Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

We have hit peak hubris. The fact that those opposite wouldn't present the minister for consideration in detail on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024 is evidence of peak hubris. But it is worse than that because I have come here to talk about road safety. Given what has happened on the weekend, the fact that the minister is not here is not only peak hubris but disrespectful. Quarterly road fatalities increased by 3.7 per cent from the December 2022 quarter to the March 2023 quarter. In the 12 months to March 2023 road death increased in our nation by 5.9 per cent compared to the previous 12 months. Let us put that in raw numbers: that is 67 additional lives lost over that 12-month period—additional lives lost. Devastatingly, of course, we have lost many more since. These figures are sobering. Every road death is tragic. It is not just a number; it is a family member, a partner, a friend, a child, a parent, a member of the local community. The statistics are important, but so is data about how we design the path forward. Numbers tell stories, and these stories guide policy formation in this place—or at least they should—in order that we might bring the numbers down. If the numbers are going up, the policy settings are clearly not right, and we need to look at relevant specific data to understand how we might be able to change that tragic trajectory to save lives.

Australia's National road safety strategy 2021-2030 sets out Australia's ambition to reduce annual road fatalities by at least 50 per cent by 2030, but, without in-depth analysis of the causes of crashes, we have little hope of implementing the most effective interventions needed to even come close to achieving this target. We need data regarding serious injuries, road quality, crash causes, and details regarding people and cars involved to assist us in knowing where and how to target road safety initiatives. The AAA managing director, Michael Bradley, knows this. So do his AAA members. They, of course, are the NRMA, RACV, RACQ, RAA, RAC, RACT and AANT. Michael said:

It is not enough to know how many people were killed in road crashes—we also need to know how they were killed, and how to prevent these deaths in the future.

It's also fair that Australians should be satisfied that the investment in the national road network is being made where it's needed. Road deaths are rising, and those opposite are reluctant to ensure data is collected and reported in a transparent way to inform road infrastructure investment.

The Commonwealth's failure to facilitate the timely, consistent and open reporting of national road safety data is impeding Australia quantifying its road safety problem, developing evidence based responses or evaluating their effectiveness. It's not credible that, during the height of the pandemic, COVID data was published daily regarding infection numbers, vaccine rates, gender, age and location of hospitalisations, yet data failings, it is said, prevent us from knowing how many Australians are injured in road crashes each year and what factors led to those.

My question to the minister, if she were here, is: what reassurance can the government give that the funding allocated to road safety in the budget will actually deliver road safety outcomes? The second question I ask is: how will the government quantify the road safety task in our nation and how will the government develop evidence based responses and evaluate the effectiveness of those responses? Noting the current National Partnership Agreement on Land Transport Infrastructure Projects is due to expire on 30 June 2024, will the government leverage the significant land transport infrastructure funding it provides states and territories to incentivise the provision of priority road safety data as a condition of funding? Finally, the Road Safety Program is the only program that specifically requires states and territories to provide specific road safety data as a condition of family. How many states and territories have provided this data, and has funding been withheld for projects in those jurisdictions that refuse to provide this data? Those are the questions for the minister if she were here.

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