Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Tuesday 10 July 2007

VEHICLE AND TRAFFIC AMENDMENT (ROAD SAFETY LEVY) BILL 2007

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr President, I will be relatively short and try to keep to areas that have not really been touched on that much so far. I will not touch on whether it should be paid on licences or registrations because I think that has been sufficiently covered. I am not so much against it being paid on registration. I think that the Government in that instance would get the money within 24 months whereas with the licences there is a five-year period of time over which the money would be coming in, and I would like to see things happening now. That is where I start and I think that is the concern of a lot of people out there now, with our accident rate and fatalities starting to creep up again. In the 1970s, as I said previously, we had an accident or fatality rate in this State of 150-plus per year. I recall that one year we had a fatality rate here in Tasmania of 160-odd; I think that was the highest it got to. That is a huge number of people killed in a State of less than 500 000 people.

Ms Thorp - The population was less then in times of higher accidents.

Mr DEAN - I often do a comparison between here and some other States and countries in the world. The one I have used recently has been Denver in America, which has a far greater population, more open and longer roads and all of the other things that go with that, plus a colder climate, but their fatality rate averages around the 30 to 35 mark, which when you compare it with ours here indicates very clearly that we are not doing well at all. So I would like to see something done now to improve our road safety.

I noticed the member for Rosevears talked a lot about the education side of it. We need education but I do not believe that is the answer to the problems that we confront here. I believe that there are a number of issues that we need to address now and one of the things I keep talking about is better policing. I believe that there ought to be better policing. I believe that there are other road safety strategies that we could employ now that would make our roads safer. For example, if you travel from Launceston or Burnie or Smithton to Hobart, you see nothing really other than the normal speed limit signs that identify and bring to your attention the need to check your speedometer and look at what you are doing.

In some of the other States and countries around the world you have strategically placed signs on these well-traversed roads which identify to you the speed you are travelling at the time you pass these electronic signs. I believe that we ought to have more of those in this State which would bring home to people the speed they are travelling at. It is not a strategy that would be likely to cost enormous amounts of money to do.

Mr Aird - Do you like those roadside signs that give you a snarly look if you are travelling at such a speed or a smile if you are travelling within the limit? It is very rewarding when you get the smile.

Mr DEAN - I do not know if it should be that sign but the sort of sign I am talking about you see if you travel on the road from Melbourne to Bathurst, which indicates that you are coming up to a speed limit checking sign and identifies to you the speed you are travelling at the time you passed that sign or were coming to it. I believe that those are the sorts of things we ought to be doing in this State. We have policed this area in the same way now for a long time without any real innovation, without changes. We need to have more signs up there. I have often said that we need to have them where we have speed cameras out there.

I would hope that some of this money will be spent on more speed cameras, I have no problem with that, but I believe that there ought to be signs out there to say that you have just passed a speed camera or a speed-checking area, something to indicate and bring home to you that perhaps you are not travelling at the speed you should be and that you could be unsafe and causing a menace to other drivers on the roads.

So there are lots of things that we can do. There is another thing that really causes problems out there and you experience it every time you get on a main road where you have a slow vehicle holding up a line of traffic. That creates a problem as well. It creates frustration, it creates concern. There ought to be something there to ensure that these drivers, if they hold up a number of vehicles, should be pulling over to the side to let them go.

Ms Thorp - Turn-out lanes?

Mr DEAN - I have raised that on many occasions. That is a real problem.

Ms Forrest - Especially when they speed up at the passing lanes.

Mr DEAN - You are absolutely right, and you then cannot get past unless you are breaking the speed limit. There are many things that we can do which would be relatively cheap options, when one looks at the cost to this State every time we have a fatality. I am not quite sure what the costs are now, but I understand it is in the area of $1 million, I think, for a fatality and somebody else in a better position -

Mr Parkinson - It is higher than that, but you are in the ballpark.

Mr DEAN - So a fatality is a high cost to this State. As I said, there is a lot more that we can do and I think police can do a lot more. I think they need to change some of their strategies and I think DIER can do a lot more as well.

Mr President, I refer to the second reading speech where there is comment made about using best practice infrastructure - on page 2 of second reading speech. We are talking about best practice infrastructure but what do we really mean? I would suggest we would mean on any road that is now newly constructed - a new road, a main road or highway, and let me take the Dilston bypass, for instance, which is identified to be a 9-kilometre new bypass from Rocherlea through to the other side of the Windermere turn-off, for anybody that knows that area; it is a 9-kilometre stretch of road - if we are serious, that road will have a middle barrier in it. That is what the Swedish system is all about. The Swedish system, which is referred to in the second reading speech, is about making the roads safer. They talk about middle barriers, they talk about side barriers on their roads. If we are going to be fair dinkum about this, we need to have in that bypass road, for instance, a middle barrier. Will we have one? I would suggest we will not because what is going to be said is, unfortunately, there will not be enough money in the budget for that to occur. That, to me, is not the way we should be going.

We are trying to reduce accidents. We have this $20 levy that I am satisfied people will pay - I do not have any problem with that - if they know that at the end of it the roads are going to be safer. If they know that when their son or their daughter or loved one goes out, they are going to come back safely they will pay it. I do not think there will be any real problems. It is a whole different thing than the fire service levy and some of those other levies that are paid. People know that our roads are not safe.

I would urge the Government to look at all new roads being constructed with safety as an important part of it. If we are serious about the Swedish model, then very clearly we will be looking at that very closely.

Mr Wilkinson - You have always been serious about Swedish models though, haven't you?

Mr DEAN - You are a lad.

One other thing I want to mention, Mr President, is the hooning legislation. We look at road safety and what has the hooning legislation really achieved? All it really has achieved is a car being taken away from some of these young bucks or young ladies or whatever for a period of about 24 hours. To me, it is quite ridiculous and a nonsense. What you have out there now and the young hoons will tell you, is game that they play with the coppers. It is just a game they play. If they get caught, they might lose their car for 24 hours, I think it is and it might cost them $80 to $100 or something like that, which is nothing at all. We ought to be serious here. We ought to be saying that if they are caught hooning, their car will go for one month and we ought to be saying very clearly to these people that we are serious about what we want to do and that is to make our roads safer.

I support the legislation that we currently have. I look forward to this commencing but I also look forward to seeing something happen out there to make our roads better. I just want to reiterate, I also ask the Government to look at all new roads that are developed and built and the Dilston bypass is a classic example of where we should now go because that is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2009, I think commencing next year, 2008, or thereabouts, towards the end of that period. That is a road that we ought to start on. We know very well that, with or without a pulp mill, that road is a highly used road, there is a lot of heavy traffic there and in the past, Mr President, there has been a high fatality rate there. On the part that is being bypassed in fact - I was trying to work it out the other day - there have been seven to nine deaths in the time that I have lived in the north of the State.

It is a very busy road used by a lot of traffic so we ought to be serious about what we are doing here. We were told that this money is to be expended on roads and not on administration, that all of this money is going into actual road safety so if we can be assured of that I think that that will say to people very clearly out there that you need to do it and that they will do it quite willingly because they want better roads.

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