House debates

Monday, 21 October 2019

Private Members' Business

Black Spot Program

6:07 pm

Photo of Tony PasinTony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to begin by congratulating the member for Wide Bay. He's someone who comes to this place with, let's say, some real rubber left on the road when it comes to this motion. He's a man who was involved with the police force, who was very often required to deliver tragic news to loved ones following road accidents. He's someone who is really passionate about road safety, and not just this motion but his behaviour in the party room and in this place generally is proof positive of that. He and I are both chairs of our respective state's black spot committees, a position I am very much honoured to hold, and it's one which calls upon us once a year to sit with various stakeholders in a very constructive, collaborative meeting where we determine allocation of this funding.

If I can go to the point the member for Gilmore made in error at the end of her contribution: I'm sure she didn't intend to suggest our government wasn't allocating funding to the Black Spot Program. In fact, funding to this program is a billion dollars over 10 years, and this year's annual funding goes from $60 million to $110 million, an increase of $50 million. She did point out that there's been an underspend. There's an underspend because this funding is provided to state governments, who go about undertaking the works, and in some cases, sadly, this work is not being done on the ground. There's no issue in terms of the allocation of these funds. The projects are funded, and I see it in the work I do in the black spot committee in South Australia. I have been incredibly disappointed with respect to one project, at Holder Top Road in Waikerie, which took not one but two years to break ground after we had approved the improvement of a dangerous intersection. That's where this issue is. Quite frankly, to point this out is really just to go and find statistical politicking and point-scoring. It's not becoming, quite frankly, in this debate. Nobody in this place wants to put Australians in harm's way in any endeavour. In fact, if it relates to road safety, I think we can all say across any aisle that it is a multiparty intention in this place to make road safety a very high priority. Of course, as a government, we're doing that not just in relation to the Black Spot Program; there's $100 billion worth of infrastructure projects being rolled out.

In preparation for this contribution, I asked for details of total federal government expenditure on the road network in my electorate since I had the privilege of being elected the member for Barker. I can tell the constituents of Barker that since I was elected in 2013 over $990 million has been expended on the road networks across my electorate. Almost $1 billion has come in to improve the road networks of Barker or is slated in the forward estimates to do so. I can point to $200 billion for the Princes Highway and $70 million for the Renmark-to-Gawler section of the Sturt Highway. That is considerable funding in terms of the Black Spot Program. But, rather than spending this time highlighting each and every one of those projects, I can say, as someone who drives 100,000 kilometres in my electorate, that we need to do more. Governments need to do more. Local governments need to do more, state governments need to do more, and the federal government needs to continue to make a significant contribution.

I conducted over 40 community meetings during the course of the last year or so, and in all those community meetings I asked constituents: 'If there were one thing you could do to your road network to make it safer, what would you do?' On balance, we came to the resolution in each of those meetings that they wanted to see wider roads. Wider roads are safer roads, and I'm talking in particular now of a country electorate like mine. So over time I'd like to see us undertake a serious program of road widening across my electorate and, indeed, across all of our rural electorates. We know that it costs about $100,000 per kilometre to widen a road. That's a small fraction of the cost of resurfacing a road, and it has a significant impact in terms of reducing likely road fatalities. I commend this motion to this place.

Comments

No comments