Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on this motion today on motor sports, and I commend both the member for Solomon and the member for Forde for establishing the Parliamentary Friends of Motorsports group. There is nothing more Australian than motor sports. Also I'd like to acknowledge the presence of other motor sport enthusiasts in the chamber, the member for McEwen and the member for Hasluck—particularly the member for Hasluck, who has a far more esteemed and successful on-track motorcycle record than me. I broke my neck in 2021 at Lakeside race track at a series of corners called the bus stop—apparently that's because everyone gets off there! Anyway, I can't remember much of it, but I lived to tell the story.

Motor sport is very important in this country. As has been said, nearly 200,000 Australians every week engage in some form of motor sport, and that covers all ages. It covers genders. It covers everything. Everyone gets involved when it comes to motor sport. Not only is it such an inclusive area for us as citizens but also, as has been mentioned, it's a great driver of the economy, with $8.6 billion being injected into the economy.

I said there's nothing more Australian than motor sport, and it makes me think about my growing up in Australia in the 1980s, when it was Wayne Gardner on an absolutely maniacal 500cc machine. How anyone rode them, I don't know, but he did it for us, and the nation rode with him when he won his world championship. Then in the nineties we had the incredible Mick Doohan, who followed that through to the four-strokes and to the modern era of Jack Miller and KTM, formerly on Ducati. We've ridden the highs and lows of Australian motor sport.

More than 20 years ago I was a big fan of a fellow called Andy Caldecott. He was an off-road racer of motorbikes, an Australian legend. He won the Australian Safari four times and was a place getter in the Paris to Dakar on motorbikes. I used to wake up every morning to see where Andy had got in the placings. He won a couple of stages. I'll never forget the morning I woke up and heard that unfortunately Andy had lost his life in the race. It was sad. But that's motor sport. It's an expression of freedom. It does come with its risks, but there is a lot more good that comes from motor sport than bad. I say that particularly in that so much of what we rely on today in our motorcars is derived from motor sport. I mention Andy for that reason. Yes, people will tell you it's dangerous. But when you think about tyre technology and when you think about suspension and traction control, you think about what saves us every day. Most of it has been refined in motor sport and has then come down to the everyday road user.

It's a great proving ground, a great place for kids to learn vehicle dynamics. And as with so many areas in life, you find that the kids who have learnt to ride fast on a track don't ride fast on the road. They know that the place to do that is on the track, where the conditions suit what you're doing and all the safety precautions are taken, and they know that. As a former accident investigator who has seen too much death and carnage on the roads, I know that motor sport contributes to lowering the road toll. And if we're to continue with our goal to reaching zero fatalities, motor sport will play a big part in that.

With that, I will say, long live the combustion engine, and well done to everyone who promotes motor sport in this fine nation of ours. And well done to the member for Forde and the member for Solomon for creating the Parliamentary Friends of Motorsports group.

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