Estimates Vote

South Australia Police, $839,077,000

Administered Items for South Australia Police, $61,000

Minister:

Hon. C.L. Wingard, Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing.

Departmental Advisers:

Mr G. Stevens, Commissioner of Police, South Australia Police.

Mr A. Rice, Chief Inspector, South Australia Police.

Mr S. Johinke, Director, Business Services, South Australia Police.

Ms E. Kokar, Executive Director, Road Marine Services, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Ms G. O'Neill, General Manager, Road Safety, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Mr B. Cagialis, Director, Finance and Risk, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

The CHAIR: Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Friday sitting of Estimates Committee A. I can advise that the following members have requested to be discharged: the members for Hammond, King, Mawson, West Torrens and Giles. They have been replaced by the members for Davenport, Finniss, Elizabeth and Playford. We have a whole new-look committee.

Ladies and gentlemen, estimates committees are a relatively informal procedure and, as such, there is no need to stand to ask or answer questions. Changes to committee membership will be notified as they occur. Members should ensure that the Chair is provided with a completed request to be discharged form. If the minister undertakes to supply information at a later date, it must be submitted to the Clerk Assistant via the answers to questions mailbox no later than Friday 5 September 2019.

I propose to allow both the minister and the lead speaker for the opposition to make opening statements of about 10 minutes should they wish. Questions must be based on lines of expenditure in the budget papers and must be identifiable or referenced. There is no formal facility for the tabling of documents before the committee; however, documents can be supplied to the Chair for distribution to the committee. All questions are to be directed to the minister and not the minister's advisers. The minister may, however, refer questions to advisers for a response.

The portfolio we are dealing with today is road safety. The minister appearing is the Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services. I declare the proposed payments open for examination. Minister, I invite you to introduce your advisers and make a brief statement if you would like to.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Thank you very much, Chair. I will not make an opening statement, but I will introduce the people I have with me, and thank you for the indulgence. On my far left, your right, is Gabby O'Neill, General Manager, Road Safety, DPTI. On my immediate left is Emma Kokar, Executive Director of Road Marine Services at DPTI. On my right is the good-looking gentleman, the Commissioner of Police, Mr Grant Stevens. Behind me, on my left, is Bill Cagialis, Director, Finance and Risk at DPTI, and Steve Johinke, Director, Business Services at SAPOL. In the third row is Adam Rice, Chief Inspector with SAPOL.

The CHAIR: There is no need to make an opening statement, minister?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, let's get on to talk about the budget.

The CHAIR: Does the member for Elizabeth wish to make a statement or get straight into questions?

Mr ODENWALDER: No, I will just ask some questions, thank you.

The CHAIR: It is your call.

Mr ODENWALDER: Minister, welcome, and welcome to your advisers. Thanks for coming. I am glad DPTI are here. I was a bit confused last year about the separation of responsibilities regarding road safety. I understand that it has become the subject of some comment. My first question, minister, is simply: why is the road toll so high this year, in your opinion? What is going on this year to make the road toll so high?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Sorry? What is the budget reference?

The CHAIR: What is the budget line?

Mr ODENWALDER: I beg your pardon. Let's try SAPOL, Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 193.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 193.

Mr ODENWALDER: Road safety.

The CHAIR: Road safety. We could try that.

Mr ODENWALDER: We will give that a go.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: And which line, sorry?

The CHAIR: It is a general question.

Mr ODENWALDER: It is a general question about road safety.

The CHAIR: And I am happy to accept that.

Mr ODENWALDER: Let's not start off on a—

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: And the question was generally about road safety?

Mr ODENWALDER: Why is the road toll so high? You are the minister responsible for it. I am just asking you why you think it is so high.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I appreciate where you are coming from. Can I start by saying that one death on our road is one death too many. If there were a magic wand that a minister could wave, I am sure that a police commissioner could wave, DPTI could wave or an opposition person could wave, you would be waving it. We had a seminar with road safety experts just a few months back. We sat down at about the halfway mark of the year, maybe a bit before, and I asked that question of the road safety experts. I am not the expert; we had the experts in the field there.

We had a discussion and I asked, 'What is the reason this year that the road toll is comparatively higher than last year? Is there one thing we are not doing? Is there an area that we are not looking at? Is there something that we are not seeing here?' To a person in the room, they all said, 'No, no there's not. There's not something that is a stand-out that me, you or anyone could be triggering to prevent this.' We just need to keep working away at the things we know, which are evidence based, that can bring down the road toll.

We know that road safety is a collective, hence the two agencies we have here. DPTI have a role in the licensing, as far as licences are concerned and as far as road infrastructure is concerned. We know that if we can make road infrastructure better and safer, we can help with that as well. We talked about car manufacturing as well. RAA were at the summit and they had plenty to say. We also talk about education: how do we better educate people? How do we make people more aware?

We have advertising campaigns, of course, partnerships and promotions that now also sit with DPTI. We want to look at how we can change behaviour and get people to do the right thing. Likewise, SAPOL have a role to play to make sure that they are out there policing and educating. Now of course they are doing the advertising arm as well. When we look across at other jurisdictions, which is something we are very conscious of doing, the trend of being higher is sadly common in other states and jurisdictions. They are actually higher than what they have been previously.

CASR is very aware that there is a differential element that will always be seen year on year. They look more over a five-year trend as opposed to a one-year trend. If we ask whether there is a magic wand or something that can fix it straightaway, no, there is not. Are we working on all those areas, as previous governments have? Absolutely; yes, we are. Have the experts identified one area where we need to do more work? No, we need to do work across right across the board.

Another thing I will note, which is an anomaly—it is not a reason: it is just a fact—is that, whilst deaths on our roads this year are up, serious injuries are down. What is the reason for that? Who knows. But for a millimetre here or there, or a foot here or there, or a few seconds here or there is the heartbreak that families experience. We are very conscious of that. We continue to work on that in a bipartisan manner, as we have in the past and will continue to do in the future. I do not think we should be political about this. I think this is something on which we should be working together to make sure we do all we can to bring down the road toll.

As I said at the outset, one death on our roads is one too many. Sadly, I have had some in my community that have been absolutely heartbreaking for people in and around my area. In speaking with SAPOL when we have our regular meetings to discuss this, I ask the question all the time: is there something we can be doing? The one point that has been noted is that a lot of the deaths could have been avoided. The incidents could have been avoided if a different decision had been made. That is something that we are very conscious of. That is why we want to address that, and push and drive behavioural change as much as ever before.

We want people to think about what they are doing when they get behind the wheel, and not be blasé—for want of a better term—or take things for granted. We want to make sure that people are thinking. When you get behind the wheel, you are responsible for yourself and the passengers in your vehicle, other people on the road and pedestrians. You are part of a much greater network. We want to make sure that the people are really thinking about what they are doing.

The commissioner has just informed me that Australian police met earlier this month, and SAPOL led discussions. SAPOL are doing their bit on their side, DPTI are doing their bit on their side and, as minister, I am pushing this as hard as I possibly can. Anywhere we can find an area to make improvements, we are looking to do that.

Mr ODENWALDER: Given the new structures following the abandonment of the Motor Accident Commission—we will get into that in a minute—what is your own role in regard to road safety campaign strategies as of 1 July this year?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: The previous government sold the Motor Accident Commission, as you would be aware. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the Motor Accident Commission because they ran CTP, as you would know. The previous government sold off that asset, and that was gone. They were then left to run just the road safety division, the advertising, the sponsorships and the like. They had a board that was paid over $300,000. From memory, Kevin Foley was one of the members up until recently—

Mr ODENWALDER: Point of order: I am happy to ask plenty of questions about the new structures and the Motor Accident Commission, but this is about your role—your role.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I will get to that. I am just explaining how it is structured and how it is set up.

The CHAIR: The point of order is about—

Mr ODENWALDER: It is bringing him back to the substance of the question.

The CHAIR: —the relevance of the minister's response.

Mr ODENWALDER: We only have half an hour on road safety.

The CHAIR: For everybody's benefit, we only have half an hour. We are down to 20 minutes on road safety. Minister, I will bring you back to the question.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I will keep it brief, then, and you can flesh out your other questions. I am the spokesperson for road safety and I am the Minister for Police, so I have the police aspects of road safety. As I mentioned, DPTI is here as well. Minister Knoll is the minister for transport, planning and infrastructure. He has responsibilities for the DPTI elements of road safety. As I said, it is a collective. It is a bigger picture.

Mr ODENWALDER: Sorry, I beg to differ, minister. Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 136 clearly states that you are responsible for the road safety elements of DPTI.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Sorry, say that again.

Mr ODENWALDER: Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 136 clearly states that you are the minister responsible for that particular program or sub-program of road safety within DPTI.

The CHAIR: Thank you for that clarification, member for Elizabeth.

Mr ODENWALDER: I am just trying to help.

The CHAIR: The minister will consider his answer to the question.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I am just finding the budget paper line that you are referring to. Could you repeat that, please?

Mr ODENWALDER: Page 136.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Page 136, Budget Paper 4, Volume 3?

Mr ODENWALDER: Yes, ministerial responsibilities or something.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: For road safety; that is right. Infrastructure planning and policy is an element of road safety, as I have talked about. Road safety goes into the planning of roads and those aspects. Roads and marine are there as well. The elements of transport projects and land use planning are with the Minister for Transport.

Mr ODENWALDER: I note what you are saying. I appreciate your fulsome answer to my first question, and I accept that road safety is a whole-of-government responsibility. What discussions have you had with other ministers—I think particularly of the Premier and the Minister for Transport—about road safety policy going forward?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I think I outlined this in some detail before, but I am happy to go over it again.

Mr ODENWALDER: I am asking particularly about any conversations with the Premier about road safety.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I will not go into the detail of what we discuss in cabinet, but road safety is discussed all the time. It is discussed across a number of portfolio areas. That is one thing about road safety: I do not think it should be the remit of one person. I think there is a collective responsibility there. I know I talk about it with all my cabinet colleagues. It is important. I think I discussed from the outset that it is really important that there is a bipartisan approach to this. In your electorate and in others' electorates, everyone has that concern for road safety. So, yes, it is discussed very broadly in a wider sense with the Premier and the other ministers, most closely, though, with the minister for planning, transport and infrastructure.

Mr ODENWALDER: Minister, are you responsible for the new advisory board that oversees the coordination of road safety?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Yes.

Mr ODENWALDER: You are the minister responsible for that committee. Can you outline the difference between the advisory board and the working group and how those two will interact? Are there terms of reference, and who will be on it? I note that you have appointed a chair; is it Jim Plouffe?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: That is correct.

Mr ODENWALDER: Is he amongst us today?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No.

Mr ODENWALDER: Why not?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Because he is not needed here. I have the head of SAPOL here and I have DPTI here as well.

Mr ODENWALDER: But you do not have the chair of the working group in charge of the responsibility for road safety promotion.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, it is a road user safety committee. It is a committee, not a board, as it has been previously. From memory, I do not—

Mr ODENWALDER: It is not a board?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, it is not. That has been made very—

Mr ODENWALDER: Okay. I am just asking questions.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I apologise. I have put out media statements. I am not sure whether you have seen them. It has been put into the public very, very clearly about how this will be set up. I am happy to go through it again with you, if you like.

Mr ODENWALDER: My question, then, is how the two groups interact. You have the advisory committee. What is it called, the committee? Then you have a working group, so who is on the working group?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: The working group that I think you are referring to, and I am not sure where you got this working group from—

Mr ODENWALDER: I think, in fairness to the commissioner, I got it from the Budget and Finance Committee.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I understand there were some questions asked there, yes.

Mr ODENWALDER: I think that is where I heard those two terms.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Again, I am happy to talk you through the process because it is a similar process to what was in place under the previous government. We now have the road user safety advisory committee, that group there, which is headed by Mr Plouffe and which has a number of other road safety experts on it.

I was starting to say before that the previous incarnation, the Motor Accident Commission Board, which, as we said, after the previous government sold off all the assets at the Motor Accident Commission, was just down to running the road safety part, was probably not the most wise spend of taxpayers' money—having a $300,000 plus board to run the road safety aspect which is sitting at around $14 million.

We have re-established this committee, which has a number of key road safety people involved to cover all aspects there to make sure that we are utilising that expertise. We have the chair, as you mentioned, who is Mr Jim Plouffe. They will be giving advice to me. Sitting below that in the departments, they have these working groups, which will funnel information in. So they can do the work, which they actually have had in place previously; and it was a previous model that was used. Under the previous government, those working groups were established.

The experts within the departments, within SAPOL, gather the data, the information, and feed that up to the advisory group. The advisory group will make assessments and feed that information through to me. As I outlined before, bear in mind that the money MAC had was hundreds of millions for running the CTP operation, which was sold off, and now we have some $12 million-odd that was spent on the advertising, the sponsorships and the partnerships.

That has been distributed across to SAPOL running the advertising arm of things, as has been very publicly identified, and DPTI running the sponsorships and partnerships, and those agreements. The funds have gone across to them to run that. We have DPTI doing that work, SAPOL doing that work, funnelling through the advisory group to me, and that is how that group will work.

Mr ODENWALDER: So does the advisory group, headed by Jim Plouffe, have the authority to make decisions in regards to road safety promotion? Is Jim Plouffe the ultimate arbiter of that—under you, of course, minister?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, very much by name it is an advisory group.

Mr ODENWALDER: It advises, for instance, the commissioner and the CE of transport, and then decisions are made?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, the commissioner and CE of transport are both on that advisory group, so they will then take the information, funnel it through to me, and a decision will be made accordingly.

Mr ODENWALDER: So who makes the decision?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I will be.

Mr ODENWALDER: You make all the decisions about road safety policy and advertising going forward?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No. To be clear, and I just stated this before, SAPOL will make their decisions around the arms they are responsible for and DPTI will make the decisions around the arms they are responsible for, but with respect to road safety policy and structure, that will come through the road safety advisory group and be funnelled through to me.

Mr ODENWALDER: So Mr Plouffe or the advisory group will not have the authority to direct resources?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No.

Mr ODENWALDER: On their own, no; okay. Have you considered the possibility of advice coming through the advisory group, which is contested or disagreed with by the commissioner, or by the CE of transport, or by the road safety units within DPTI?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I think I just outlined that the commissioner and the CE of DPTI are on the road safety advisory group, so they will be funnelling through the information. If you are asking me if there might be disagreements—

Mr ODENWALDER: Well, you can foresee that there may be disagreement within the group. Is there a voting system within the advisory group?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I need to clarify. Are you saying that there might be discussion within the road safety advisory group about different ideas and different concepts?

Mr ODENWALDER: Well, yes, that's right, and there may be strong disagreement about which direction to take. How would that disagreement be resolved?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Just to clarify, you are saying to me: will the road safety advisory group have discussions and conversations around what policy direction or issues might be taken going forward? Yes, they will have discussions about that and, yes, they will share them, and it will be filtered through to me to say, 'This was the majority decision,' and if there is dissent that will be made clear.

I point out as well that at the end of the Motor Accident Commission, when your side was in government, the commissioner was on the board of the Motor Accident Commission, so he had a say at the same level, so it is very similar. Yes, the advisory committee I hope will discuss, flesh out and talk about policy directions and what will be good and what will not be good, and that information will be fed through to me. That is exactly how it is designed.

Mr ODENWALDER: The difference between the new arrangements and the previous arrangements, though, as you just said, is that, while the commissioner was on the committee that steered the board of the Motor Accident Commission, ultimately the Motor Accident Commission was independent of government and it made decisions and it made spending decisions. Now SAPOL and DPTI are making those decisions. I am just asking you if there is a potential for conflict.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Fundamentally, to be clear, the advisory group, with its key people on board, will funnel information through. SAPOL will take that advice on board when they make their decisions. DPTI will, likewise, do the same thing. I think what we have fundamentally done here—and it may be a point that I need to be clear on, and I apologise if I have not explained it—is that with the MAC being sold off what we had in the past was the treasurer responsible for MAC, the minister for police responsible for the policing side of road safety and the minister for road transport responsible for the DPTI side of road safety.

We have fundamentally just lost one of those arms, so we have made it even simpler and clearer that the responsibility and the roles, as we have been outlining here in this committee, sit with SAPOL and DPTI, with me as the spokesperson out the front aligned with SAPOL, and then with the Minister for Transport also heavily involved from the DPTI perspective.

Mr ODENWALDER: Has the police commissioner approached you for extra resources regarding road safety communication?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Sorry, I missed that; can you repeat it?

Mr ODENWALDER: Has the commissioner approached you for extra resources in order to fulfil the new role in road safety?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Yes, extra resources—I can give you the detail, if you like.

Mr ODENWALDER: Yes, the detailed split between SAPOL and DPTI would be good.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Within the split—and this is the shell that was left in MAC after the previous government sold it off—in the funds that went to DPTI there were two FTE roles that went with that as well. I think I have already outlined it but, just to be clear, they were for data analytics, administration, policy and research through CASA, the major and minor partnerships and also administrative support of the road user safety advisory committee. As I mentioned, there are two FTE roles to support the functions of the committee and the ongoing sponsorship and partnership arrangements.

From SAPOL's point of view, they will pick up the road safety advertising campaigns, the digital communication and media campaign evaluation, as I think I have outlined as well. With that came six FTE roles to support the functions of campaigns, digital communications and media and the evaluation of those campaigns. SAPOL will also be responsible for the schoolies component, the Encounter Youth arrangement that is in place there. That has been very positive and they will continue to run it through SAPOL.

Mr ODENWALDER: Yes, that is good. So there are eight FTEs in total, then, spread across DPTI and SAPOL. Were any of those people from the previous Motor Accident Commission taken on?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Have they come across from the Motor Accident Commission, any of those eight?

Mr ODENWALDER: Yes.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I am informed that four of the six who came to SAPOL came from the Motor Accident Commission and none of the FTEs who went to DPTI came from the previous Motor Accident Commission.

Mr ODENWALDER: We will go to those sponsorships, then. Presumably that is under the DPTI line, Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 142. If I understand what you have been saying correctly, those sponsorships—apart from schoolies, as we have already discussed—

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Sorry, what page was that?

Mr ODENWALDER: Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 142, DPTI, road safety. Can you reassure the RAA that their Street Smart High and Street Smart Primary programs, which were funded through the Motor Accident Commission, will continue to be funded beyond 30 June 2020?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I think the Treasurer made it very clear in the budget papers that all those programs were funded until 2020. We will discuss that with all the people involved, and we will go through those, as we want to make sure we are getting good bang for our buck. I have been to a couple of those RAA events, and we will very much have a look at what they want to do going forward and how we go forward. However, in the transition they will all be assessed by DPTI. We will look at those—

Mr ODENWALDER: So you cannot guarantee beyond June 2020?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: No, the guarantee has been made until June 2020.

Mr ODENWALDER: Does the same thing apply to the Road Awareness Program that the MFS runs?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: As far as I am aware, that is the date the firm commitment has been made to. The Road Safety Advisory Council will funnel information back and we will make decisions on those going forward. All the funding allocated to those programs has been committed to by the Treasurer, so the funding—

Mr ODENWALDER: This year?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Just to explain, the quantum is guaranteed going forward. Like any program—

Mr ODENWALDER: Beyond 2020?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Yes; like any program, though, it will be reassessed. We may look to expand it; anything could happen there. Someone may not want to run the program anymore. Again, I will take advice from SAPOL and DPTI and the advisory group to say, 'This is a program that's working really well.' I know you know the RAP program as well, a great program. I was at Westminster School just recently witnessing it for myself, and it has a great impact.

All these programs are great. Am I the expert to evaluate them and say what could be better and what may not be? No. It probably goes back to the first question you asked when we sat down here: what are we doing and what can we do better? I will always evaluate and always look at and take advice from our new committee to get the best outcomes for road safety. If something better comes along, we will definitely have a look at that, and if something is not working as well as it should be we will have a look at that too.

The quantum is guaranteed, and I think the Treasurer made that abundantly clear in his estimates. All the programs that are in play are there until the end of June 2020, and we will assess from there and also assess them along the way.

Mr ODENWALDER: On the same budget line, page 142, DPTI is responsible for road safety. Do you agree with the Treasurer's comments made on 26 April to the ABC? He said—and I paraphrase—there is evidence, and road safety experts agree, that the one thing you can do to improve road safety is to reduce speeds in the community.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Sorry, who said that and when?

Mr ODENWALDER: The Treasurer said that on 26 April on the ABC. Would you agree with the general proposition that there is evidence, and road safety experts would argue, that the one thing you could do to improve road safety is to lower speed limits?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I do not know the context you are referring to as far as the radio interview, and I do not know what was said in preface. In simple terms, the Treasurer would be right if he said that if you are driving a car at 3 km/h you are going to be far safer than driving it at 100 km/h. I do not think anyone would disagree with that. What we want—and I think I made this really clear, from a road safety perspective, right from the outset—is to have that suite of road safety measures being the best it can possibly be. We know that freight has to move across the country, and we understand that people have to move across the state and through our regions.

We know that there has been a massive underspend that we inherited from the previous government as far as the standard of roads is concerned, and that is why we put billions of dollars into upgrading our roads right across the state. We think this is really important. It has been a big feature of what the Minister for Transport has been pushing out there. A safer road system actually makes our roads safer. So it is a collective.

We know that road shoulders, overtaking lanes and these sorts of things add a great deal of safety to our road infrastructure. We know that policing and making sure that people are sticking to the speed limit are important. It is not safe to think that you can do just a few kilometres over the speed limit and be safe; it is not a safe speed. A speed limit is set for a purpose and a reality. So many people see a speed limit and think, 'I can go 10 or 15 per cent over, and everything is okay.' It is not. A speed limit is posted on a road because that is the maximum speed that the experts suggest you should be doing on that road. So it is a suite of things.

What you were referring to in regard to what the Treasurer said, again, I do not know the context, but, very simplistically, if a car is doing 3 km/h or 100 km/h, there is going to be a difference if you have a collision; there is no doubt about that.

The CHAIR: Member for Elizabeth, we have reached the allotted time.

Mr ODENWALDER: Thank you.

The CHAIR: Given that, I declare the examination of the proposed payments for road safety to be completed.