Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously, our commiserations go to those people in Queensland battling the storm. But today I want to speak about the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety. Today we convened in room 2S1 and conducted an awareness campaign in respect of road safety. We invited members of the coalition and the other parties in the parliament to come and make a pledge. Mr Llew O'Brien, the member for Wide Bay, is the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety. I want to acknowledge the work of a number of groups. One is the Australian Road Safety Foundation, with Russell White as its CEO. Donna Caley and Ariana Panettiere are also involved in the foundation, and its partner groups are Caltex and Suncorp. They are backing the Fatality Free Friday campaign, which is on 26 May. Since its inception in 2007, the Fatality Free Friday campaign has continued to expand its operation and is now recognised as Australia's only national community based road safety program. It has successfully fostered community ownership; it raises complex road safety issues; and it encourages those who can make a significant difference in reducing road trauma to do so. The campaign is more than just a single day. Its target is to have a Fatality Free Friday, and, ultimately, longer term community change. It is just one of the active groups in road safety.

Another active group in road safety is the SARAH Group. Peter Frazer, the president and founder of the SARAH Group, has made a personal tragedy into a campaign for road safety. He has done a fantastic job in bringing greater awareness of road safety. Their pledge is:

Drive as if my loved ones are on the road ahead;

Remove distractions, and never us my smartphone while at the wheel; and

I will be aware of, and take care of, vulnerable road users around me.

The SARAH Group is extremely active. They believe that each person's life is precious and can therefore never be ethically traded against traffic mobility. No person should be placed in harm's way simply because of poor policy, poor planning, poor maintenance or poor procedures. Each of us must strive to actively protect other road users, especially those road users involved in or assisting at a crash, breakdown or other incident. This is another really grassroots group promoting road safety. Mr Frazer informed me today that the New South Wales government will light up the Sydney Harbour Bridge in yellow for the National Road Safety Week and for the UN Global Road Safety Week starting on 7 May.

Another very active group in road safety is the Australian College of Road Safety led by Lachlan McIntosh, the president, and Claire Howe, the executive officer. They have put together a submission to all federal parliamentarians. Given your former career, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, these stats will come as no surprise to you. Twenty-five people die each week due to road accidents. There are 700 injuries. Each year the estimated cost to the economy is in excess of $32 billion. The Australian College of Road Safety makes a number of points. The first point is that the Australian College of Road Safety calls on all federal parliamentarians to unanimously reject the current increasing rate of road death and injury and commit to the ultimate goal of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries. The second point is that the Australian College of Road Safety calls on the federal government to task the Productivity Commission with undertaking a full inquiry into the impact of road trauma on Australia's productivity and the national investment of policy decisions required to achieve the nation's policy goals of safe road transport systems. The third point is that the Australian College of Road Safety calls on the federal government to make the publication of targeted safety star ratings on national road networks a condition of Commonwealth investment in the network from 2017-18 onwards and to undertake a full policy review in 2017-18 on how to leverage greater safety results from the current investment in road transport.

The final point, which I am going to expand upon, is: ensure all new vehicles—cars, vans, motorcycles, buses and trucks—are equipped with the world's best practice safety technology and meet world practice crash worthiness. The reality is that imported cars to Australia have safety features removed. They need to be in place if they go into the European Union or the United States but, because we are in Asia and we import cars, they despec them, essentially.

One of those pieces of technology is autonomous breaking technology. The chilling reality is that a couple of the terrorist catastrophes or the like in Europe involved trucks. One was fitted with autonomous breaking technology and that mitigated the disaster; it mitigated the number of people that that terrorist could run over. The other truck was not fitted with autonomous breaking technology and the casualties were five times greater.

We have a technology that stops people from running into each other and running over each other. It is mandatory in the US. It is mandatory in the European Union. But in Australia we have not made it mandatory. That is an absolute policy failing. There should not be any difference between any party in this parliament on road safety. We all use the roads. We share the roads with our families and we share the roads with other Australians. We all want to get home safely at night. Why is there not a policy imperative here? This is technology that the best placed great safety investigators are saying works.

We will no longer make motor cars in Australia at the end of, probably, this year. The last manufacturing plant will close. There is no impediment to legislate to ensure that all Australians are given the opportunity to drive the safest cars in the world. Autonomous breaking technology and lane-assist functions are two well-researched and well-established and mandated technologies in the European Union and the US, which should be in place in Australia. If they were in place in Australia they would reduce the 25 deaths per week. They would reduce the 700 injuries per week.

It is an absolute mystery to me why our department of transport and ministers—of both sides—have not acted on this. I think the Hon. Darren Chester is an excellent minister. He is a person who listens to people in the road safety area but I do not see any action. If the boot were on the other foot and the Hon. Anthony Albanese were the minister, I would have no hesitation in saying exactly the same things I am saying now. We need to mandate these proven technologies to save Australian lives, to stop Australians from being injured, to give some relief to those emergency services people who Senator Macdonald spoke about so eloquently. They would not need to be out every day and every night on the weekends picking people up off the streets in car accidents that could have been avoided.

This technology should be mandated. The department should be moving to do this, and there is no impediment that I can see. The Australian manufacturers may not have been able to comply with this requirement, but they are not even going to be here. We will import and sell a million cars a year, in Australia, each year—over a million cars—and we have the capability, if we mandate this technology, to get into the second-hand car market, because if the major fleet buyers insist on it they transition to the second-hand car market and we will rejuvenate the fleet in Australia.

There are states, like my own state, where the vehicle fleet is older, but we know that electronic stability control has now penetrated right down. ABS has also penetrated right down. If we have autonomous breaking technology and lane assist we will be doing smart stuff in the 21st century. We deserve it. Every road user deserves it, and the most vulnerable road users deserve it. Some of the cars marketed at the lower end, in the $20,000 or $23,000 price range, like the VW Golf—and that is not an ad for VW—have autonomous breaking technology, so your most vulnerable users, the P-platers and the like, will be protected from that moment of inattention or distraction and will not have an incident involving injury or death.