Tuesday, 8 March 2022

Western Metropolitan Region truck curfews

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (19:40): (1788) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in the other place, and the action I seek is the provision of electronic monitoring on residential streets in the inner west to enforce curfews on trucks travelling without valid permits. A recent post by MTAG, which is the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group, on their Facebook page shows a number of B-doubles and A-doubles—monsters, 32-metre-long road trains—on Somerville Road. Let me read you the rest of their post:

These trucks are not allowed on Somerville Rd but have been occurring in huge numbers lately, particularly since the start of the school year.

The system is clearly broken. When the community is reporting these trucks and screaming for enforcement, the NHVR turn up for a few days and then disappear again. It should not be up to the community to self-police the curfews!

The inner west desperately needs modern electronic monitoring. We know this technology exists, it was used on Hyde St when a section of Whitehall St was closed for 12 months for West Gate Tunnel sewer works. These cameras should be on Francis St, Somerville Rd, Williamstown Rd, Buckley St and Moore St—to monitor both the curfews and A-Doubles traveling without a valid permit.

The Andrew’s government sold off the lease for the Port of Melbourne for $9.7 billion and we are asking that a very small portion of that money gets spent here now to give us cameras that will provide effective monitoring of the thousands of port trucks using our residential streets.

It’s not too much to expect a safe community where the government takes responsibility for its policies and enforces the curfews in a modern and effective way.

Will it take an A-Double—

or a B-double—

to plough through a school crossing before something is done? Right now we are feeling abandoned by government.

Minister, it is time to step up, take responsibility for your policies and ensure that they are enforced. Step up, keep the community of my inner west safe, and let us hope that you do this before the next state election.