both to support those that use our roads within our state and of course respond to the whole range of different emergencies that we know do occur. It is a shared responsibility, and what is critical is also understanding that we are on a journey. It is not just with road education and driver education; we can certainly take the opportunity to reflect on the past 40 to 50 years and that incredibly quick journey and the important role that technology has played within many of our vehicles that are on our roads.

I listened to some contributions earlier from other members, and if we do reflect on that journey through decades over time, many of the safety features that are on vehicles that we use today of course did not exist decades ago. I think we should acknowledge and put on the record those people who work in those industries to make our vehicles safer, and that is indeed a good thing. Whether that be air bags or the use of crumple zones, safety features are on cars that certainly were not on the first car that I owned. It certainly did not have any safety features like many of the modern cars that are on our roads today do. We know there is not just a sliding scale of safety features that exist; it also comes down to driver awareness and indeed driver concentration. That is where this bill is critically important.

We know that the legislation is designed to improve road safety by facilitating enforcement of distracted driver and seatbelt-wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras and adding to the list of serious offences that trigger immediate licence suspension and disqualification when charges are laid under the Road Safety Act 1986. It also improves the transport accident scheme by making various amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986 that address identified anomalies.

The details of the proposal—and a number of members have spoken about this in their contributions—are that the government has committed approximately $34 million over five years to roll out mobile phone and seatbelt offence detection cameras as a priority project under the new Road Safety Strategy Action Plan 2021–2023. The bill makes legislative reforms that are needed to support the use of new technology for enforcement purposes. The bill provides that an image from a prescribed road safety camera is, without prejudice to any mode of proof and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, proof of the relevant fact, such as a driver touching a portable device while driving.

We know of course that the use of mobile phones is incredibly common now within our community. I was at a public hearing last week and mentioned the most recent images of Lance Franklin kicking his 1000th AFL goal. I did have to get that in as a Swans supporter. The image to me that stood out as thousands of supporters flooded the SCG was indeed that—and I did not go through and count them one by one—just about every single supporter had a smartphone within their hand. If we look around, not just this precinct but all work sites and many workplaces and schools within our community, we know that smartphones are not just here to stay but are absolutely everywhere. This is an important piece of legislation that goes to responding to not just the evolution of technology within our community but the use of technology in a way that makes our community safer. This is why this piece of legislation is important.

I know that a number of members have in their contributions spoken about the number of lives lost on Victorian roads. As I said earlier, one life lost on a Victorian road is one life too many, but we as a government—and indeed, I would say, as a Parliament—should always be supporting initiatives, projects and pieces of legislation that go to improving road safety and reducing road trauma within our state. In the 3 minutes that are remaining I did just want to talk about some of the broader investments in road safety. Particularly if I take the opportunity to look across my local electorate, I am really pleased and proud that we have been able to get some key investments in local roads. The Sunbury Road duplication will be a transformative project within my community. Acting Speaker Halfpenny, I know as a colleague and a member of Parliament you also have experienced growth within your own electorate, and I know that what is really important for electorates like ours is investment in roads as we continue to see more and more users on those roads. Projects like suburban and arterial road upgrades, of which Sunbury Road is one, are critical pieces of investment in road infrastructure that go to road safety. Installation of signals is another one. Gap Road and Horne Street within my electorate is another significant project, as well as removing the local Gap Road level crossing and planning upgrades for the Calder Freeway and the Bulla bypass—projects that are critically important to road safety.

We know, whether it is through community awareness and education programs, whether it is through those investments in those key roads that we know more and more people use each and every day or through using technology—which is addressed in many of the provisions in this bill—to improve community road safety across the state, this is something that the Andrews Labor government will continue to invest in and will continue to deliver as part of a broader suite of reforms that this government will continue to invest in and bring before the house.

I did just want to make an observation, because I know there has been some commentary from over the other side about investment in roads. When I look through successive budgets that we have been a part of, the investment from this government, not just in the local projects that I have mentioned previously but right across the state, is unmatched. When we look north to the budget from last week and the investment from the federal government, what really concerns me is that the investment is simply not there, nor is that ability to see many of these road projects that are in growth corridors such as where I live—Sunbury Road, for example. We need to make sure that projects like that and many, many more are continuing to be seen on the map. We need the federal government to step forward and put some money into these projects, to see Victoria, to recognise us as a state in this nation and to continue to invest in road safety. This is an important piece of legislation that goes to road safety. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (17:48): I think the member for Sunbury is probably right: the level of road investment in this state is unmatched; it has never been as poor as it is right now. I certainly do not need 3 minutes to talk about the road projects that are occurring in my electorate, because there are not any. There might be an occasional bit of re-sheeting, a little bit of maintenance, but there are no projects underway and there have not been—in any year that Labor has been in power in this century and a little bit before.

The Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 is straightforward. It amends the Road Safety Act 1986 and the Transport Accident Act 1986, basically intending to achieve three outcomes. It aims to enhance enforcement against distracted behaviour—people on their phones, texting or trying to find the next podcast, everything else you can do on a smartphone—and enhance enforcement against a failure to wear seatbelts. Absolutely crazy: why would you get into a motor vehicle and ignore the safety device that is closest to you, the seatbelt? It is just absolutely crazy. But we know it is happening, and we know that we do not have enough police on the road to enforce this in the way we have traditionally done in the past. As someone mentioned, there is an opportunity to use technology. So that is what this is about.

The second point is about strengthening the licence suspension powers where a serious road safety offence is alleged and there is a risk to public safety. The final change is around the transport accident scheme. On the one hand this is tightening the eligibility requirements where particular offences may have been committed and compensation would be, to put it mildly, inappropriate and in many ways morally wrong. The second change deals with anomalies that potentially disadvantage people who may be involved in a second collision and therefore be penalised by having the support that they have been receiving reduced.

The background to this legislation is that while road safety has improved enormously in this state over an extended period, you have only got to look at the graph that was included in the government’s own road safety strategy. It makes it clear that road safety has, despite the enormous growth in vehicles on roads, improved enormously since the 1960s. I was just looking back this afternoon, and I well remember as a kid the Sun’s ‘Declare war on 1034’ campaign. The headline was ‘Let’s end this grim harvest of tragedy’, and when you look at the way the numbers were increasing at that time, it really is very, very unpleasant reading. This article refers to the 1969 figure of 1034. The high-water mark for deaths on the road was 1061 the following year. But the article was suggesting that mathematically it was likely—this was in, I think, November 1970—that the road toll for 1970 would finish up as 1118. Thankfully it did not, but had it done it would have been 22 people every week. Of course the reference there is very much to the decision of the government, on the recommendation of the Road Safety Committee, to require Victorians to wear seatbelts. The report, which I have in my hand, handed down in September 1969, made some pretty tough recommendations, including within two years the compulsory wearing of seatbelts.

The reason I raise this is because one of the factors on that graph that I referred to is that basically since this government was elected the numbers have plateaued and in fact they are starting to increase. All the way down 1970 the graph is in a downward trend until we get to the election of this government, then it flattens out and starts to ease up again. Unfortunately one of the first things the government did was in fact to abolish the Road Safety Committee, which had ensured that road safety was considered to be a bipartisan issue. Both sides had an investment in that.

There are a few smirks going on in the chamber, but when you look at the history of this, the 1969 report, the opposition and the government—then a Liberal government—were included in the make-up of this committee. The report talks about a survey conducted by the RACV. When you look at the numbers, fewer than half of the population supported compulsory seatbelts. More than half of the population opposed compulsory seatbelts, yet the committee went ahead and made recommendations that seatbelts should be compulsory in a range of situations immediately and then within two years be compulsory across the state. They were able to do that because they had that bipartisan membership and the issue was able to be pushed hard by both sides. Sadly, as a result of this government’s actions, we have lost that bipartisan approach. The government would rather play politics with this issue—not all members of the government, and I certainly do not include the current minister in this category—but too many people want to play politics with road safety, and road safety is about the loss of human life.

As the government’s strategy makes very clear, it is not good reading, and it is something that has really got to be turned around. Frankly, I do not take much joy from the strategy, although the issues that we are dealing with this afternoon I think are of value. There is not a lot in it. One concern I very much do have is that towards the end of the strategy there is talk about safety performance indicators and output indicators. They are all generalities. We have not seen the specifics. There are some issues that are to be dealt with by 2030, but how are we going to know that the strategy is on track, how are we going to know that the strategy is actually having an impact, unless we see those numbers? And of course, apart from the raw numbers—the number of serious accidents, the number of people killed on the road; we know those headline numbers—we do not know how we are tracking in so many other areas. Mobile phones, texting—we are dealing with that this afternoon. We are not doing anything at this stage to deal with the epidemic of drug driving, we are doing very, very little in terms of drunk driving, in terms of .05 breaches; those numbers are just not getting any better, so I think there is a long way to go.

In terms of the changes that are being made this afternoon, as I mentioned there are some changes around technology, so allowing cameras, through the use of artificial intelligence, to detect—and then it being verified by humans. The information provided by the government after the briefing was that we currently have an offence rate of 2.4 per cent. One in 42 drivers is using their mobile phone. Frankly, I would not be surprised if it was much higher than that, but even if it is one in 42, it is an epidemic problem. Hopefully this change will go some way to dealing with this.

On the changes around licence suspension, serious offences—whether it is leaving the scene of an accident, whether it is a range of issues around protecting emergency services workers or whether it is around the final issue of dangerous or negligent driving, all of those issues—are dealt with, and dealt with reasonably. On the final one, as I mentioned earlier, the transport accident changes, the only point I would make on that is that the measure that is intended to prevent further loss of earnings is not retrospective. I think it is reasonable to ask: why is that not retrospective? The response we had back from the government was, ‘It would be a significant administrative burden’. Perhaps it would be, but what about the impact on the individual? I am sure it is a much more significant impact on the individual than it would be an administrative burden.

So I think it is a step in the right direction. There is a lot more to be done. We desperately need more enforcement beyond cameras. We need cops on the road. We need people wondering when they are going to pop up. It is a step in the right direction, but if we could make this a truly bipartisan effort, we would have much more success.

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:58): I too am pleased to speak on this bill that will improve road safety for our community, and I welcome the bipartisan support from those opposite. Road safety is a critical issue for the government because too many Victorians die on our roads and too many families and friends are unnecessarily touched by the road toll. Road trauma can be prevented, and this legislation is another step towards that. I support the government’s road safety strategy of eliminating deaths from our roads by 2050 and reducing the road toll by 50 per cent by 2030.

The statistics paint a clear picture of what changes we need to adopt to save lives. Sadly, 31 people died last year while not wearing a seatbelt. This equates to 13 per cent of the 2021 road toll. We need to make changes to laws and methods of detection to ensure people are wearing seatbelts. It is too important not to. Further, we must address the issue of driver distraction, particularly the use of mobile phones while driving. Driver distraction is a significant contributor to fatal accidents on our roads. It is estimated that driver distraction has led to the loss of more than 20 lives annually—20 funerals that should have not been held, 20 families who should not be grieving and 20 communities that should have never been impacted.

Driver distraction is also estimated to cause over 400 serious injuries per year. In 2020 an investigation found one in 42 drivers to be illegally using their mobile phones while driving; however, because there were limitations surrounding how this information was collected, the real amount of mobile phone use by drivers when driving is expected to be much higher, and anecdotally I believe that to be the case.

I thank the Minister for Roads and Road Safety and his ministerial office staff, as well as Regional Roads Victoria Grampians regional director Michael Bailey, manager of transport integration Angela Daraxoglou and their team, for the excellent job they do in looking after roads in Western Victoria.

Importantly, this bill that we have before the house today will amend the Road Safety Act 1986 as well as the Transport Accident Act 1986, and in doing so this legislation will improve enforcement capabilities. It will allow for immediate licence suspension and disqualification for serious road offences, so three reforms to the Transport Accident Act 1986.

Great things are happening in Ballarat when it comes to roads and road safety. I thank the minister for his support for upgrading Ballarat roads and making our roads safer for all users, whether that be trucks, buses, cars, motorbikes, scooters, bicycles or pedestrians. One fantastic example of this is the new Ballarat Safer Cycling Connections Sturt Street shared path, which has greatly improved road safety for bike riders and the broader community, with new traffic lights and pedestrian signals installed in the median to allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross safely at these intersections. I am also pleased to see that the Sturt Street–Drummond Street crossing is well underway as the final stage to be completed of our shared path. The new shared path replaces the existing narrower gravel path that runs along the southern edge of Sturt Street between Pleasant Street and Dawson Street, with a smooth surface for bikes, trikes, scooters and prams. Importantly, the design of our new shared path has an increased buffer between the path and existing traffic lanes, making it safer and easier for pedestrians and cyclists to access central Ballarat by bike or by foot as well as to enjoy our historic Sturt Street gardens. The path also provides safe passage for students wanting to ride their bikes to Ballarat Clarendon College, to St Patrick’s College, to Loreto College and to Ballarat High School from central Ballarat. The safety upgrades to Sturt Street and the construction of the shared bike path have created local jobs as well as providing safe alternate transport options for the community. This transformative investment was part of a $9.3 million Ballarat Safer Cycling Connections project in partnership with the Transport Accident Commission.

We are also improving local roads and road safety with the Keeping Ballarat Moving projects, which are being delivered to support growing populations in my electorate in Alfredton, Delacombe and Winter Valley, as well as new traffic lights in Gillies Street, Adelaide gardens, Albert Street in Sebastopol and out the front of Loreto College. We are also upgrading the roundabouts at Cuthberts Road and Sturt Street to improve traffic flow, and as the projects are titled, we are keeping Ballarat moving. I was at Delacombe Bunnings on the weekend thanking our Grampians Health team for the great work they are doing with the pop-up vaccination clinic and was pleased to see the amount of work going on with the removal of the roundabout in the lead-up to the installation of new traffic lights at the Delacombe town centre. The $60 million investment is significant for our community. The upgrades of six traffic hotspots in the surrounding roads will improve travel and reduce the risk of crashes at key intersections, thus road safety across Ballarat.

Road safety is a priority for this government. Through our road safety we are addressing the road toll and aiming for a 50 per cent reduction by 2030, just eight years away. The Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 is a crucial part of this strategy. Its critical amendments will make our roads safer and our transport accident scheme fairer. First of all, the bill improves enforcement capabilities through legislative reforms that support the rollout of mobile phone and seatbelt offence detection cameras. We know that driver distraction and disregarding seatbelt requirements are both tied to the significant increases in crash risk and road trauma. Addressing this behaviour is key to reducing the road toll, and according to the Monash University Accident Research Centre automated traffic offence technology has the capacity to prevent 95 casualty crashes per year. This government has committed more than $33 million over five years to this rollout, which is anticipated to begin in early 2023 with a three-month transitionary period and an extensive information campaign.

Secondly, this bill proposes to add to the list of offences that trigger immediate licence suspension and disqualification. These additional charges include culpable driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death or serious injury and the most serious of hit-and-run offences, ensuring the removal of the most dangerous drivers from our roads.

Finally, the bill makes important amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986 concerning how benefits are paid in specific circumstances. These include increasing the age of a dependent child from under 16 to under 18, in line with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006; also removing discrimination for older workers who experience traffic accidents at retirement age by increasing entitlements from 12 months to 36 months; ensuring that children who lose two parents in a single accident receive the benefits for each; and expanding the TAC scheme to further cover cyclists injured by opening doors. These amendments correct anomalies and inequalities in Victoria’s transport accident insurance scheme and facilitate the essential work done by TAC in supporting victims of road trauma. It is well known that regional and rural Victoria is over-represented in the road toll, and we need to do more to save lives.

I would like to give a shout-out to the TAC for the support they give community football and netball clubs across Victoria, particularly in rural and regional areas. Football and netball clubs are the lifeblood of so many communities, including mine, which is why it is so important the TAC are working with clubs to encourage their players, the parents, family members and supporters to follow the road rules and drive safely. The TAC have built a strong relationship with local football and netball clubs in the Wendouree electorate, including the mighty Redan football club and the Lake Wendouree Lakers, working with them to educate club members about the importance of road safety. This was included in the Towards Zero round in the AFL Goldfields region in 2019. Then in 2020 the TAC provided $1.3 million through the Towards Zero club grants program.

What we have heard about this legislation that is before the house today is that we need to take action to save lives. We need to do things differently, and by doing things differently we need to use technology better to make our roads safer. We need to reduce driver distraction because we know that mobile phones are causing fatal accidents and bringing about far too many injuries every year. As a government and community, we need to do better. We must do better when it comes to road safety and addressing the causes of the road toll. Too many lives have been lost because of people not wearing seatbelts. This is not on—this is not on in 2022. Everyone must be wearing a seatbelt, whether it be a child in the back seat or a parent in the front seat. I strongly encourage everyone to take road safety seriously. Wear a seatbelt, drive to conditions, follow speed limits, do not drink and drive, and put your phone on ‘Do not disturb’ to stay alive.

Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (18:08): I am pleased to rise this evening to make a contribution in relation to the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. We can see that this bill broadly covers three different areas. It enables better enforcement of distracted-driving and seatbelt-wearing offences by giving evidential status to images from new types of road safety cameras, it adds 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 the bill is also intended to alter the transport accident scheme by making various amendments to the Transport Accident Act 1986.

As many speakers have said, the genesis of this bill is particularly in relation to the trial that went on in 2020 regarding taking photographs inside people’s cars. That was to do two things. It was to detect people using their mobile phones whilst driving and also to detect motorists that were not wearing their seatbelts. It was interesting to look at statistics that we received from the department, and I thank the department and the minister for the briefing and the information that ensued from that.

In that particular trial 680 000-odd vehicles were assessed, with one in 42 drivers using their mobile phone whilst driving. I think that that is a very revealing statistic and one that should be of concern to all of us. We have heard many stories today from other members, and I am sure we could all tell our own stories, of when we have been in traffic—whether at high speed, whether at low speed or stationary at the lights and so on—and we have seen other motorists fiddling around with their phones. It is the classic situation where the light goes from red to green and the vehicle in front does not move because the person has got their head down, and they are inevitably fiddling around with their phone. It is a dreadful distraction. It is obviously even worse when the vehicle is in motion. There is that very effective ad—I think it is a TAC ad—where the fellow has his eyes covered over and you can see the distance that the vehicle travels whilst he is messing around with his phone. I think that is quite a powerful ad.

It was interesting also that the not wearing of seatbelts was detected as part of the pilot program. That was one in 667 drivers that were not wearing their seatbelt. That is quite a staggering number as well. Except for forgetfulness, you would wonder how on earth anyone would ever end up in that situation. It is interesting to note, as others have, that it was 1970 when seatbelts became compulsory here in Victoria. That was as the result of a parliamentary inquiry and parliamentary work done by a committee back in those days. That has been a life-changing development for all Victorians and indeed has spread around the world. It is interesting, as I said. In relation to the seatbelt statistics, I looked them up on the TAC website, which I found was a very comprehensive resource. That showed that the number of drivers who were killed on the roads while not wearing a seatbelt in 2020 was 22, and in 2021 it was 27. That was an alarming increase of 23 per cent over that time. Obviously through the last few years, in general terms, there has been less vehicular movement on the road with the extensive lockdowns and other things, so that is an alarming trend. I trust that that is a matter that will continue to receive attention from the TAC and others.

In terms of the overall road toll, we can see there again that the statistics contained on the TAC’s website note that the majority of the tragic accidents are on rural roads. Many other contributors to this debate have talked about the rural road situation, and I think that that is one of the factors that the government absolutely has to address in trying to improve road safety here in Victoria. It is just an absolutely essential aspect that they must consider.

In talking about that, I particularly wanted to go back and look at a couple of the Victorian Auditor-General’s reports in relation to that, particularly the report from June 2017, Maintaining State-Controlled Roadways. As we have heard in the countless examples today, particularly from my colleagues on this side, the condition of the roads can lead to either damage to a vehicle or, worse, vehicles running off when hitting wrong cambers on a road or poor drainage on a road, which impact upon a driver’s ability to handle the particular conditions at the time. If we go back to the report from June 2017, I just want to read the conclusion in relation to that on page vii of that report. It says:

The increasing proportion of the state road network in very poor condition presents a growing risk to public safety and increases road user costs.

Not enough funding is allocated to road maintenance to sustain the road network, but VicRoads also cannot demonstrate clearly that it is making the best use of its existing maintenance funds.

Its approach to road pavement maintenance is reactive, with maintenance generally being carried out only when it becomes critical. Targeted early intervention to prevent roads from needing more costly and extensive maintenance has been limited. This approach has not kept up with the rate of deterioration of road pavements across the network.

From the stories that we have heard today there is no doubt that that situation is probably many times worse. Particularly in certain parts of the state where there have been significant amounts of rain over the summer, the roads have not stood up very well, and anybody that has driven on country roads in Victoria will attest to that. The government needs to be on notice to get out there and fix the roads, make sure that they are in a condition that is appropriate, and that will obviously well and truly contribute to safer travel for all Victorians but particularly for Victorians that live in rural and regional areas.

We can go back even further to various other reports from the Auditor-General’s office. We had the report on 18 June 2020, Safety on Victoria’s Roads: Regional Road Barriers—and that was an issue that I wanted to bring up, particularly the wire rope barriers, as they are known. I was alarmed when I saw evidence from some of my colleagues in relation to those wire rope barriers and how they had been put so close to the edge of the road. I remember seeing a photograph of a car parked next to one of the wire rope barriers, and the car was still half on the highway so there was no room to pull off. I thought at the time, ‘What a disaster waiting to happen’, and it just makes me scratch my head and wonder how on earth that was ever done. I trust that the government is getting out and trying to sort out that self-made mess again for the obvious safety reasons.

There was also an Auditor-General’s report of 17 March 2021 in relation to maintaining local roads, and one of the conclusions that was drawn there was interesting as well. It says:

… councils cannot determine whether they are achieving value for money when maintaining their road network. This is because councils lack detailed cost data to analyse and benchmark their performance.

So I really wonder as we continue to look at these particular matters whether we have made any progress at all.

Again, it is incumbent upon the government to make sure that they are addressing these basic but critical aspects of road maintenance and of road management, both locally and more broadly, particularly in rural and regional areas. As we have heard from other members, the issue of potholes is a very real one, and coming up to the winter that is a very significant issue that we know can cause a driver to lose control and run off the road. So the government needs to look at road safety, to look at all these matters, from a holistic point of view and not leave out one of the key aspects of it, which is the road surface and the road conditions in the country.

I think there is no excuse for people using their mobile phones while they are driving. Everyone is on notice in relation to that. Hopefully these cameras will be an effective deterrent, and we will be able to retrain motorists—and particularly, I would dare to suggest, younger motorists—to leave their phones in the glove box, in the boot or on the back seat but out of reach, for the safety of all Victorians.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (18:18): I too rise to speak on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I think there have been some great contributions on this side of the house in relation to this bill, what it does and how it is going to make our roads safer for everybody travelling on them.

As I start my contribution I just want to share a story from my childhood about why road safety and seatbelts are so important. I noticed going through the notes in preparing to speak for this bill the number of deaths—31 people that died across Victoria last year from not wearing a seatbelt. And I felt really saddened and really quite frustrated about that—that we are still having a conversation around people wearing seatbelts and that being a safe way to travel in the car. It made me cast my mind back. I thought twice about sharing this story, but I will share it—but I will keep names private, although I am sure at the end of this story you will realise who I am talking about.

I grew up in northern New South Wales in a beautiful, very small, very sleepy beach town. One of the things that I did in my teens that might surprise many on this side of the house is I used to go surfing. We would finish school, and we would go surfing. Way back then not many girls went surfing there in northern New South Wales. I remember going surfing and seeing a young girl paddling out with her dad, and many years later you would know her as Stephanie Gilmore. So that tells you a little bit about where I grew up.

I remember two beautiful-looking young men, and this is when I was about 16 or 17 years old. I know that I could drive. I had a white Daihatsu Charade that I used to drive. Not many of my friends had a car, and I would pile us all into the car and we would drive to the beach, go surfing, maybe drive around town or go to parties. But I remember on one particular occasion at South Beach in Kingscliff, which was kind of a dangerous beach to go surfing, as we were heading out there were two young boys of about 20—beautiful blonde-haired young men, very, very tanned, very athletic and very, very good surfers.

I can still see the image in my mind of these young boys because some weeks later we went to a party at the southern end of the Gold Coast in, I think it was, Greenmount or Rainbow Bay at the time. It was one of those parties I probably drove to—but we did not tell our parents we were going—and because I was the driver I was not drinking. Lots of people from school were there. All the guys that we had crushes on were there, and I remember seeing these two young boys. I think at the time one of them was dating one of my friends that I went to school with, that I was in the same year level as, from the same town. We had had a great night. We all headed back home in my car, and I dropped everyone home. I remember the next morning my mother asking if I was at that party. ‘Yes’—I confessed that I was. We had not told them; she was pretty cross. But something had happened at that party, something very unexpected and something that changed the community and people’s lives—a mother’s life, a father’s life and most certainly their son’s and siblings’ lives.

Those two young boys probably had had quite a bit to drink and jumped into the back seat of, I think it was, a wagon back then. I think they were lying down. The girl I went to school with, the girlfriend, was in the passenger seat, and she had her seatbelt on. The driver, who was also of driving age but still young and not drinking, got into the car and put on her seatbelt. The roads—I cannot really remember back then; I do not think there was an issue with the road. The driver lost control of the vehicle, and the vehicle hit a tree not far from the party—because I still remember where these trees were in this part of the southern end of the Gold Coast. The two girls had seatbelts on and the two boys did not. I remember my mother said to me that the two boys were thrown out of the car, because they were not wearing a seatbelt, upon impact with the tree. Those two boys, those two 20-year-olds—I just checked the media article about the deaths—died. There is nothing said about seatbelts, but my mum made it very clear to me that they were not wearing seatbelts and that that is why they were thrown out of the car. Now, the first responder on the scene—the paramedic or the ambo at the time—was the father of the girl that I went to school with. He attended the scene, and I think both young boys died pretty quickly upon impact.

As I said, that was something that went on to destroy lives, and it certainly hurt and put a lot of determination into the brother of one of those boys. I will not say his name here because I am not sure it is a story that is told very often, but you would know him as one of Australia’s and the world’s most famous surfers. That happened many, many years ago, and it stuck—the importance of seatbelts and seatbelt safety. It is a story that no doubt I will pass on to my children. It was a story told and a reminder given by two worried parents, my parents, to my sister, my brother and I repeatedly about the importance of wearing seatbelts for road safety—that they could and indeed did save lives. So I feel disappointed we are still having this conversation around Victorians needing reminders and needing enforcement measures in place to put on their seatbelts.

I am pretty proud that we have gone ahead and committed to a target of halving our number of road-related deaths by 2030. That is quite an ambitious target. Last year—and it is just so tragic because every death on the road is preventable—236 people died on Victorian roads, and this was an increase of 10 per cent from 2020. That is not something that anyone standing in this chamber wants to stand up and talk about—an increase from 2020. When you look at these stats they are pretty sobering. You know, some people might say, ‘Less than 300 people in Victoria die on the roads; there are states that might have bigger road tolls’, but when we stop and we think—and I think about stories like those two young boys; it is quite interesting now seeing a picture of one of them, because it is just as I remember him—every single one of those casualties is a person. They are a mum, they are a dad, they are a brother, they are a sister, they are young children, they are wives and husbands, they are family, they are our friends, and they help make up our community and who we are as Victorians and as Australians. They are more than a statistic, and if road safety was observed, they might still be here today. You know, I quite often wonder whether those two boys would be here today if they had had their seatbelts on.

We know that at least 20 per cent of these incidents were caused by speeding—we still know that speed is a massive factor—and, as I talked about, another 13 per cent were caused by not wearing seatbelts. We know that we need to do better. We need to do better if we are going to actually reduce the road toll by that 50 per cent by 2030. We are rolling out $34 million to install those new speed cameras, which is really important. People talk about revenue raising. Well, whether it is raising revenue or, as I see it, getting people to slow down and save lives, we are going to be able to detect not only the speed that the cars are driving at but, remarkably, whether seatbelts are being worn and whether portable devices are being used. I know there is a lot of community awareness around using mobile phones. We look at other portable devices like DVD players—and I just cannot believe that drivers would actually be looking at them while driving—but we are going to be able to detect indeed if the drivers are looking at these things. We know that mobile phone usage contributed to 24 road fatalities in 2021—that is about 11 per cent of overall deaths on the road.

A lot has been said about this bill in the house—you know, I have very quickly run out of time in sharing with you my childhood story about the importance of road safety and seatbelts—but this bill goes a long way to helping make our roads safer, whether it is enforcement or whether it is upgrading roads and things like that that this government has been getting on and doing. Being able to save just one life on the roads from an accident incident that is completely preventable is a really big deal. I wholeheartedly commend the bill to the house.

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (18:28): I rise today to contribute to the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 and in doing so, at the outset, say that we will not be opposing this bill. In fact I think it is fair to say that on most occasions, pretty much at all times, we are on a unity ticket across all parties within this Parliament when it comes to road safety, keeping our roads safe, making sure that road users are safe and that there are measures in place to limit any dangerous incidents and accidents and making sure that people get home to their families. However, I think that the approaches are often different, and whilst we will not be opposing this bill there are some concerns that we have in terms of the government’s overall approach when it comes to road safety.

At the outset I just want to make mention—and it has been mentioned by a number of other speakers today—that it has been on a couple of occasions and most recently that this Andrews Labor government abolished the road safety parliamentary committee. It is our—on this side of the chamber, the Liberal-Nationals—commitment that that is an important parliamentary committee. It has been a tremendously important parliamentary committee over many decades and has given us significant insights and recommendations on making our roads safer. In fact it was the Labor government in 1982—it was instituted, I think, back in the 1960s—and then in 1982 and in 2014 the Andrews Labor government actually stopped that parliamentary committee, which means that for Victorians they are poorer for it. It is a committee that recommended introducing and legislating for seatbelts and the demerit point system. Various road safety initiatives had come through that committee process, and the mind boggles as to why the government abolished that and turned a blind eye to that joint parliamentary committee.

In saying that, the Andrews Labor government has taken a bit of a piecemeal approach. Whilst they have got some initiatives in this bill that we hope will make our roads even more safe, they take a piecemeal approach to road safety. We can see that as well around the road safety funding and road safety upgrades. Through our regional, country and outer suburban communities we know that this Andrews Labor government has failed to deliver on significant road safety upgrades, and that contributes to road trauma incidents.

I would like to take this opportunity—I am not sure that we have really spent enough time talking about this in the contributions so far on this bill—to pay tribute to the local police, particularly in my community, the Yarra Ranges police at the Lilydale and Mount Evelyn stations and surrounding stations, and also to first responders to road trauma incidents, volunteer firefighters at the Seville CFA and the Wandin CFA. When there is a road safety accident, whether it is from speed or from somebody using their mobile phone—driving dangerously—the Yarra Ranges police, particularly the highway patrol and the traffic police, are the ones that monitor these roads, and it is our first responders, our volunteers, who go out to the accidents, see the trauma, help the families and clean up the mess. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them and what they do each and every day of the year for our community.

In my community we have got a number of roads that are dangerous and need significant attention, and it is not just these initiatives in the piece of legislation that we see today. What we are calling on this Andrews Labor government to do is to significantly address the complete and utter crumbling of our roads—dangerous intersections, dangerous roads—because if they actually took the time and the effort to get out of the tram tracks of the city and have a look at these outer suburban and country areas, at these roads, they would see that actually fixing the roads would go some way to reducing road trauma. In my community we have the Melba Highway, the Maroondah Highway and the Warburton Highway. The Warburton Highway is notorious for severe accidents. The Andrews Labor government should not wait for another tragic accident on one of these roads—on the Melba Highway or the Warburton Highway or indeed at Maroondah Highway–Killara Road in Coldstream. They should not wait for another death before they upgrade these roads, which they have known about for a very long time.

The minister at the table, the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, is turning around and looking quizzically at his colleagues up there in the corner. I think that they know that these roads need fixing—these dangerous roads and these traffic problems, unaddressed by them for years and years. Despite the community gathering together, campaigning and advocating for these roads to be improved, this government has done nothing. What is their strategy? To leave the potholes, to leave the roads crumbling, the sides of the roads decaying? You know, putting in some flimsy reflector poles does not fix the traffic accidents. We call again on the government to fix the Maroondah Highway at Coldstream, the Warburton Highway in Seville and Seville East and the Melba Highway through Yering and in fact into my colleague the member for Eildon’s area—right through her area. These bridges are narrow. They are insufficient to support the communities that use these roads—the transporters, the tourists and just the people who live there who want to get around there day to day, to get to and from work and school and to get home safely. If this government took the time to fix these roads and address that, then I think it would go a lot of the way to fixing road safety.

I heard the contributions from a number of members from the Labor government talking a lot about the removing of level rail crossings, and I know that that is particularly important. In my community in Lilydale the level crossing has been removed there and the construction still is not complete, despite the fact that the government says it is done—it is not. But interestingly the main street there in Lilydale has no road strategy and in fact the congestion is far worse than it was before. Despite the government saying that it would slash congestion, it has made it worse, and it has made the main street, Maroondah Highway through Lilydale, more dangerous. This is concerning for everyday Victorians who live in Lilydale and drive through this area. They are very concerned about the safety of this road—that under the sky rail bridge it goes from two lanes to one lane in the middle of an intersection. This is not normal. This is a problem, and it is unsafe. Already there have been a number of near misses at that intersection, and it is only a matter of time. So when the government says that it is removing the level crossing, the boom gates, in order to remove a dangerous intersection, it has really generated another danger with the traffic lights and the changing from two lanes to one lane right under the bridge within the middle of an intersection. It is not a solution. We know that we have already had near misses and nearly accidents right there, with the buses coming out and so forth. Again, what is the strategy for the constituents and the residents in my community that need to use that on a daily basis to get to and from work and school and to get to and from home safely?

Again, with the short time that I have remaining, the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill introduces a couple of measures to add to the suite of measures that are of a bipartisan or a multipartisan nature. We have sought to have improvements to make roads safer through initiatives like the wearing of seatbelts—the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce seatbelts. As a mum of two boys, since the day they were born I have been saying that they need to have their seatbelts on. These initiatives are important, and we support those initiatives, but we would call for a better strategy and more funding for roads.

Mr STAIKOS (Bentleigh) (18:38): It is a pleasure to rise to make a contribution on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. The member for Evelyn began her contribution by saying that road safety is above politics, and indeed it is. I think regardless of politics, throughout Victoria’s history Victorian governments have pioneered road safety. In 1971, for instance, Victoria became the first jurisdiction in the world to mandate the wearing of seatbelts. Another one that you might not know is that Melbourne’s roads were the first in Australia to have traffic lights. That is actually in the latest crossword puzzle of my Bentleigh electorate newsletter, that one. It just goes to show that we as a state have pioneered road safety.

It is also in the messaging around road safety, around seatbelt wearing. I remember when I was 10 years old visiting Greece with my family. In 1996 of course hardly anybody in that country would wear seatbelts. They were there, they just were not worn. I remember we would wear seatbelts all the time and people would look at us as though, you know, they were looking at somebody wearing a face mask three years ago. They looked at us in that way, but we came obviously from a country that certainly did place significant emphasis on road safety and the simple act of just wearing a seatbelt. We know how important wearing seatbelts is. In 2021, 31 people died while not wearing a seatbelt, which was 13 per cent of the 2021 road toll. That of course is devastating. You know, those are probably preventable deaths—if only they had worn the seatbelt. The seatbelts are there for good reason and the laws are in place for good reason.

This government has a strategy in place and a target—a target that we are confident we will reach—and that is to halve the road toll by 50 per cent by 2030. That is a target that is underpinned by many things, including the measures in this bill. This bill does a number of things, but essentially what this bill does is formalise the use of detection cameras for mobile phone and seatbelt offences. It also ensures that that evidence can be used when following up a violation of mobile phone and seatbelt laws. Subject to the enactment of the bill, the rollout of automated detection and enforcement will commence in early 2023—not far away at all.

The member for Evelyn also pointed to what she called a failure to deliver road upgrades, so it has just prompted me to perhaps talk about a few road upgrades in my electorate, where there certainly has not been a failure to deliver. I see the Minister for Public Transport and Minister for Roads and Road Safety at the table, and he has certainly always been a listening ear when it comes to the road safety needs of the Bentleigh electorate. I suppose the biggest road project in the Bentleigh electorate ever was the removal of those three level crossings. The member for Evelyn laments the removal of the level crossing over in Lilydale; apparently the removal of that level crossing has made the area less safe. Look, I do not know Lilydale, I do not know the area, but I can honestly—

Ms Vallence: Well, maybe come out of the tram tracks.

Mr STAIKOS: We do not have any trams in Bentleigh, by the way—we never have. I do not live in a tram-tracked area. But what I can say is that the level crossing removals, the three of them in the Bentleigh electorate, have certainly made the area safer. I remember vividly at the Centre Road, Bentleigh, level crossing a lot of deaths. I remember quite some years ago the death of 15-year-old Alana Nobbs, who was a student at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College. Her father for many years after that campaigned for the removal of the Centre Road level crossing. There were so many others. I remember an elderly lady was collected by an express train right in front of her husband at that level crossing. These were tragic accidents. This government obviously at the 2014 election embarked on a very ambitious agenda to remove 50—we are removing 85. We keep adding to that. Those are projects that certainly make our roads more safe, not less safe. I am sure, not knowing that area over in Lilydale that well—

Ms Blandthorn interjected.

Mr STAIKOS: Well, the member for Pascoe Vale does know the Lilydale area, and she assures me that it is much safer than it was. So maybe have a look at that one again, member for Evelyn.

I must say, given the member for Evelyn said there has been a failure to invest in road safety initiatives, I do remember back in 2016 when the level crossing removals were under construction in my electorate one Georgie Crozier, otherwise known as the shadow minister against health, marching up and down Centre Road petitioning against the level crossing removals. I have never understood the strategy of those opposite, throughout the Level Crossing Removal Project over the last seven years, in campaigning against it. I mean, if they think that is a vote winner, they have got another think coming.

If I go through the list of other road safety initiatives in my electorate, I think of the roads we have converted to 40 kilometres per hour in those high-pedestrian areas—Centre Road, East Bentleigh, where my office is, and now North Road in Ormond. These are shopping strips. They are high-pedestrian areas. When you announce these, you inevitably get people saying, ‘Stop slowing down traffic’. But we have got to think of road safety first. Road safety cannot be an afterthought. Yes, we have got to get people from A to B in a timely manner, but we have also got to make sure that the roads are safe, because roads are not just for motorists, they are also for cyclists and for pedestrians. It is a bit like the South Road upgrade. Forty thousand cars use South Road each and every day, and it has been made busier because of the Mordialloc Freeway. The member for Mordialloc is not here, but he has heard this from me before. That upgrade is not just for motorists. Yes, it will make traffic flow better, but it will also make South Road work better for pedestrians, make it safer for pedestrians. We are often criticised whenever we embark on a road initiative for that reason. There is a view among some that we should only upgrade roads to make traffic flow better. We need to make sure we are making traffic flow better, but we need to make sure that we are making these roads as safe as possible.

We also, in the 2020 budget, funded the signalisation of the Centre Road and Bignell Road intersection, and that one I do know well because when I was a kid I was involved in a car accident at that intersection. St Peter’s church is on that corner, and on multiple occasions cars have ended up in the church garden. It is a very, very dangerous intersection. When we announced this I heard from a lot of people who said, ‘Oh, another set of traffic lights on Centre Road’. But it is better than people dying, and we have to weigh all these things up. These are very important. Facebook can be a really weird place, and often on Facebook you see people warning each other about speed cameras. Well, just do not speed. Road safety should not ever be an afterthought, but I am afraid for some people it is.

These are good initiatives in this bill. They contribute to our road safety strategy, a strategy that has a target of a 50 per cent reduction in the road toll by 2030. I congratulate the minister on bringing this legislation to the house. It is a good piece of legislation, and I am sure, member for Evelyn, that the level crossing removal at Lilydale has substantially improved and enhanced safety in that area. I commend the bill to the house, and I wish it a speedy passage.

Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (18:48): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the debate on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Can I start by thanking the Minister for Roads and Road Safety for the important work that he continues to do. As we know, things change over time and road safety needs to be reviewed consistently. When I was growing up back in the 1970s all eight of us got thrown into a very small car—no seatbelts were required at the time—and when I think about that now, if we had had an accident, I probably would not be standing here today.

The introduction of seatbelts was so significant for our communities, for keeping people safe. As we go through the years, different things change. Now we have the issue of people using mobile devices in their vehicles and being distracted. These are things that are so important to our community. I know in my community of Geelong many people have been impacted by road accidents because someone was killed or seriously injured, and the impact on their family and their friends—the devastating impact, particularly on young people—is something that we need to try and deal with all the time consistently.

We are very lucky to have the TAC head office in Geelong. They do amazing work. Their advertising was referenced earlier by another member in this place—the TV advertising that they do and the impact that that has. But sometimes I think that it impacts on people like me, but we need to be getting that message across to other people who may not be watching TV, like young people. There is lots of work to do around road safety, but I do commend the work of the TAC and what they do. They also get out and about in our community and run awareness campaigns and work particularly with sporting clubs, because we know from the past that people have a few beers down at the sporting club and drive home, and whether it is alcohol, whether it is speed, using a mobile device or not wearing a seatbelt, we have seen the impact of that. We have seen the devastation of people being killed on our roads. It is really important that we continue to work on road safety, ensuring that we are dealing with the issues as they come up from time to time.

I think the use of mobile phones is really concerning. I know when I drive around—and I know a lot of members referred to this in their contributions today—that I see people using their mobile devices and phones, and we know that it only takes a second to completely change your life or somebody else’s life. When you are using your mobile phone, you are distracted, you are not looking at the road and you then put everyone at risk—not only yourself but other people, road users or passengers in your vehicle. We need to continue to drive that message to anyone using their mobile phone. And it is not just young people, I have to say; I see older people using their mobiles and being distracted when they are driving. In fact I have seen numerous minor incidents, fortunately not major incidents—running up the back of the vehicle or side-swiping a vehicle—because someone has been on their mobile phone.

I would imagine there would be many, many families out there that would welcome this legislation. I know over the years I have spoken to many families who have been impacted by serious vehicle accidents, whether the person was using a mobile phone, not wearing a seatbelt, speeding or affected by alcohol—all those issues that we see from time to time that cause accidents—and they have lost a loved one or one of their loved ones has had such a serious injury that it has really impacted on their quality of life. So I think there is a lot that we need to be doing and focusing on to ensure that those families can be reassured and our entire community can be reassured that we are dealing with road safety and that we are not going to allow this sort of thing to continue without at least putting in whatever measures that we can.

The new technology is something that I welcome, and I know people in my community of Geelong would welcome it as well—that if you are using your phone or not wearing your seatbelt it is picked up. And if you were not the driver or you want to challenge that, you have got every right to, but it is really important that we continue to use technology in this way to provide road safety. The research shows that while you are driving your risk of having a crash, depending on the type of phone activity, is between twice and 10 times the risk of other drivers. We know the damage that can be done. But for me it is about that split second of making the wrong decision, making that decision to pick up your phone or to be distracted in some way. Whether it is your phone, not wearing a seatbelt, alcohol or whatever the issue is, it can just all be over in a flash—not just your life but that of passengers, other road users or your loved ones. I have met people that are living with the fact that they have actually killed a family member, a loved one or a friend, and they have got to live with that for the rest of their life as well as dealing with the justice part of it—being convicted for culpable driving and those sorts of things. Nobody wants to live with that.

I also want to make note of the significant road improvements that we have been doing around my community. Only the other day the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, who is here in the chamber with us tonight, was down in Geelong looking at some of the fantastic changes that we have made to improve our road network. Geelong’s population is growing really quickly, and we need that road infrastructure. I am pleased to say that the minister has listened to the people of Geelong and ensured that there are good road improvements right across my electorate of Geelong.

As I said, there are amendments in the bill that recognise the danger of driver distraction. The police on the ground can only do so much. It is so important that we recognise that, yes, the police are out there. They are doing their job—they do a mighty job in our communities. But they cannot be sitting there at the side of every vehicle to make sure people are doing the right thing. As first responders, whether it is them or the paramedics or the fireys, they are turning up at these horrific scenes and are having to deal with someone’s very bad decision that has caused a trauma, a tragic accident, where people are killed or seriously injured. You can only imagine what it must be like for them turning out there. I was listening to members talk earlier about how often in smaller communities the first responders know the person that is in the car that has been killed. As first responders, the work that they need to do is something that someone like me has no idea what it must be like for them. I do send a big shout-out to our first responders. But also it is not a matter of having more police on the road as such; it is about having that technology. We have the technology. We need to use it and we need to continue to use it to ensure that we can identify who is using their mobile phone and whether they have got their seatbelt on. When they get the fine, maybe next time they will think about not doing the wrong thing. This is a great bill. I recommend the bill to the house.

Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (18:58): I too rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, a somewhat short and truncated contribution this evening. It occurs to me that when you look at road safety it is something that continually evolves, and it evolves over time. As new technologies emerge, as the way we live our lives continues to change, of course legislation in this space is also going to need to be amended. But it is a really good start, firstly, that we have a minister not only for roads but for road safety as well. You have got to have someone who is actually in charge of the agenda and that is driving an agenda as well. Secondly, and as importantly, you have got to have some sort of overarching vision and some sort of strategy to work within to be able to drive the road toll down, which is ultimately what the aim is at the end of all of this. You have got to utilise research, you have got to utilise data and you have got to use that to keep driving that through to come up with the plans that you need.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.