MOTOR VEHICLES (LEARNER'S PERMITS AND PROVISIONAL LICENCES) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (16:34): I continue my remarks from before lunchtime today in regard to this bill. The main part of the debate that I had been talking about previous to the lunch break was the increase in time to be on P-plates. The point I was making was essentially that by the time you have got your learner's, and if you get your learner's as soon as you become 16, you can have a year of that and then you can have two years of P-plates. My comments were that if you cannot drive after three years, God help you if you think it is going to take four years to be able to drive appropriately. I think our opposition to that part of the bill is absolutely spot on, but I will go on to other provisions of the bill.

It will restrict P1 drivers to carrying only one passenger and there will be exemptions made for family members and when a fully-licensed driver is a passenger. Then we get to the other part that we do not agree with on this side of the house, which is about the curfew for P1 drivers from 12am to 5am. We are told that you can have exemptions for employment, training, formal volunteering and formal sports. As the member for Bragg quite accurately said, you will have to drive around in your car with either a glove box or a toolbox in the back full of all the exemption forms, just to be able to go about your daily duties.

The simple fact is that, in country areas, people can travel significant distances to get to work and their sport. Certainly in some of our basketball, netball and football leagues, you can travel well over 100 kilometres in my area, and I know that in the member for Stuart's area they would be a lot further. Hundreds of kilometres are driven on weekends and that is just for the sporting activities; then they have to turn around to get home from their sporting activities.

Certainly in regard to work, it is not unusual for many people in my electorate to have to travel somewhere between 50 and 100 kilometres, and that is something that a lot of people do every day. There are people who work at all hours now. We do not live in an 8 to 5 or a 9 to 5 world; we very much live in a 24-hour world. Certainly throughout my electorate, there are the obvious jobs at some of the eateries. We have KFC and McDonald's and there are plenty of others in the area that employ people who would have this licence category—young members of society—who need to get to work and get home.

Not only that, a lot of night work goes on. A lot of people on dryland farms are working tractors sometimes throughout the night, whether it be at seeding time or harvesters at harvest time. If you get a good night and you get a good run and the moisture is right, you can reap all night. Also, in the same vein, there are many hundreds of people who are involved in the vine industry, getting to work during the vintage. Obviously most of the grapes are picked in the late afternoon and through the night, so there is another example.

Many people who have to operate the grape harvesters, truck drivers, and obviously the people driving the bins that the grapes are picked into in the vineyards—what we in dryland farming call chaser bins—will have to operate all night and these people will be going home and moving up and down the roads during the hours of this proposed curfew. Quite frankly it is just unworkable. It will become a bureaucratic nightmare, and people will have to have a swathe of documents on them so that they do not break the law.

There are also points about bringing forward the hazard perception test from the P1-P2 stage to the learners P1 stage. This will effectively reduce the number of times that people have to attend a Service SA centre and it can certainly get interesting just attending a Service SA centre at times. Another part of the bill provides for the removal of regression to a previous licence stage.

Around motorcyclists, what the bill is aiming for is that learner motorcyclists will be knocked out with the curfew provision. I have already said that we are against the curfew provision in the bill. Previous speakers earlier today have talked about the statistics and they certainly indicate that between 12am and 5am fatalities have dropped off to the point where there are actually zero up to August in 2013, and that is a great result. It is sad to lose anyone on our roads. Further statistics provided by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure show that more crashes involving P-plate drivers actually occur in the evening, before midnight. The department has admitted that that bit is impractical, as you would need a truckload of exemption notices at that stage.

In general, in regards to driving and what we need to look at in this state, people talk about road conditions. Sadly, we see again the department looking at bringing down the speed limit on more roads to 100 km/h. Other members have brought up today, as I know the member for Schubert did, the fact that many of us regional members travel a minimum of 60,000 kilometres a year.

I know that in my busiest year in this role I was up well into the 70,000-odd kilometres, and I think that the member for Stuart would drive a lot more than that to get around his electorate. Quite frankly, we are not driving EH Holdens anymore. We are driving very, very good motor vehicles with our work. It is a real privilege to have access to these vehicles, I must say, and we pay our lease arrangements on them.

There are roads throughout my electorate that are reduced to 100 km/h and, quite frankly, it is ridiculous. There are roads just outside of my electorate heading up through to Gawler, through the back of the Palmer, and places like that, up the back of Mount Pleasant, where speed is reduced to 80 kilometres for very, very long sections of road. It will not be very much longer that in this place we will be legislating to have a man with a red flag walking in front of our vehicles.

Mrs Redmond: There'll be no road deaths.

Mr PEDERICK: Yes; there won't road deaths, but people will be dead from boredom. It is just getting ridiculous. The problem we have in this state is that the state Labor government has not spent the funding on these roads to keep them up to the necessary standards. It is pretty easy for the department to get around and say, 'Oh, these roads don't match 110 km/h anymore; we'll just reduce the speed limit.' Well, it is just madness—just spend some money on the roads.

The member for Schubert talked about the Dukes Highway, and I have talked about the Dukes Highway many times in this place. I have also talked about the absolute madness where $100 million has been spent on putting a 1.2 metre section in the middle of the road between Tailem Bend most of the way down through towards Coonalpyn and Tintinara. It is just crazy. Yes, there were some more overtaking lanes, and, yes, that makes it better, but that $100 million would have put in 20 to 30 kilometres of dual lane.

Yes, I will make a point and note my interest. I live at Coomandook, which is about 40 kilometres south-east of Tailem Bend, and it would have benefited me greatly. It is just a waste of money to put in these band-aid solutions, spending $80 million of federal money and $20 million of state money on something that is just a band-aid, when over time we will need to duplicate that highway. I am sure other members will bring up many other roads around the place that need work on them.

In regard to road conditions, there are some issues around native vegetation and its removal. I do not want to see blanket clearing of native vegetation, but we have seen some instances where overtaking lanes have been put in terrible positions, on corners, because a few trees would have had to be removed if the lanes were put on the straights. I can name one just south-east of Ki Ki that has claimed many lives, and one life is one life too many.

I believe it is partly because of where the overtaking lane is located: it is right on a bend. People are a bit confused, late at night—it could be any time of the day; they could be a bit dozy in the mid-afternoon—and next thing there is an accident because people do not realise you have a merging lane and they run into the front of a truck, and there is only one way from there.

In regard to things like our mining industry in this state, I hear the mining minister talk long and loud about the benefits of the Cooper Basin. Yes, the Cooper Basin is a great place—I worked there 30 years ago—but the problem is access to it. I wonder how much work we are losing because of the state of the Strzelecki Track. It is an absolute disgrace when you compare it to the road from Queensland. The Queensland side is virtually bitumen all the way to the border near Innamincka, bar about 20 or 30 kilometres. I can imagine how many regional jobs we are losing because service companies like Halliburton and others in the Cooper Basin believe it is rattling their equipment too much to take it down the Strzelecki Track, so they are bringing staff and equipment through from the Queensland side.

I will look at how people have gained their licence over time. My 93-year-old father certainly had some health tests for his driving licence, which are compulsory when you get a bit older, but he has never had a driving test in his life. When he first got his licence he just wrote in, applied for it and they posted it out. He has had a pretty successful driving career until he decided on his own advice to give up his car and forfeit his licence. Over time things have changed. Back in the late 1970s we only had to get a learner's permit for a little while and then we would go down, do a quick run around the block with the local police officer at Coonalpyn and you would have your driver's licence.

I think that things have improved, in that people do need to do more to make sure they can drive appropriately. However, as I said earlier in my contribution, on the land we learn to drive at a very early age and it becomes almost natural by the time you are 16 and get out on the road. There is more than can be done with respect to driver training. Bob Weir and his group from Murray Bridge came to me and said, 'We've got this great plan.' I have had a look at the site where they want to have a driver training centre in Murray Bridge. I wrote to minister O'Brien to see if I could get some money for a scoping study for this projected driver training centre and, sadly, we were not able to get any funds, but there are certainly good people who have the right idea in advocating for driver training in the area.

In that regard, we have the Tailem Bend Motorsport Park, which is land that the Coorong council currently owns. Thirty years ago it was a drag strip when it first came into being. There are many events held out there. I know there are a lot of sporting motoring events held out there, like drifting and that kind of thing, but there is also a lot of driver training. I know the police do some driver training down there and I know there are groups from Queensland who come down to do driver training, and the Tailem Bend Motorsport Park is to be commended for the facilities that it is supplying.

I know the Tailem Bend Motorsport Park is currently undergoing a sale process through the Coorong council and expressions of interest went in the other day and over the last couple of weeks. I know they will be scrutinised in the next couple of weeks to find out who the successful bidder is to buy that large section of land. They have over 600 hectares there and it will be a great venue if it comes to its full potential, but it will need a massive investment of up to about $40 million to bring everything into play that could be brought into play at that park.

At the end of the day we do need to make sure that people in the bush especially are not put offside by legislation that is completely unworkable. In the city, in most areas—and not all, I must say—there is access to public transport, but that is not that reliable either, as we have seen recently. In the country, we just do not have that access. We get buses out to Mount Barker, which I think go about once every hour, and that is a great thing, but you do not have to go that much further down the freeway to Murray Bridge and there is no public transport there.

If you go out the south side towards the other end of my electorate, towards Goolwa and Victor Harbor in the member for Finniss's electorate, there is no public transport there. What do these people do if they have a job where they have to run into Adelaide or even travel distances throughout the electorate? They might be running through to Strathalbyn, Goolwa, Victor Harbor, Murray Bridge or Tailem Bend. Certainly, there are other people in my electorate who are out in the potato growing area at Pinnaroo, Parilla, Lameroo and Peebinga—all those areas where people do not work standard hours.

This is something that the government needs to address, and that is why we are opposing the issue of curfews in this bill. I think there are far more sensible things that can be done, and I certainly endorse my previous remarks: if you cannot drive within three years of getting your learner's permit and your Ps, I think there is a real problem; you probably should not be driving at all.

That is not to say that people do not get the appropriate driver training. I appreciate that things have tightened up since a lot of us got our licences many years ago. A licence is a privilege, and it should be treated as such, but we must do the right thing so that we do not completely stall the economy, where we have people basically having to go on unemployment benefits because they cannot get to work; that is what parts of this bill will do.

If we cannot get our young people and our children into work, next they will lose their drive and become a drain on our community forever, and that is the last thing we want. I endorse most parts of this bill and I look forward to the rest of the debate, but I would like the government to certainly take notice of our amendments.

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (16:51): It is my pleasure to speak for a few moments on the Motor Vehicles (Learner's Permits and Provisional Licences) Amendment Bill. Although I agree with a lot of the comments made by some of my colleagues about the nature of the spend on road and road maintenance in this state contributing to the situation with our road toll, I will restrict my comments to the objects of the bill, which relate to the licensing, particularly of young people, in this state.

The member for Hammond just reminded me about his father getting his licence at a very young age, and I know that my father (who was born in 1917 and sadly is no longer with us) got his licence at the age of 14, and the police officer who took him for his test—this was in Sydney—did not actually have his licence. So, times have definitely changed.

At the other end of the spectrum, where I have now been through the stage of not only getting my licence but then my children getting their licences, I read in the paper recently that there is an increasing trend towards young people not actually getting their licences. For most of us in this chamber, it was probably part of the rite of passage of coming of age that we did get our licences, and it was considered quite normal. Now, with more youngsters living, working and playing in the city, as my second son does—although he does drive—many people in that circumstance find that they do not need a licence.

I had one young man in my electorate who, as a volunteer with the CFS over a number of years, had attended so many fatalities that even in his 20s he was just not prepared to get his licence because he had had to take so many dead or badly injured young people out of so many wrecks that he decided it was not worthwhile to get his licence, at least at that stage.

In relation to licensing, when I graduated with my licence, there was no such thing as a P-plate (which probably says something about how old I am). We have introduced those special requirements because of a perceived risk either to the young people themselves or to other road users because of the behaviour of young people.

It was certainly the case that there was a very distinct increase in the range and severity of accidents as we had more and more young people with access to high-speed motor vehicles—which we did not all have when we were young people—and managing to get themselves into enormously terrifying situations. They can happen in a blink of an eye, and young people can lose their lives or become maimed or injured, or indeed take the life of a friend or someone they do not know.

There is no doubt that there was plenty of statistical evidence to show that there was a need to do something about these drivers. Members may remember that, before I came into this place, I was on the Road Safety Advisory Council of this state for almost 10 years. The evidence, as I recall it, internationally was to the effect that it did not much matter what age the requirement was for you to get your licence; it was more a matter of the major number of accidents, and that bulk in accidents occurring within the first few years that you had your licence.

So, it did not matter much whether it was in North Dakota where, the last time I was there, which was about 10 years ago, you could get your licence at the age of 14 still, and they had an interstate motor vehicle speed limit on their interstate highways of 75 miles an hour. This is a state that is snow covered for six months of the year, so it is a wonder that any of their young people survive. The evidence was that it was the first few years of having your licence that put you at risk. It did not matter whether you were getting it at 14, 17 or 19; it was the inexperience that was telling.

I am all in favour of us addressing issues where there is evidence-based reason to proceed to make specific requirements upon particular groups of drivers, whether they be young, old, middle-aged or whatever. The problem for me with some of this proposed legislation in this particular bill is that it is not evidence based and the fact is that what we are doing is punishing all young people to actually do what needs to be done in relation to very few young people.

Most of the young people I know, when they get their licences, are extremely conscientious and cautious. The first time any of them goes out to drive once they have their licence and are on the road alone, they are extremely conscientious. My experience is also that often young men, after two or three months, think they then know it all and become less conscientious, but by and large, young people are very conscientious.

They are most concerned to get through their period of provisional licensing without losing their licences, and they are probably better drivers than the average driver on the road because they are so newly aware of all the rules and because they are concentrating on those rules because they do not want to lose any points or lose their licence and do not want to go back to being a P1 or whatever it might be.

It seems to me to be unnecessarily harsh, then, to impose things on that group, who are by and large very good drivers, rather than saying, 'Okay, we won't impose these things unless and until you do something wrong, and if you breach the rules in any way, then we are going to come down on you like a sledgehammer, but why punish all of those who really haven't done anything wrong?' In particular, this idea of having the curfew from midnight until 5am—I have the figures here that we were given about it—there is just a complete lack of evidence as to the need for this.

Over the last few years in this state, in terms of our 16 to 19-year-old drivers, between the hours of midnight and 5am, in 2007 there were eight fatalities, but in 2008 that went down to six, in 2009 to five, in 2010 to four, in 2011 to one, in 2012 there was one, and this year, to August at least, none. There is simply no evidence to show that, at the moment and for the past several years, there is any indication that young drivers (and most of our P-platers are in that 16 to 19 age bracket) are in fact more at risk in that midnight to 5am category. It seems to me that we are punishing all of these young drivers without any evidence to say we are actually doing it for their own good, because at the moment the statistics in this state do not lend themselves to support that argument.

Finally, I want to just draw attention to where I think we should be concentrating a whole lot more—putting aside the argument about the maintenance of our roads and concentrating on licensing—and that is in relation to how our young people get their licences. It seems to me that, in this state, it is still possible for anyone to teach anyone else to drive. If they have a licence, they are allowed to be the person training someone. Apart from the terrifying experience that every parent has if you go out with your unlicensed youngster, the fact is that anyone seems to be able to hold themselves up as a driving instructor. There are some exceptionally good driving instructors, but equally there are some who are not so good.

When I was faced with each of my children coming through in turn, I decided that I would not teach them my bad habits—and I must have some bad habits, I know, even though I have a relatively clean record and have never lost points on my licence, so I think my standard is probably reasonable. I thought, it is sensible not to impose my bad driving habits on my children, so I will pay someone—and I paid a lot of money in each case.

I found that each of the driving instructors—and they were different ones on each occasion—taught my children how to drive at 60 through suburban streets with no hazards. They did not teach them how to get onto a freeway or how to get off it, and to this day I see everyday people who still put their brakes on before they leave the freeway or do not speed up to the speed of the freeway to get onto it.

They did not teach them anything about night driving and how to read the markers on the road as to which direction the bend of the road was likely to go. They did not teach them about how to change down a gear before pulling out to pass a truck or how to drive on a dirt road. I have long complained about the fact that in this state it was lawful—and I do not care what the age is—to get your licence and then in a matter of hours go and put a caravan on the back of a turbo-charged Range Rover (or other powerful car) and hit a dirt road at night, because you have your licence.

Gradually, we have seen a diminution of some of those aspects, but I still say that we need to do more about how people learn to drive. Anecdotally, I would have to say that there is a country/city divide that is very noticeable in this state and that is this: youngsters growing up in the country generally have experience on a paddock basher of some sort and they become very familiar with controlling the movement of a vehicle, but generally they are not very familiar with traffic and all the things that driving in the city brings.

The city kids, on the other hand, have been usually taken in cars to and from everything they have ever attended in their lives, and they are very familiar with the movement of traffic and with traffic lights and turns and all sorts of things like that, but they are not very familiar with how to manoeuvre a vehicle.

I think that we have a responsibility to actually redress that imbalance. We need to make sure that our city kids learn more about controlling vehicles, particularly on dirt roads, of which there are still a lot in this state, and we need to make sure that our country kids get more exposure to actually driving in traffic, so that if they get their licence down at Coomandook, in the member for Hammond's territory, they come into the city confident and knowing how they are going to manage a car in that situation.

I also think we need to look at advanced driver training, and there are two schools of thought about that. For some youngsters it is a very good thing and they do learn more, and maybe that is how you teach some of the city kids about the manoeuvring of vehicles at large, but there is, however, a risk that someone who goes through advanced driver training, especially a young male, dare I say, may think that they are actually a little bit more competent than they indeed are, simply because they have been through that sort of a course.

So I indicate that I am absolutely opposed to the midnight to 5am curfew. I am very hesitant about the idea of putting in place restrictions such as how many people can be in the car and so on on any driver, no matter what age, unless and until there is some offence that justifies that. I am all in favour of doing whatever we can to use evidence-based approaches to resolving our road safety issues.

As the member for Hammond responded when I interjected, inappropriately, during his contribution, we in fact could reduce our road toll to zero if we simply pulled the speed back sufficiently so that a man with a red flag could walk in front of every vehicle. The state would grind to a halt, but you would reduce your road toll. The reality is we are not going to be doing that. We need to find ways to minimise our road toll and to reduce the risks, but in my view the thing that we are focusing on in this legislation, rather than reducing the risks, is actually using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut and making young people pay a penalty for offences that they have not yet committed.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (17:03): As a parent who has had one of those awful phone calls at 4.30 in the morning, I certainly support the intentions of this bill. You never forget or get over losing a child in a car accident.

South Australian crash data supports limiting the peer age passenger restrictions and night-time curfews for P1 drivers aged between 16 and 19 years. While 16 to 19 year olds make up 5 per cent of the population in South Australia, they are involved in 12 per cent of road deaths and serious injuries. On top of this, the same cohort in rural South Australia is 2½ times more likely to die or be seriously injured than their peer group in Adelaide.

Under this bill there will be exemptions for drivers carrying their siblings, neighbours' children or children from other families to and from school. There will also be exemptions for drivers if they need to drive for employment, including formal volunteer work, education, training and sporting purposes. The restrictions do not apply if the P1 driver is aged over 25 or if a qualified supervising driver is present in the vehicle.

Many young people in my electorate commence work prior to 5am in the morning, particularly as deckhands, dairy hands, on farms, etc. As a result of this bill, there could be a minimal number of these people who will no longer be able to take more than one other person aged between 16 and 19 years of age to work. We must bear in mind that they will still be able to go to work at those hours (between midnight and 5am) if they are actually going to work.

The bill will bring about a curfew for P1 drivers between midnight and 5am and also restrict P1 drivers from carrying more than one passenger aged between 16 and 19 years of age. The bill also extends the provisional licence period from two years to three years. P1 will be for one year and P2 will be for two years. I did meet with the minister's advisers and I thank them for their advice. One of the questions I have raised with them is the fact that a 17-year-old P1 driver could still drive around prior to midnight with his 17-year-old friend, 16-year-old brother and two other 15 year olds; this could often occur and be a recipe for disaster.

Every time we see serious accidents involving young people there are always calls to increase the driving age to 18, which I have never supported. It would be a great restriction on young people in the country, particularly for them to go to work and sporting events, etc. I feel that I would much prefer to see those people still being able to get their P1 licence when they can now and be restricted, rather than increasing the age. So, they will still be able to go about their activities but there will be some rules in place.

We must always bear in mind that a driver's licence is a privilege, not a right. I support any moves that will save the lives of our young people, but we must be careful not to overrestrict them in going about their legal activities.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (17:07): Following on from the member for Mount Gambier, I know that everybody in the opposition respects the experience that he has had in this situation and the amendments that we will move in this house and the comments that we make are no reflection, one way or the other, on his personal situation or the skill or otherwise of his family member.

Let me say that as a person nearly 50 years old, well over 30 years old, I did a lot of stupid things in a car. I did a lot of very stupid things in a car, with and without a licence, on and off the road. So, I do not address this issue in any way as a wowser or in any way as a person who has not fully and seriously considered all of the risks. I was exceptionally fortunate, as a young man, as a boy becoming a young man, to have a very close family friend who taught me how to drive. He started out by putting me on a small old tractor in the middle of the scrub, surrounded by trees. I could not really hurt the trees, I could not really hurt the tractor and I could not really hurt myself.

I graduated from that to refuelling school buses in a yard, off the road, in his family business. It was my job to get behind the wheel of a bus (40-foot buses) and move it (slowly, to begin with) from one place to another, being absolutely and dreadfully afraid that I might damage something, least of all hit the fuel bowser, but over time you get better, you get a bit of practice and you move on. I do not brag about this at all, but I certainly did plenty of silly things with—as members who have already spoken have commented on—probably the bravado that a lot of young men have in assuming they are bullet-proof and not considering all the consequences. I was very lucky. I would like to say I had some skill but, of course, I was exceptionally lucky that I did not ever come to grief.

Most of my work through my adult life has included an enormous amount of driving. Working for BP Australia, starting out as a country rep, you are essentially driving all over the place. Working for myself, being privately employed, for quite a few years I drove between 100,000 and 120,000 kilometres a year, which is an enormous amount of driving in anybody's book, mostly on deserted outback roads and highways: dirt roads such as the Strzelecki Track, the Birdsville Track, the Oodnadatta Track, and on the Stuart Highway.

I can say that, certainly for the last couple of decades, I have never, ever taken driving for granted. I am not one of those people who just say, 'Yes, I can drive. I have been doing it all my life. Everything is fine. I have got through the danger period and now I am an expert.' I get the odd speeding ticket, which does happen, I think, to probably most of us here. I never, ever forget the risks and I never take it for granted.

Until I am home or until I am in Adelaide or until I am actually where I am going, I do my very best to really keep my concentration up because I know that, even today, I could come a gutser somehow, and I am dreadfully fearful of some damage that I might impose upon somebody else. So, that is where I come from when I address this issue. I am not an expert, but I do think I have got something to contribute.

Let me say at the outset that I think one of the things that is important to contribute is that P-platers and young drivers in general, at the moment, are actually under a great deal of scrutiny. I can tell you, from having spoken to people in the city and also constituents, particularly in Port Augusta, that young men and young women are certainly well and truly scrutinised by the police and, very often, pulled over for very questionable reasons. They are often pulled over for good reasons too, but they are very seriously scrutinised by the police. Whether that is a little bit of overexuberance on behalf of the police or whether they have perhaps saved somebody's life by doing that, we will never know.

The bottom line here is that I am sure every single member of this house considers road safety very seriously and particularly road safety as it applies to young people, because not only are the risks higher—we know that they are higher—but, also very importantly, we would all, as essentially middle-aged members here, be more concerned about loss of life to a young person than an older person. Nobody's life is more special, but we consider younger people to be a little bit more precious.

So, this is a very important issue but, as our deputy leader and lead speaker on this issue has articulated very well, some of the aspects of this bill are not actually addressing some of the core issues. As she and many of my colleagues have said, the fatalities of 16 to 19 year olds during that 12am to 5am period have actually been dropping significantly, and that is outstanding. Everybody should take some credit for that. The government should take some credit for that, families should take some credit for that and, probably more than anybody, young drivers should take some credit for that. So, to address that and try to stop them from driving is really just not supported at all by the facts as we understand them.

Just to touch on a couple of other key things, we certainly support bringing forward the hazard perception test to the L-P1 stage—we certainly support that, without any doubt. We have agreed that we are not going to move any amendments to the issues about the number of passengers in a vehicle. I can understand where that is coming from, but I guess I also have a query. As the member for Mount Gambier quite rightly mentioned, the combination of people who might be legally in the car under these new provisions does not necessarily make it a safer environment.

The idea is that a P1 driver could carry only one passenger except for family members and when a fully licensed driver is a passenger. It may well be an older brother or an older mate or it might be a young female driver's older partner/boyfriend, and they could be sloshed or could be significantly impaired. It does not say, as far as I am aware, that the passengers all have to be stone cold sober and making a positive contribution. The numbers in themselves will not necessarily make the difference, but we have decided as a group not to oppose that suggestion, because I think we do understand the issue that more young people together may create more distractions.

We certainly do oppose the suggested midnight to 5am curfew for a lot of good reasons, and we oppose the proposed increase in time spent on P-plates from two to three years. As the member for Hammond said, it is not actually the time on your Ps that is going to make the difference: it really is about your skill, your ability, your training, your learning and how seriously you take the issue. For me, about the most important part of this puzzle is how seriously the young driver takes their driving and the training that they have done up until becoming a young driver.

I am very supportive of the idea of having driving as a standard high school subject. It is an issue about whether the budget can afford that, and I understand and accept that. It certainly would not be something that was mandatory if people thought that there was a better way to do it. I think this is a topic that needs to be taken as seriously as that; it is one of the things that young people must have as part of their education.

I agree also with one of the comments that the member for Heysen made about the difference between city drivers and country drivers. It is not an age issue. You can see people who have been driving for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years in the country coming down to Adelaide and getting really frazzled by the traffic. I have friends in a range of ages who actually do not like to drive in the city. They do not do it. They say, 'Look, I'll drive to Gepps Cross or somewhere around there. We'll jump out and then we'll swap and I want somebody else to drive.' It is not an age issue: it is an experience issue, and it is about somebody assessing their own ability.

The exact same thing is true in reverse with regard to city drivers going to the country. As members here know, I spent a long time living on the Stuart Highway running RAA agencies at the businesses that we ran and doing the majority of the after-hours call-outs myself from Pimba. In a really remote area the RAA also does the accident pick-up service. It is not part of what the RAA does, but the person who is there, ready to go out and fix broken cars in the middle of the night is also the person who goes and helps pick up cars from accidents.

I can tell you that the vast majority of people who came to grief on the highway late at night were city drivers just falling asleep. It is not necessarily that the city driver is more prone to getting tired than the country driver: it is just about experience. It is just about recognising that you are at that stage. It is about recognising that you are tired and you need to get out.

The member for Kaurna was talking about a banana or a glass of water. The member for Schubert was talking about chocolate and Coca-Cola. It does not really matter. I have got trail mix in the car. I get it and have a walk around. You have got to do whatever you need to do. The reality is that it is about that experience, and that is not an age issue. That is not something that necessarily people are going to improve on by having to be on P-plates for three years instead of two or not being able to drive after hours.

In fact, you could make a pretty good argument to say that if you were driving after-hours responsibly you would start to pick up some of those skills. The skill is, I think, very often about recognising your own capacity—your own capacity to drive at what speed, your own capacity to stay awake and when you cannot, all of those sorts of things. Certainly, this is a very important issue to country people. The member for Hammond talked about distances. Sport, school, church, social events—we do not have the public transport. We do have the significant distances to drive. I recognise and acknowledge that the minister has included an exemption for people who need to travel in the midnight to 5am time for employment and I think that is very sensible but, really, that whole thing should be exempt.

The figures tell us that young people are not dying on the roads any longer in those hours and let us all keep our fingers crossed or pray or do whatever we need to do and hope that that continues. However, it will not be preventing them that stops it because then, all of a sudden, at whatever time in their life and in their development cycle they are allowed to go out on the road at midnight, it will be the first time they have done it. They are not necessarily going to be any better at it because that was delayed.

It really is about young drivers' attitudes, their training and their maturity. I would hate to set up a situation where people are pressing themselves to rush to get home before midnight because they have a certain category of licence and they have to be off the road at midnight. They are saying, 'Well, what do I do? Do I get caught being on the road after midnight or do I speed home?' It really is just a silly situation.

We all agree in opposition, and I am sure government members and the Independents agree, that road safety is absolutely vital, but these sorts of restrictions—telling people they cannot drive between midnight and 5am or telling people that they cannot enter a nightclub after 3am—are not the sorts of things that actually make people behave better. It has to be a person's ability and their attitude that is actually going to make them behave better.

Telling people that they can drive at 100 instead of 110 when the real problem is the quality of the road is not going to stop accidents. It is actually about the person's ability. Every single good, decent, capable driver can get out there and drive at 110 on certain roads. In fact, I think there is a very good argument to be made that on a very few roads in our state we could actually push up the speed limits.

I say quite openly in this house that I have canvassed this with police officers and with highway patrol police officers who share the same opinion, but as I said, that is on a very few roads. It is not about the speed limit and it is not about the time: it is about the driver. It is about the driver not being the really dumb, young bloke full of bravado and letting that get away from him. It is about the person not showing off to their colleagues. It is about the other people in the car not distracting them and skylarking and carrying on.

It is not about whether or not it is actually midnight or whether or not you have been on your Ps for a certain amount of time. The risks do not go away. Just telling somebody that they cannot engage with the risk does not take the risk away. The risk is still going to be there one day. The fact is still going to be true and I think that getting on and teaching people how to deal with the risks is a far more responsible and far more effective way of going about it.

Those are the reasons why I object particularly to those two suggestions from the government. The extension of the time on Ps would be a very unfair imposition on the people who are doing the right thing to try to capture the people who are doing the wrong thing when those people are probably going to run into grief regardless of whether they are on their Ps for two years or three years and they have their accident during the first year, the second year, the third year or the fifth year when they have not been on Ps for two years. That person is probably still going to run into grief.

It is not about how long they are on the Ps and it is not about whether they are allowed to drive between midnight and 5am. It is about how they and their friends, their family and their peers address the risks. I think addressing the risks and not trying to avoid them and just delay them or put them off is what is really going to help save lives. I support an enormous amount of what the government has in the bill, but I do not support those two aspects because I do not think they are actually going to address the issue that we all want to address.

Mr BROCK (Frome) (17:24): I also rise today to support the Motor Vehicles (Learner's Permits and Provisional Licences) Amendment Bill. When this bill was first discussed, I had grave concerns as to the effect the bill would have on our youth in our country regions, and this has been mentioned here by previous speakers from the country. However, I notice there are several exemptions that will allow our youth to attend schools, training facilities, play sport, get to work, and participate in normal stuff. These situations in country regions are completely different to those, who may be affected by this bill, who live in the metropolitan areas of Adelaide. In Adelaide there is ample public transport and close distances for taxi services, but in country areas some of these services do not even exist.

Firstly, I must point out, really importantly, that I am very passionate about doing whatever we can to preserve the precious lives of our youth. Over many years, I have lost many friends in motor vehicle accidents. Those friends were very young at the time, and I was young at the time too—we were only 18. They were also very immature and invincible, because we all think that when we are young we are invincible. I also lost my late wife to a motor vehicle accident. No matter who is to blame, the consequences are horrific. I do not believe anyone can appreciate the effects that it leaves not only on the immediate family but on whole communities, especially in country regions.

When we are young we think we can do anything and nothing will harm us, but the reality is that it is not what we do but what others do and how they behave. As responsible adults and legislators we need to do whatever we can to ensure that our young people are taught as much as possible to behave responsibly in motor vehicles and on the roads. An area that we previously used to have at secondary schools was driver education. I strongly request that this be part of education teaching in all secondary schools across South Australia. The member for Stuart has questioned the budget impact—you have to worry about that—and I agree with the member; however, we have to look at the fact that, in the long term, a life is worth more than another $200,000 or $300,000—

Mr van Holst Pellekaan interjecting:

Mr BROCK: Yes, I was just going to say that life is worth more than that. Secondly, if you reduce the opportunity for a tragic, long-term, life-ending or lifelong injury, it will save the government of the day many hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospitalisation bills. This is to ensure that our young people know how to drive defensively and to understand road conditions and, importantly, the power of vehicles that are available today.

It has been mentioned previously that Rotary clubs in general, but in particular the Rotary clubs of Port Pirie and Clare, have driver education opportunities at both public and private secondary schools. These are for students who are nearing or have an appropriate driver's licence. This project is called Rider. Road rules are always changing and evolving and refresher courses would be of great benefit to not only young people but also older drivers across the whole state.

The member for Fisher mentioned that some drivers appear to be angry, and I do see them on my many, many kilometres of travel. They may be, but with so much pressure from slower vehicles, caravans, road trains, which may cause long delays and long lines of traffic, it becomes an irritating issue and it does get on some people's nerves. The member for Giles also mentioned grey nomads and, again, I encounter these caravans on many occasions, especially around the Clare area. These people also have a right to travel, and as a safety issue they cannot travel as fast as normal motor vehicles.

Another issue I see during my many kilometres of travel is the fact that some vehicles, due to the colour of those vehicles, seem to get lost by blending into the colour of the road. These vehicles may not be readily visible to the oncoming traffic, and one of the oncoming cars may want to pass a vehicle and not see the vehicle coming towards it; so I think that is a real issue. We have the right to have our cars the colour we like, but I believe that all vehicles travelling on open roads should have their headlights on at all times. One way to improve this is to have headlights come on automatically when the vehicle is started and then turned off automatically when the key is removed from the ignition. It could be a very simple part of the manufacture of vehicles across Australia.

Also, with the wearing seat belts or the non-wearing of seat belts, a vehicle should not be able to be started unless the relevant seat belts have been secured on the driver and any passengers. I have experienced occasions when I have had an item—a briefcase or my folder—sitting on the passenger side and all of a sudden the indicator goes on reminding me that the seatbelt needs to be secured; so there are ways. Seat belts of today are coordinated and can have pressure on them to automatically look for a seatbelt to be engaged. I believe that is a safeguard, to make sure the vehicle cannot be started, the same as alcohol ignition locks.

The member for Schubert mentioned that the roads south of Clare are winding and narrow, and they certainly are. He also talked about the lack of overtaking lanes. I would remind the member for Schubert that, since I have been the member for this region, there have been many overtaking lanes constructed between Clare and Tarlee. I have worked tirelessly, together with my local councils, for improvements, and some of these include: the bypass of the Bungaree Station at Clare, with a new road via Anama Lane; merging lanes at the Kadina-Wallaroo intersection; slip lanes at the Giles corner near Tarlee; the Gladstone roundabout; reconstruction of a portion of the Tarlee to Kapunda road; and many other minor issues. We need to be very positive about this and continue to try to do the best we can.

The proposals in this bill have been forwarded to all of my road safety groups for their consideration and feedback. The feedback so far is that, whilst they are concerned with some of the restrictions, they understand the value of young lives and the exemptions go a long way to improve what was being publicly discussed prior to the bill being debated in this house. As I said earlier, I had grave concerns about restrictions and youth not being able to get into the community, to school or training, or to work. This bill can be improved and I think we need to be able to discuss that going forward.

There are many roads across the whole state and they have not just overnight got to the condition that they are in today. They have been neglected over many years. I will say this—and I have said it before—both sides of politics in this state need to take their share of responsibility for the lack of attention to roads over many, many years. These roads do not fall apart within five minutes.

The situation is that we have more traffic and larger vehicles, with road trains now being able to travel on many roads and basically coming just about into Adelaide. They can go through a lot of centres that they were not allowed to go through before. I think previously they were not allowed to come south of Port Augusta, then they got up to Lochiel and now they can come basically right into Adelaide. Many of these roads were not really constructed to carry the amount of heavy traffic that is going on at the moment.

Vehicles in my day were far stronger and slower, but they were never as powerful as they are today. The vehicles of today are supercharged. Some of these vehicles are capable of doing in excess of 200 km/h. Why have a domestic vehicle capable of doing these speeds when the speed limit is 110 km/h? I question why we as a country are allowing these vehicles to be sold to the general public, because you are not supposed to go that fast. It is a really weird situation.

The member for Stuart has a great region and he had the pleasure of travelling for BP Australia. Prior to me going back to Port Pirie and working at the smelters, I also had the privilege of being a manager for BP Australia to the northern areas, in the member for Stuart's area, and more. I used to travel to lots of areas up there on the roads, and met lots of oncoming traffic and things like that. We were taught how to react to what was coming towards you, to the road and to the how the weather was affecting it. That is a big issue. As I said, I think the time has come where we need to have some more educational programs back into the secondary schools, and refresher courses going along.

Whilst I have some concerns with the restrictions, such as extra time frames for the various licences and so on, I am very aware of the tragic results that can eventuate from an unfortunate incident. It does not have to be a death. It may be a lifetime injury where there is personal loss and emotional stress. The stress and loss is not only for the family and friends, but any accident has a very strong impact on emergency workers, paid or volunteers, hospital staff and doctors.

Sometimes these people may not be at the front of people's thoughts when issues such as these are discussed, but we need to seriously consider these people, because they will be emotionally affected, and it is worse if they know the person. I have heard some negativity not only in this chamber but across the general public regarding this bill. I am very sure that, between here and the upper house, we will all work together to reduce the opportunity for any incident to happen.

Through the minister, I sincerely thank the departmental staff for the great briefing I had the other day. It was very detailed and I asked lots of questions. They gave me some great presentations. I feel far more relaxed than I was before I had that briefing, and I certainly appreciate it. Those sorts of briefings are very beneficial, especially for an Independent, because we have to get all our own information. Again, I thank the staff very sincerely. I will be looking very closely at any amendments to this bill, but at this stage I am certainly impressed with it, and I am supporting it.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (17:34): Without any doubt whatsoever, everybody in this place wants to improve road safety, and reduce the deaths and serious injuries on our roads. The member for Frome just said that the economic impact is hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, the economic impact of death and serious injury on South Australian roads alone is $1.3 billion per annum; it is just incredible. If you can reduce that by even 1 per cent, that is a huge amount of money that you can be putting into other areas to improve the lives of South Australians. So we should all be doing whatever we can to reduce the economic impact.

I remember being in estimates on a number of occasions, questioning the then minister for road safety about the causes of crashes. Minister Kenyon, who is currently overseas at the moment, kept insisting that road crashes were all the result of driver inattention or some other cause. We know that it is the case that drivers do contribute to the significant majority of road crashes, but—and I was trying to find the reference before I came in here—I understand that up to 40 per cent of road crashes are due to the design or lack of maintenance of roads.

We need to be doing something about making sure that our roads are safe. We know the reports of the backlog of road maintenance have been put out by the RAA on a number of occasions, and the government needs to make sure that we are doing all we can to contribute to road safety from that aspect. It is not about changing legislation to restrict the way people drive, and it is not about reducing speed limits; there are a whole range of issues that we need to be looking at.

I remember back in 1972 in Port Augusta (the member for Stuart's electorate), I was sent up there as a very young 20 year old to teach tech studies. The tech studies teachers also had the opportunity to undertake driver education. I am not sure whether we had our own car at the school—I think we used one of the teacher's cars—but for one of the tech studies teachers, his job was driver education. It was not only the theory, but also the practice, and involved taking students out and teaching them how to drive.

That was back in 1972, 1973 and 1974, when I was there. So, what has happened? Why are we not continuing along those lines in our schools by continuing driver education, and making sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to change the attitudes, change the behaviours, and make sure that our young people are recognising the threats and risks that are associated with driving vehicles?

A good friend of mine, Darren Davis—Darren Davis and I are poms, so we cannot make any disparaging remarks about poms and pommy drivers—is a very good driving instructor who has been coming to my office for a number of years now, and we have become good friends. Darren has spent a lot of time researching the behaviour of young drivers, and has imported the first virtual reality driving simulator in Australia. It sits on the dash of the car, and the front wheels of the car go on to two turntables. The computer screen shows varying scenarios for the driver to react to.

I have sat in the car and have been put through a various number of hazards and tests, and it is a good learning experience, even for an experienced driver. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can, and I congratulate Darren on what he is doing to make sure we keep our young people safe through his driver education.

Darren challenged me to come out with him one day in his car to see if I would still pass a driving test. I failed it even before we had left the curb, because I did not leave my indicator on for five seconds before I actually left the curb. I looked and saw there was nothing coming, but the theory is that you are supposed to leave your indicator on for five seconds before you move out, after checking your mirrors and all those sorts of things.

Having parents teaching their kids to drive, and having friends teaching your kids to drive, is not something I would recommend. My father and brothers sat in the car next to us when I learned to drive in early model VWs and Holdens; we got through it then, but the traffic, speeds, congestion and pressures were not what they are like today. Having a professional driving instructor such as Darren is something that I would recommend to all parents, relatives and friends of people who are learning to drive. Give them some professional instruction, because you cannot go past that professional expertise.

I think we still have the sad status of having the oldest car fleet in the nation in South Australia. Why is that so? We have to do something about making sure that people are able to afford more modern, more up-to-date and safer cars. New cars with airbags, anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control and intelligent cruise control, where if there is a vehicle in front of you slowing down, the car will take the cruise off and start to slow you down—that is all coming in now.

I had some demonstrations over at Victoria Park last year where I had the opportunity to go and look at some of the latest cars that were being shown and tested. There were optical systems that detected objects in front and behind so that if you were in traffic and for some reason not paying attention, the car would stop for you, or if you were backing up and there was a child or an object behind you, the car would brake and stop to make sure that you were able to avoid what could be a very nasty accident.

So, there are things out there that we can do to make sure that the young people we are dealing with particularly in this case are given the opportunity to drive in safer vehicles on safer roads and have the training and expertise to be able to get out there and do what they want to do, and that is enjoy South Australia and enjoy this fantastic life we have here in South Australia. Our young people are our future and they are the people we really need to be looking to in helping South Australia maintain its presence as the place you want to live.

As part of my shadow portfolios (I have the youth portfolio), I spoke to the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia and Anne Bainbridge, the executive director, about their attitude to this bill. While their response paper is a little out of date—it was first put out in 2011—I think the issues that they have raised in there are still important now. I tried to talk to them today but unfortunately could not get through.

The executive summary of their submission, and it is a lengthy submission of 20 pages, contains a number of dot points. I will just read them through, because they are the salient parts of the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia's attitude to this legislation. I assume that the government has been back since this submission to talk to them about what is going on and to make sure that they are comfortable with this legislation. The executive summary says:

Despite the over-representation of young people in crash statistics, the vast majority have progressed from their learner's permit through to their full licence without incident, meaning that additional restrictions placed on young drivers have an adverse effect disproportionate to any possible effect on road safety.

Neurological research suggesting young people are not psychologically developed enough to make competent decisions about their own lives is relatively new, has not yet presented findings that are in any way conclusive, and fails to take into consideration the wider context in which young people make decisions.

Introducing passenger restrictions will reduce young people's mobility and transport options, while also severely disadvantaging young people who have primary responsibility for transporting their extended family members, especially those from a CALD background—

That is a culturally and linguistically diverse background. YACSA at that stage opposed this initiative, and I think they still do. YACSA also says:

Instead of restricting passengers, there should be greater education for young drivers about the inadvisability of risk-taking on the road, and greater encouragement for passengers to play a role in decreasing young drivers' risk-taking behaviours.

The implementation of a night-time driving restriction represents not only an unacceptable limitation on young people's freedom, particularly in rural and regional areas, but also an inefficient method of controlling behaviour, and one which may be difficult to enforce. YACSA opposes this initiative.

Raising the minimum age for a provisional licence will have a significant negative impact on young people who are employed or seeking employment, particularly apprentices or young people seeking apprenticeships. The proposed exemptions do not provide an efficient or effective way of overcoming this negative impact.

YACSA opposed that initiative, and I understand that their opposition was listened to. The next point that YACSA makes is:

Because parents are the group with the largest influence on young people's driving behaviour, new approaches are required to the way parent-supervised driving is carried out, including specialised training for parents, and possibly subsidies for young people to access qualified driving instructors.

That further reinforces what I said about having a professional driving instructor sitting in there with these young adults who are learning to drive so that they recognise the threats that are out there and the risks associated with those threats and they are able to then cope with the situations they are faced with. The final point that YACSA makes is:

The initiative to extend the total minimum provisional licence period from two to three years is not intended to target people over the age of 25, and is therefore age discrimination. Even if this were not the case, YACSA opposes this initiative on the grounds that mandating a minimum licence period of three years is simply legislating for novice drivers to do what they already do in the majority of cases in South Australia.

YACSA has pointed out some extremely important issues for young people in South Australia. I hope the government has listened to them. The opposition is certainly listening to people in South Australia. So, while we support the intent of this legislation there are some areas where we are opposed to what the government wants to introduce. I think the government should, in this case, be listening to common sense, and that is from people out there who have many years of driving experience, teaching experience and who are in contact with the people we are trying to target; that is, the young people of South Australia.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (17:45): I will make a brief contribution to this bill. I know we want to have a division on it before 6 o'clock, so we will try to achieve that. It is a good opportunity and many members on this side of the house have made a contribution because very few things are as important to a country person as his or her driver's licence, and this particular bill deals with how those licences are gained. I understand it is to do with the graduation of the licensing scheme and consultation for these reforms has occurred over the last couple of years, with the final report published this time last year. So, it has taken 12 months for us to get to this point.

Essentially, the bill provides for an increase in the time that young people must remain on their P-plates and it increases from the current two years to three years. The bill also restricts, or proposes to restrict, P1 drivers to only carrying one passenger, with exemptions for family members and when a fully licensed driver is a passenger. A curfew for P1 drivers from 12am to 5am in the morning, and much has been said about that already. As an opposition, we are set to oppose that particular proposition. It also aims to bring forward the hazard perception test from the P1/P2 stage to the learner/P1 stage.

There are probably not many people in this place who have undertaken a hazard perception test, but I have four teenagers at the moment and I know all about hazard perception tests—nearly there: the first one is about to turn 20, so that will be a relief. Three of them have undertaken the learner/P1/P2 process. Number four will go through that process under new arrangements, I am sure, and believe me, those kids, such as our Max, who is 15 years of age, are watching these developments very closely.

The bill also proposes to remove the regression to a previous licence stage and a learner motorcyclist will be captured by the curfew provisions. So, much discussion has taken place. I would suggest that, for the most part, this bill is very well intended. As has been pointed out, nobody can ever argue against the importance of road safety, and I appreciate that a couple of members of this house who have made a contribution to this debate have been touched very closely by sadness that has been brought about by a road accident. One cannot imagine the feelings and sadness that brings about.

The reality is that, as with most Labor Party government bills, there are some significant unintended consequences, I suspect consequences that are not even considered at the time of the drafting of the bill. This particularly relates to those young people who are living in the country and are going to be significantly impacted by changes to the licensing arrangements. Our intention, as an opposition, is to oppose the increase in time spent on P-plates from two years to three years.

A point that has not been raised in the discussion so far is one that I am well aware of because, as I said, I have four teenagers and they have friends. They highlight to me that, under a P-plate licence, they have just four demerit points available to them. This is significant in the sense that, should they inadvertently incur a breach, most of those breaches have a penalty of three demerit points, which leaves them with just one. The problem then arises that, should they, once again, inadvertently breach the road traffic regulations, they are quite likely to lose their licence after just two offences and are back to square one.

This has severe impacts. I know there are some in this place who have not incurred any demerit points, but many of us have and we do not mind admitting that. It is a potentially significant impact on a P-plate driver who, all of a sudden, will be not 17, not 18 but 19 and still carrying a P-plate licence.

We will be supporting the passenger restrictions for P1 drivers with exemptions for all the reasons that have been outlined thus far. The risk involved with young drivers carrying a car full of people of similar age has been highlighted many times and I think the statistics would speak for themselves on that.

We also support bringing forward the hazard perception test to the learner P1 stage, but we are opposing the 12am to 5am curfew for many of the reasons that have already been highlighted. There are exemptions available for this, but the reality is that very few of the accidents and incursions actually occur during those hours of the day. There are those who need to drive, particularly for employment and sometimes for other reasons as well, and they will be impacted upon.

I would like to relate a delightful story to the house, which I think reflects back on the capability of our young people. We sometimes forget how very capable our young people are and how skilled they are. There was a year 11 boarder at one of the city schools here, who was a station boy who lived in the far north-east of the state. He had his L-plates. He could not drive a car of his own accord. What he used to do on an exeat weekend and on holidays was catch a taxi out to Parafield and fly his Cessna home. This young man was not allowed to drive a car, but he could fly himself home, which is extraordinary.

I think we need, just from time to time, to reflect on the capabilities that our young people have. That comes about through experience, and the member for Stuart spoke about experience and the importance of gaining experience. You do not gain experience by putting off what you have to do.

Ms Chapman: Like getting married.

Mr TRELOAR: Like getting married. We won't go there, member for Bragg. It may be a contribution for another debate—I don't know. Eventually, you have to let these kids drive. Particularly in the country, a driver's licence gives independence. It gives independence to the young person and it also gives independence to the parents who are otherwise responsible for taking them here, there and everywhere over great distances. It also provides all important social opportunities for country kids.

It gives educational opportunities and, of course, as has been mentioned many times, it gives them the opportunity to gain employment because, invariably, young country people have to travel to gain employment and to fulfil their employment obligations, and public transport is simply not available. So, there we go. We need a driver's licence.

Road funding has been talked about. Speed limits have been talked about. I understand there was a big story on the front page of my local paper again today about the proposition that the open road speed limit, the highway speed limit, in South Australia may be reduced from 110 to 100. I think this would be a retrograde step. Mark my words, there will be much opposition to that sort of move from this side of the house.

The member for Hammond mentioned how good the vehicles are these days—that is the truth of it. The cars are so much better. They are so much better equipped and technologically advanced than what we ever had. Driver training has been talked about. My kids learned to drive on the farm; I learned to drive on the farm—many of us have. In fact, during one week of shearing a few years ago, I undertook some negotiations with one of our shearers and, at the end of the week, I gave him a box of beer and he gave me a car and no GST was declared on that.

Ms Chapman: Good trade.

Mr TRELOAR: It was a good trade because it was a Subaru. My kids learned to drive in it and gained good skills, such as how to control a car in a number of situations, sometimes at speed. It was front-wheel drive, of course, being a Subaru and they understood very quickly that to do a good wheelie you had to do it in reverse. I did not mind that. I did not mind that because the kids were learning to handle a car and they were learning to do it before they got to 16 and before they got on the road. I think that is something we should consider very seriously in our driver education programs—giving children and students the opportunity to learn to drive before they actually get on the road. I think that is something we seriously should consider.

The member for Hammond mentioned checking rabbit traps in the car. In fact, we did the same thing and my brothers and I usually would take the farm ute which was an HR with seatbelts. It was one of the first models ever to come out with seatbelts. It was not compulsory to wear them, but they had them. Often they gathered dust, but we would drive the HR. One particular day we were allowed to take the VC Valiant down to check the traps.

The Hon. M.F. O'Brien: A good car.

Mr TRELOAR: They were a good car—225 hemi motor; beautiful.

Mr Pederick interjecting:

Mr TRELOAR: They always failed when you needed them. We were allowed to take the car down to check the traps. In the old days, of course, we would have walked or cycled, but given that we had reached the new age we were allowed to drive. My younger brother was so excited because he thought he had seen a rabbit that he jumped out early from the back and very nearly came to grief with me driving. It was all a lot of fun and we learnt to drive very much in a safe environment.

One of the things that I have—and I am not saying by any means that I would ever be legitimately called a good driving instructor—really tried to impress on all of my teenage children as they have learnt to drive is how to react should they be confronted with a situation. One of the members previously has mentioned that we learn how to drive on a good sealed road or we learn to drive in the city at 60 kilometres down a street with very little in the way of other traffic or roundabouts, so we do not have a lot of experience in those initial stages.

One of the real dangers on country roads, I believe, is drifting off the edge or dropping off the shoulder and getting into the gravel verge of the road. The instinct is to very quickly bring the car back onto the road and that often can be fatal, because, in fact, what happens is the car is jerked back onto the road, the tyres grip and all of a sudden, quick as you can say Jack Robinson, you are over the other side of the road and you roll the car. You are on the other side of the road, you have rolled over, you are in the scrub and you are in serious trouble or a lot worse. One of the things I have really tried to impress on my kids is bringing the car back onto the road very carefully.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (17:58): I have only got a couple of minutes, but I will commence. I would like to thank all members who contributed to the bill. I would also like to acknowledge the work that has been done by the agency in providing the briefings, particularly to members of the opposition.

I have to say I am probably a little disappointed in that we went to great lengths to ensure that all the statistics were provided and we are now in a situation where the opposition is basically flying in the face of the evidence and the logic in relation to the curfew and also the extension by one year of the period in which we would like our young drivers to be on a provisional licence.

The opposition and the deputy leader have indicated that they are not supportive of those two elements of the bill as I said, firstly, the proposed night-time driving restriction for P1 drivers from midnight to 5am. The member for Bragg and other opposition speakers suggested that the government has not taken into account the evidence and the crash analysis when proposing this restriction. They have indicated that they believe that 12am to 5am is not the time when the highest numbers occur.

[Sitting suspended from 18:00 to 19:30]

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: I believe the point at which I had arrived, upon rising for dinner, was after the observation I made that the member for Bragg and other opposition speakers were suggesting that the government had not taken into account the evidence and the crash analysis when proposing this particular restriction, which is the restriction relating to the proposed night driving restrictions for P1 drivers between midnight and 5am.

The opposition has indicated that it believes that 12am to 5am is not the time when the highest number of crashes involving young drivers occurs. The statistics and crash data that my department and I have provided to members of parliament, when briefing them on the bill, show that young P1 drivers and riders aged 16 to 24 have the highest percentage of crashes between the hours of 3pm to 7pm. This is also the time when full licence holders have the most crashes, and I imagine that fatigue is a major factor, as people have finished a full working day and are generally on their way home between the hours of 3pm and 7pm.

However, the reason the night driving restrictions are being proposed in the bill is that P1 drivers are over-represented in fatal crashes for every hour between 9pm through to 6am, compared with full licence holders. South Australian crash analysis for the period 2008-12 shows that 20 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old P1 drivers/riders involved in fatal crashes crashed between the hours of midnight and 5am. By comparison, 9 per cent of full licence drivers/riders involved in fatal crashes crashed during that period of time—so, 20 per cent of 16 to 24, as opposed to 9 per cent of full licensed drivers. That is a very simple mathematical division; it is double the number. We have very much relied on an evidence base in arriving at these conclusions.

There is the real possibility that these restrictions could also impact crashes sometime before and after the restriction hours, as young drivers may not commence a journey that means they may be travelling home during the restriction hours, so we have a good sense that we will probably be able to add an hour either side because young drivers will just be prudent and not want to be caught on the road during the curfew hours.

The crash data for P1 drivers suggests that there is a case to introduce the restriction from 9pm to 6am; however, the government realises that this would have a greater impact on mobility and is not in line with other jurisdictions. An analysis undertaken by DPTI of fatal, serious injury and minor injury crashes for the period 2008-12 involving P1 licence drivers aged under 25 who were driving between 12am and 5am shows that the night driving restriction had the potential, over a five-year period (this is the period 2008-12) to prevent 12 fatalities, which is an average of two per year; 100 serious injuries, which is an average of 20 per year; and 337 minor injuries, an average of 67 per year.

My recollection, and my strong recollection, is that after briefing the deputy opposition leader we received a request to do some analysis to give a clear indication as to what the impact of the proposals we intended to bring forth with this bill would do in real terms. The figures I provided the house tonight were provided to the opposition at their request, and they show that our proposal for a curfew would save two lives per year, reduce by 20 the number of serious injuries (that is, people going into casualty and being laid up in hospital for weeks if not months) and, on average, 67 minor injuries per year. So, the impact is significant. We have done the data analysis, we have provided it to the opposition, and I have to say that I am more than a little disappointed that the opposition is not being supportive on this particular proposal.

I learnt to drive in Whyalla. I did all the early fundamental stuff on the salt pans outside Whyalla. I socialised in a regional environment; I went to dances in Port Augusta. I am aware of the restrictions of growing up in a regional centre that do not exist in the metropolitan area. As a parent, I believe that the saving of two lives per year and the keeping of at least 20 young people out of a casualty ward are sufficient to propel me to the conclusion that this is good policy.

The member for Bragg has talked about the restrictions being an inconvenience to young drivers and their families. I believe that a bigger and a longer-lasting impact on family life would be the losing of the life of a young family member or seeing them live with a permanent serious injury. It should be remembered that the proposed night driving restriction is for only one year, on a P1 licence, when the driver is at their most vulnerable and inexperienced. It does not apply to P2 drivers.

These restrictions are there to protect young drivers who are driving solo and who are not experienced. It is about providing protection and not punishment, and I think that has been lost in the debate to date, and I think that it bears emphasis and reiteration: we are not penalising the vast bulk of young drivers in the South Australian community because of the irresponsible actions of a small group. We are dealing with the fact that we are trying to protect young people who have just come off their learner's, who have just moved out of an environment where generally mum or dad or a driving instructor was sitting alongside them, a second pair of eyes alerting them to merging traffic and all the other things that one has to contend with when driving.

The second set of eyes, the mature advice, is removed on the transition from the L-plates to the P1. It is a period of significant vulnerability, it is a period when we should be protecting our young people. We are not seeking to penalise young people. We are seeking to address the fact that they do not have the experience and, in a large number of cases, they do not have the maturity. We want to lead them through those first three years of driving, as they progress from a learner to a more mature and experienced driver.

We believe that it is important that we introduce the curfew, because we know that night driving is a lot more difficult than day driving and that it is a period of great vulnerability for young and inexperienced drivers. I do appreciate that a restriction will have an effect on the mobility of young drivers, particularly in rural communities, and I have mentioned the fact that I learnt to drive in Whyalla. However, young drivers aged 16 to 24 who live in rural and regional areas are dying and being seriously injured on our roads at a much greater rate than young drivers who live in the city.

In fact, they are 2½ times more likely to die or to be seriously injured in a crash. My heart goes out when I hear of instances of a car full of young people in a rural community experiencing a serious crash in which a large number of those young people are killed. I believe that the impact on a rural community, not only on the parents and relatives, but the rural community, is probably a lot more profound than it is in the metropolitan area.

These are, in a large number of cases, young males who play sports, particularly football and, to a lesser extent, cricket. It has an impact, I believe, very similar to the impact of the First World War, where rural communities effectively lost a generation. They were unable to constitute football teams from the period of probably 1918, the conclusion of the First World War, into the mid-1920s. When I see a major crash in which three or four young fellows are killed, all from a football team, it reminds me of the consequences of the First World War. It rips the heart out of a rural community and has an impact far more profound that in the metropolitan area. That is why we are very, very keen to get this particular proposition in place.

Young people will still be able to drive between midnight and 5am for work, including formal volunteer work, education and training purposes, and to attend sport training or matches. While I recognise that this restriction may be viewed as particularly burdensome on country-based drivers, due to the lack of public transport options available, in the light of the significant number of fatal crashes that occur on country roads this government believes the road safety implications associated with this amendment far outweigh any impositions that this additional requirement will create.

The bill also is proposing a night-time restriction for 12 months on a P1 licence because young drivers are more likely to crash in the first year of unsupervised driving. While the crash rate starts to come down around six months, it is still elevated at the time. The deputy opposition leader did make reference to Western Australia. My reading of her comments was that she was not really suggesting that we follow the Western Australian model; she was just making reference to the fact that this was the situation in Western Australia. We have ruled out going down the six-month route because we believe it is impractical, on the basis that there is no real evidence to support restricting it just to six months as opposed to 12.

SAPOL are of the view that it is an impractical proposition in that they would be pulling over people during the curfew hours only to discover they were in the second six months of their P1 as opposed to the first. I do not believe that the opposition deputy leader was seriously recommending that we look at that as an alternative to the position of just blanket opposition, but we have looked at the West Australian model and we believe it is impractical and does not address the issue of the inexperience existing for longer than the first six months.

On the issue of the shortest practicable route, it is included in the bill to prevent unnecessary trips and travel by young people during the night hour restrictions. We are clearly allowing young drivers who need to travel for employment, sports, education, volunteering or emergency services work to travel at night between midnight and 5am to be able to continue to do this.

From my own experience in Whyalla, I was delivering newspapers around the steelworks and the shipyards at 4 o'clock in the morning. Young people do do things over those hours. They are gainfully employed either in family businesses or working for others, and we believe that we have pretty well covered off on that, but we want to prevent any potential abuse of the flexibility that we are allowing by insisting that people actually do take the shortest practicable route and do not use the exemption that is granted to rort the system.

The exemption system has been developed so that a driver will need to provide evidence for the reasons for the trip and it falls into the exemption grounds. This exemption model allows flexibility in an exemption system for changes in a driver's employment, for example if they change jobs at short notice. The exemption grounds for employment also allow for a driver to drive during those hours in the course of employment. There is deliberately no requirement for a particular type of evidence to be presented in order to not limit the individual circumstances under each exemption ground. It will be up to drivers to prove that they are driving within the exemption grounds. This is not red tape; this is not yet another overlay of bureaucratic inflexibility. We want to make this work and we want to make it as simple as possible.

P1 drivers could carry evidence such as a letter from their employer. A non-mandatory form will also be available on the mylicence website. Drivers who carry the signed form or a letter from their employer should be able to satisfy police investigations and avoid committing an offence. I would say that in country and regional areas you would have a number of police in country towns to whom virtually all young people are known, and their employment, training and sporting activities would be known to SAPOL officers. I do not believe that in regional and rural communities there would be any harassing, and we believe that the very simple form of evidence that we are requesting would overcome any situations that may arise.

Police at the roadside will take into account whether a P1 driver has a good reason to take a particular route such as avoiding roadworks or roads under construction. There is no requirement on a driver to provide a particular document that outlines the shortest practicable route. There may be many reasons such as those outlined by the member for Bragg that require a young driver to take an alternative route. The reason the wording is included in the bill is to stop trips such as a young person who may be starting work at 3am, driving to see mates or to a party or some other social event prior to starting employment.

The exemption grounds are for the purposes of getting to and from places of employment, for sporting activities, training and education, volunteering or emergency services work. As the member for Fisher quite rightly said, if you have too many exemptions the restrictions would be farcical. The member for Bragg is also right that the enhancements that the government made to the Graduated Licensing Scheme in 2010 were needed and were also based on evidence at the time.

The government plans on evaluating these changes. However, at this point in time there is insufficient crash data available, as a minimum of five years of date is required for evaluation. I think we have made a series of changes to this particular piece of legislation—in 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010—and the opposition, in relation to the night curfew, has observed that the fatality and serious injury rate has been dropping year on year.

I believe, in the absence of us being able to do the longitudinal study over the five years, that we are starting to see the evidence of the previous changes that we have made, and it is my hope and belief that the changes that we are discussing tonight will further drive down the number of fatalities, serious injuries and injuries on our roads.

A large number of members speaking on the bill made reference to driver training. I am advised that there is considerable debate about the value of training or education for car drivers as a means of improving driver behaviour and reducing road crash involvement. Research indicates that some form of training has been effective for procedural skills acquisition, and other programs have been found to improve drivers' hazard perception.

Conversely, numerous studies conducted in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe and Scandinavia over the last 35 years have found that driver training courses that attempt to impart advanced skills, such as skid control, to learner drivers may actually contribute to increased crash risk, particularly among young males. There is this sense of overconfidence. Evidence also indicates that an enhanced GLS is likely to make a greater and more lasting contribution to young driver safety than expanding driver training programs.

That is really what this bill is all about. It is an acknowledgement that, over the first five years of a young driver's driving life, on moving from L to P, there is a peak really within a matter of days of them graduating from the L to the P, and then over a five-year period there is a significant drop in the crash rate of young drivers. Around year five it starts to plateau out and sits around that flatline planing probably for the next 40 years of their driving life.

We know that for the first five years they are the most vulnerable, because they are inexperienced, but after five years we arrive at this plateau, where most of us sit then for the next 40-odd years of our driving life. We believe that what we are talking about, which is more experience in a controlled, nurturing environment, which is the intent of the legislation, is more effective than trying to substitute on-road experience in a more controlled environment with greater driver education.

The member for Fisher will also be interested to know that, currently, drivers aged 16 to 25 who have had their learner's permit or provisional driver's licence disqualified are required by law to attend a 'ur choice' workshop. At the workshop, the reasons young drivers are involved in crashes are discussed, as well as explaining how road crashes affect individuals, families and friends, and they have the opportunity to think about strategies that would make for a safer driver. So, we are actually targeting with education programs those individuals who need them most. However, again, experience is the true teacher, and experience on the road cannot be substituted by way of classroom education.

In relation to extending the provisional licence period, this will extend the duration of protective conditions, such as the zero blood alcohol limit; the 100 km/h speed limit and vehicle power restrictions, which prevent young drivers from driving V8s in particular; and lower demerit points. In extending the P period for P2s from one year to two years, I think some members may be under some kind of misapprehension that there are a whole range of restrictions that are going to kick into place that are identical to those that apply to P1s.

We are not talking about the curfew: we are talking about the very simple and sensible restrictions in terms of not allowing them to drink alcohol, not exceeding a 100 km/h limit, keeping them out of high-powered vehicles, and also not allowing them to use electronic devices—mobile phones—with a total prohibition on the use of a phone, even with Bluetooth, because we know that what we are dealing with in those first vulnerable three years is the terrible impact of any form of distraction.

The minimum provisional licence period is three years in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and actually four years in Victoria. So, we are not actually breaking new ground here: we are playing catch-up. I found the comments from various members of the opposition, with respect to the debate that occurred in their party room, quite illuminating in that we had protestations that their position was evidence based.

All that I could pick up on in relation to the move from two to three years was the observation that, if they had not got their act together and they could not drive well after two years, well, what difference would one additional year make? That to me does not sound like a position founded on science, it does not sound to me like a position that is based on science or logical reasoning; not a position that is based on the data or the evidence.

I have asked Hansard whether I could incorporate into Hansard a chart, but I have been told that I cannot. I hope that in the Legislative Council I might be able to provide the underlying data table on which this particular graph is based. If you look at the graph, it is perfectly apparent that in years two to three we are still seeing a significant improvement in driver behaviour occurring. In fact, it is not until year five that we actually get the plateauing effect.

I think in this instance the Victorians have actually got it right and that another year would actually do the trick. Given the reluctance of the opposition to get serious about this issue, which does surprise me, given the fact that young country drivers are two and a half times more prone to serious injury and fatality, to get that particular proposition in place would be well-nigh impossible. We are now finding that it is well nigh impossible to get the additional year, even though it is in place in virtually every other state in Australia.

The data, the evidence, is irrefutable. They try to knock this proposition on the head on the basis that somebody got up in the opposition party room and said, 'Well, if they can't drive after two years, another year on their Ps is not going to make any difference whatsoever.' We have in front of us, and have supplied to the opposition, the statistical evidence that indicates that a significant improvement can and should occur in years two to three.

All the jurisdictions that have a three or four-year P licence period have a much better safety record than does South Australia. For example, Victoria has a fatality rate for 16 to 19-year-olds per 100,000 population of 9.7 compared with South Australia having a rate of 16. New South Wales, Queensland, ACT and Tasmania all have better rates than South Australia, and all have a three-year provisional period.

Extending the total minimum provisional licence period from two to three years will change the minimum age at which novice drivers can graduate to a full licence to 20 years of age. There will be no change to the age at which a learner's permit can be obtained, which is 16 years. There will also be no change to the age at which a provisional licence can be obtained, which is 17 years.

It is not correct to say that by extending the time on a provisional licence from two to three years will delay the ability to apply for a heavy vehicle licence. To obtain a light rigid or medium rigid class licence, the applicant must have held a class C licence for at least one year—this includes a P1 or P2 class C licence—and be at least 18 years of age. An 18 year old who has held a P licence for at least a year is able to now, and will, under these proposed changes, be able to apply for a heavy vehicle licence.

The main point to make is that by extending the time from two to three years, it will not mean that young P drivers are subject to the night and passenger restrictions for three years. The restrictions are proposed to only apply to a P1 driver for 12 months. The extension of the P period for three years will mean one year on a P1 and two years on a P2. As I said, those on a P2 do not even have to display a plate. If you are in Victoria and are on a P2, you have to exhibit a plate. My understanding is that the P1 in Victoria is a red P and the P2 is green.

We made a decision some time back that, to acknowledge good driver behaviour when an individual graduated from a P1 to a P2, we would not oblige them to have to exhibit the P-plate. So, they do not have to exhibit the P-plate; all they have to do is not drink and drive (not have any trace of alcohol in their system), keep their driving to under 100 km/h on 110, and not to be so foolhardy as to hop into a highly-powered V8 motor vehicle for which they are more than inadequately equipped by way of experience and maturity to handle. We do not believe that extending by a year is a major imposition. The change will also have absolutely no impact on employment or access to any other activities that young P2 drivers currently have.

In conclusion, road safety is a priority for this government, and I believe for the opposition—although I believe that in this instance their objections on the two points we have been discussing are ill-founded, not based on any evidence and, from what I gather, based on some fairly lackadaisical, slap-dash discussion and debate in their party room. I think we in this chamber all believe that road safety is highly important to the South Australian community, particularly to families with young people, and the government is particularly of the view that we would like to see this legislation pass through both of the houses by year's end so that we can implement these initiatives and have them in place by mid to late 2014.

Bill read a second time.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clauses 1 to 6 passed.

Clause 7.

Ms CHAPMAN: This clause sets out the prescription for learner's permit obligations and responsibilities. It is proposed that there be an insertion after subsection (19) which prohibits a motorcycle rider in certain circumstances being able to drive a motorbike on a road between midnight and 5am. Whilst it is referred to here, the general curfew obligations are set out in the provisions that are proposed in clause 11, being a new section 81A for provisional licence holders, and that this section does capture motorcyclists.

I indicate that, whilst this is part of the curfew obligation to which we have objection, we will not be voting against this clause. I indicate to the house the fact that it may have some consequential provision in other paragraphs of the bill. I will be simply placing our position on the record under clause 11.

Clause passed.

Clauses 8 to 10 passed.

Clause 11.

Ms CHAPMAN: This is a provision for the substitution of section 81A of the principal act and sets out the new regime to apply to provisional licences. Obviously, there is an expansion of definitions, and in particular I refer to the conditions in subparagraph (iv), which I think are the same, which really are the provisions well known to members for not having any prescribed concentration of alcohol in his or her bloodstream when they are driving. Actually, it is not just bloodstream, it is in his or her oral fluid or blood, and also the 10 kilometre rule, which provides that provisional licence holders cannot drive more than 10 kilometres over the speed limit for that area that applies under the Road Traffic Act.

A breach of both of these attracts a penalty and in some cases disqualification and the sacrifice of having to go back to the beginning of their provisional period again. To the best of my assessment, that does not change. What does change is when we go to subsection (5) it proposes to introduce the regime for the expansion of provisional licences from two years to three years by requiring the Registrar of Motor Vehicles not to issue a non-provisional licence, which is what the rest of us have, unless the applicant is of the age of 20 years or over at the commencement of the term of the licence. The addition of the provisions under this clause are what will impose the new three year provisional licence total period.

Subsections (16) and (17) principally set out the curfew for P1 licence holders who are under the age of 25 years not being able to operate a motor vehicle or drive a motor vehicle between midnight and 5am. They are the principal areas. Again, with the qualification that there may be other consequential provisions in the bill relating to the curfew amongst other obligations, they seem to be the principal areas that impose the significant penalties for breach.

I did not mention this in the second reading speech, but for the record it is some $1,250 for a breach. It makes the fee for a licence pale into insignificance. I might have to amend my previous statement because the penalty here for being caught in a vehicle without the exemptions, or not going on the direct route, is $1,250. The whole thing just becomes so absurd.

Dr McFetridge: How much?

Ms CHAPMAN: It is $1,250. In any event, I digress. These two areas we think are unnecessary for the reasons that have been previously outlined in the second reading contribution, and accordingly we will be opposing this replacement with the new section 81A.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: I think I have detailed our position in respect of believing that the curfew and the extension of the P2 for an additional year are central to the reforms that are contained within the bill. That is our position. Regarding section 4, I think the deputy leader probably wanted a guarantee, if you like, that things were unchanged, and the advice I have been given is that they are unchanged.

The committee divided on the clause:

Majority of 9 for the ayes.

Clause thus passed.

Remaining clauses (12 to 21), schedule and title passed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (20:19): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.