Cycling Safety

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:49): My question is to the Minister for Tourism and Recreation and Sport. Can the minister inform the house of any international recognition South Australia has received for its work in the area of road safety for cyclists?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (14:49): I thank the member for Torrens for the question. Yes, surprisingly, I can. The UCI, which is the Union Cycliste Internationale and the world governing body of cycling, last month announced that we've got the world famous Santos Tour Down Under on the international cycling calendar for well into the future. It has been secured after a couple of years of review of the international cycling calendar.

One of the things that they look at is our participation rates in cycling, and since we had the very first Tour Down Under back in 1999 we have seen a tenfold increase in the number of people who cycle here in South Australia. We have also seen an increase in the efforts by this government to bring about changed behaviour on our roads, where we get people to share the road, because every person who goes out on a cycling journey, no matter their age, no matter their ability, deserves to get home safely.

This is something that we discussed with the head of the UCI in Switzerland earlier this year. They don't look at just the way we put on a bike race: they look at the way we conduct ourselves in terms of promoting cycle safety to the members of the community here and how we set an example to the rest of the nation. Indeed, South Australia is the capital of cycling in Australia. We are the best when it comes to road safety for cycling, but we have a long way to go in terms of an international level, particularly in Europe, where they do things so much better than any Australian state.

I was talking to Tracey Gaudry earlier today. Tracey is a former Olympic cyclist, she is a former head of the Amy Gillett Foundation, and she is the Vice President of the UCI. She is also the President of the UCI Advocacy Group, and that is a job that entails going out and looking at people around the world and what they are doing in the space of road safety when it concerns cyclists. I acknowledge the amount of work she has put in over the years talking to, I am sure, people on both sides of this chamber and certainly many community groups.

I have been working with Tracey and also with Amy's mum and dad, Mary and Denis Safe, who have been fierce advocates for this A Metre Matters for many years now. They were a little bit astounded that it would come as a surprise to members opposite that this discussion had been ongoing for so long and that now, after the event and after some media feedback, I guess, on what these proposed changes will be like, the Liberal Party all of a sudden is changing gears and changing tack on what it is they think of these new rules.

We do have a very important role to play. We do have the eyes of the nation and the eyes of the world on us. People are seeing this, by Australian terms, as nation leading and very progressive groundbreaking rule changes. Just like we were the first—and eventually at this stage—and only state in Australia to bring in container deposit legislation, these are things that we should be proud of. We should be proud of the progressive way we go about our business.

At the same time, we do have to listen to people's concerns, but we also do not want to be out there fanning the fear of change, and I think there are some members opposite who are keen to do that. For people who are worried about cyclists knocking them down on the footpath, can I say that it is not the people out there in lycra who are going to be up on the footpath. This is designed to get an under-represented group of cyclists, the women and the young children, a safe haven.

Cyclists who are out there wearing lycra don't want to ride on the footpath. What we know is that women and children do not feel safe on our roads. We are retrofitting as many roads as we can with cycling laneways but, until we do that, we need to give them a safe haven because we want more people to ride for the betterment of their health and their wellbeing.

The SPEAKER: Deputy leader.