Road Safety

Mr MURRAY (Davenport) (14:21): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Leader, Minister for Energy, be quiet. Member for Davenport.

Mr MURRAY: My question is to the Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services. Can the minister inform the house how the government is working with SAPOL and other agencies to combat the increase in fatalities experienced so far this year on South Australian roads?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD (Gibson—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:22): I thank the member for Davenport for his question—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —a very important question it is as well, and I know he has great care and consideration for people on our roads and making sure that they get where they need to go safely. We do know that this year the number of people who have died on our roads is higher than it has been previously. We also acknowledge that any death on our roads is one death too many.

We must also point out that it is fundamentally everybody's responsibility when they are on the road to drive carefully, to make sure they get where they want to go, they get there safely, they don't impact their family by having an accident and hurting themselves and they don't impact other families by hurting someone else on the road. That is a key point that needs to be made.

We do hear people often talk about the road toll, and I really don't like that term because 'toll' indicates a price you have to pay, and we don't have to pay this price. We look at the number of deaths on our road this year at 31, and police say very clearly that all of them could have been avoided if people were more careful. To see and hear of people driving their car without seatbelts on, riding motorbikes without helmets, speeding when they shouldn't be—these are things that everyone can control, and we implore—and I'm sure that those on the other side of the house do as well—people to drive safely when they are on the roads. I was very happy to hear the deputy commissioner today—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Lee!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —talk about the fact that they have elevated road safety to the top of their agenda today at a meeting they had with 60 other senior police personnel—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —to make sure they are doing everything they can. The thing you will notice about road safety, and we are very aware of it on this side of the house, is that it transgresses through a number of portfolio areas.

I wish there was just a wand that you could wave to fix the problem. There isn't. It actually goes across a number of areas. I pointed out one, and that is personal responsibility, and police are driving that message very hard. The other one is—and I want to commend my colleague the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure—that we get the right infrastructure in place. He went to great lengths yesterday to outline the amount of money that the federal government have chipped in at the most recent budget, and last year in our state budget, with billions of dollars going into infrastructure spend here in South Australia to make sure our roads are as safe as possible.

We want to do everything we can at that end to make our roads as safe as possible. We want people taking responsibility. The police will be doing policing. That was the discussion the deputy commissioner was having today, to make sure that we can look at operations or practices that can be put in place to make sure that we are there trying to get to people before something goes wrong. Unfortunately, it can't always happen, but the police are doing everything in their power to make sure that it does.

Another one is, of course, education and advertising. Since the previous government sold off the Motor Accident Commission, it left just the shell of an organisation, and those arms are being absorbed into the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure and also into SAPOL to make sure that we can keep delivering those messages as much as possible to make sure that people are aware and to make sure that they are responsible for their actions. We cannot drive that point hard enough.

I know those on the other side have mentioned that there have been a number of motorcycle accidents—and there have been this year—and there is talk about the graduated licensing scheme. We are working through that, but we want to make sure that there aren't any unintended consequences with that. That is a focus on the younger age group, but when we look at the deaths from motorcycles this year a lot of them are actually 30, 40, 50 and 60-year-old men. One of the things we are looking at is making sure that as they get their licence—they get their licence in a car where they have extra protection. We know that when people get onto the road they are learning about the road and the road rules and without that protection they are vulnerable. We are doing that work and we look forward to bringing it back to the parliament.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!