Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I'm glad that road safety is a bipartisan issue. I thank and praise those members who have shared stories of loved ones and communities to remind us of the importance of road safety right across our country. I do find some of the premise of this debate a little disingenuous because, of course, in our most recent federal budget we as a government have committed $21 million for a national road safety data hub to support enhanced evidence based road safety strategies to eliminate road trauma by 2050. We are also working in collaboration with the states and territories in the collection of road safety data, which I note that those opposite have said they'd like to see, and we are actually getting it done.

We have, in a historic first, signed every single state and territory government in Australia on to the intergovernmental road safety data sharing agreement. It seems to be, essentially, what this motion is asking for and something the Albanese Labor government is working to deliver. I really hope that the motivation here in an important motion on road safety data is not to score political points, because that would be a great shame. Road safety is and should always be beyond politics. Road safety is about saving lives and preventing serious injuries, and we have consistently prioritised road safety in government.

When we came into government there was no finalised road safety action plan. The former coalition government did not bother to finalise a road safety action plan. Their neglect led to a two-year delay in crucial work on data sharing, collection and reporting. Since we have been in government, we have been implementing the National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 underpinned by the National Road Safety Action Plan 2023–2025 in collaboration with all states, territories and local governments.

A key action under this plan is for road safety data to be efficiently exchanged and published. All states and territories have agreed to this plan and have signed on to share their road safety data, ensuring a nationally consistent dataset. This is a vital step forward in improving road safety and is something that the Albanese government has been working tirelessly to achieve. All of this work is pivotal towards harmonising, collecting, storing and sharing road safety datasets.

Every single death on Australian roads is a great tragedy. The Albanese government is committed to working with all levels of government to reduce Australia's road toll and work towards Vision Zero—that is, zero fatalities and zero serious injuries on our roads by 2050. This is ambitious, and we take this work very seriously. In response to a worsening road toll, we held a national road safety conference in April this year, bringing together more than 100 road safety stakeholders, to identify a range of government and industry actions that can target the road toll. This conference also included the first joint meeting between police and road safety ministers, and a set of actions to target the road toll was endorsed there. In this year's budget, we have doubled the Roads to Recovery funding, from $500 million to $1 billion in a year. We've also increased the funding for the blackspot program, which is progressively rising from $110 million to $150 million per year.

Road safety is a shared responsibility across all levels of government and the community, and it really matters to our communities. Our government will continue our work investing in evidence-based road safety measures, because we know how important this is and we take community safety seriously.

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