Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 June 2019.)

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (16:49): I rise to speak to the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill, which is a relatively brief bill. Members would be familiar with how I like to curb the amount of comment on brief bills, such as the Supply Bill, for example. We will see if I can—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: My apologies, member for Lee, because you may have indicated this, but are you the lead speaker?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, sir. This bill is, in the context of the 2019-20 state budget delivered last month, a relatively brief bill. It really only canvasses two revenue measures: a series of changes to the Mining Act, to enable the significant increases to fees levied under the powers of the Mining Act and, similarly, to enable an increase to maximum expiation levels levied under the Road Traffic Act.

Its brevity is surprising because it finds its context in a state budget that contains $513 million in higher taxes, fees and charges over the budget and forward estimates period, in addition to the popular land tax aggregation measure, which has been receiving some attention inside this chamber and outside this chamber but in the parliament complex over the past 24 hours or so.

Those taxes, fees and charges and the land tax aggregation do not find their voice in this bill. I see the member for Morialta ready to spring like a leopard to raise a point of order to say that I am debating, and that this is not the substance of the bill, but I will tease him no longer.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: It is fascinating. It is contexted. It is germane.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: He is alone in that view—including from me. I do—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: You are the one who was raising it. Don't hide your light under a bushel.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I do, however, have to raise a number of issues with this bill. It is remarkable that after the extraordinary progress our state has made in providing for a more approachable, transparent and low-cost jurisdiction for the mining industry and its participants, we would be seeking to significantly increase fees. Indeed, I believe the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy has publicly complained about what they see as fee increases of up to 70 per cent in some areas on members of their industry.

Members need only cast their minds back to just before the global financial crisis, when there had been significant investment by the then state Labor government and also the mining industry in unlocking new mineral resources. There was the PACE program, which provided geographical, geological and sometimes even hydrological data to the industry free of charge, so that people could come in and explore core samples in what became a new mineral core library. That led to, amongst other things, the $800 million expansion of Carrapateena, which is currently underway and delivering significant economic activity.

That is not the sort of effort that we see in this bill. Unfortunately, this year's budget measures bill imposes extraordinary increases for members of the mining and extractive industries. It is very regrettable that this message can be sent by a state like South Australia which, leading up to the global financial crisis, was the third most prospective jurisdiction for mining in the world. That was not just as a result of what was invested from the PACE initiative but also from the significant red tape that had been cut from those people looking to come and explore and, hopefully, come and develop in that area.

Maybe it is part of a cunning plan by the minister, given the hoo-ha about his mining bill—a term not used often, and understandably so—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: It's like the days of Albert Bensimon.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: There's a name we have not heard for a while—

An honourable member: No hoo-ha.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Well, when you get it from there 'you know it's for real', if I remember correctly.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Simply irresistible.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That is probably a bridge too far these days. The member for Morialta has succeeded in shaking me from my train of thought, and I congratulate him on that. It is regrettable that, given the hoo-ha over the mining bill, perhaps this is a cunning plan by the Minister for Energy and Mining to thwart further development in regional and rural South Australia. What a nefarious plan that would be, given the unfettered support the opposition has offered him in trying to prosecute more mineral prospectivity in our great state of South Australia.

Then we move on to the remarkable increase in expiation fees. Of course no-one condones speeding, least of all me, and it is perhaps understandable that some people who give some cursory thought—no deeper—to road safety might think that jacking up speeding fines would lead to significant improvements in road safety outcomes on South Australian roads.

It was in that guise, or indeed that spin, that the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas of the other place, decided to frame his $513 million of higher fees and charges on South Australians, dressing it all up as just an increase in some speeding fines, a voluntary tax on South Australians who will not have to pay it as long as they do not speed.

Unfortunately, even with these measures that is not actually true. If you take the number of speeding offences at each of the levels to which these fines are being increased and you multiply them by the increases in the fines, it is but a tiny proportion of the amount of revenue to be raised by this. Indeed, the great bulk of the revenue to be raised from the attack on speeding drivers, as the government would like to hear it, is actually from the increase in the corporate fee.

This is a fee paid by business owners and fleet managers who are unable to identify the drivers of their fleet vehicles at the time an offence occurs; hence, that individual driver, not being able to be held personally responsible or liable for their speeding, can have the expiation paid by the company owning the vehicle. In addition to that, a corporate fee is payable. Such is the increase in the corporate fee, that this amounts to I think, off the top of my head, an $18 million increase in revenue from those fleet managers of South Australia who are unable to identify the drivers.

This has been characterised as a rort by the Treasurer and the Premier. Of course, they say that about people who own land and who may not be subject to the full effects of proposed changes to land tax aggregation. However, how does this rort affect small businesses, for example, or that tradesperson who started out on their own, perhaps as a plumber or electrician or carpenter—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Believe me—and you should know this by now, member for Morialta—the anecdote is but just starting and not finished. After just starting out with their own van, through hard toil they have managed to grow their business, employ more staff and buy more vans and so on. It is these people who are likely to be paying the tens of millions of dollars more in this corporate fee. I think that is regrettable.

I say that as somebody who perhaps could be accused at face value of speaking with a little forked tongue on this matter because I did, in fact, as a former transport minister, move to increase the corporate fee, but that was in a very specific circumstance. That was for companies that owned trucks that were being used by truck drivers to speed recklessly down the last stretch of the South Eastern Freeway towards the tollgate in Adelaide.

In that context, in the early days of my unfortunately brief tenure as transport minister, we had seen catastrophic accidents, including multiple fatalities from trucks running out of control there. All South Australians, including, I think it would be safe to say, everyone in this place, were horrified to see that at least one of those accidents was caused by unroadworthy vehicles being placed on the road, and inexperienced drivers being placed in vehicles as well, having to descend that tricky stretch of the South Eastern Freeway.

In that context, that was an appropriate use of an increase in the corporate fee, but not just everyone, not just because it is a revenue raiser. That is not about road safety: that is about punishing South Australian fleet managers and small businesses who legitimately do not often know who is driving which fleet vehicle—which van, in the example I gave—on any particular day.

I would assume (this is the feedback we get from the small business community) that if they see one of these speeding offences conducted in one of their vehicles and when they are presented with expiation, if they are unable to identify the driver, as the member for Morialta would know, if the miscreant in the classroom cannot be identified, then all the students should suffer. That is the approach often taken by a small business.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: That is not best practice in education.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is not best practice in education anymore, I think the member for Morialta was going to say. I sat up the front. I did my homework on time. I was quiet and I was always led astray. Even to this day, I still suffer from the misbehaviour of the member opposite.

It is extraordinary now that we see these speeding fines increasing in this way. We know that if the government were really serious about road safety, it would not just be about increasing fines; it would also be looking at demerit points. More to the point, it would not be about winding up the Motor Accident Commission so that South Australia can be the only state in the nation without a dedicated independent transport authority committed to road safety.

I think the seriousness behind this bill is that it gives rise to the lie that just increasing speeding fines will enhance road safety. It is no coincidence that we have had a dramatic 50 per cent escalation in the number of people who have died on South Australian roads so far this calendar year, and it almost exactly corresponds with the period of time when the Motor Accident Commission completely halted from being present in the media and making any proactive media comment about road safety—not in the lead-up to the Australia Day holiday, not in the lead-up to the March long weekend, not in the lead-up to the Easter long weekend, not in the lead-up to the June long weekend.

Not only that, there has been no new research, no new advertising commissioned and no new advertising campaigns publicised across media here in South Australia. That is terrible, and it is not going too far to say that people are dying as a result of winding back the messaging on road safety in the community at the moment.

I think that dressing up an enormous increase in speeding fines and claiming that that is doing something about the carnage out on our roads is really unfortunate. We know that even the current Minister for Police is able to quote the Fatal Five, and speeding is but one of them.

While we are not getting messages out into the community about combating all the Fatal Five—not just speeding but also dealing with inattention, distractions such as mobile phones and so on and drink and drug driving—we are worse off as a community. So I have turned over a new leaf. I have kept my remarks reasonable and I will leave them there.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (17:05): As to length, I might tend to agree with the member for Lee. As to reasonableness, well, reasonable minds might differ. I have listened carefully to his contribution and, in rising to commend the bill to the house, I will perhaps commence by making some observation by way of comparison to the relevant corporate levy and fines to which the member for Lee referred just now, namely, that they were increased in no small way.

They affect vehicles that are travelling down the South Eastern Freeway, commencing in my electorate at Crafers. Indeed, that is a particular part of our state's road network that is potentially very dangerous if navigated without care and without great skill. I very much commend the drivers of large freight trucks who have to navigate that stretch of road, in particular on a regular basis, because it certainly takes a high degree of skill and concentration to do it safely.

The member for Lee referred to the increased fees that he was responsible for implementing during his term as minister. I note that those penalties that are specified by the department, and were noted at the time as being very substantial increases, are indeed hefty. They are fines in the amount of $25,000 and $50,000, respectively, in relation to business vehicles that are detected speeding and where those vehicles are held by a body corporate who fails to nominate the driver responsible for a camera-detected speeding offence. It ought to be made very clear that there are very significant penalties already in place in relation to the driving of corporate registered vehicles when the driver of the vehicle is not nominated.

When it comes to questions of safety, it is important to be aware that it is, and has been for some time, regarded as importantly linked to responsibility and individual accountability. To the extent that the regulations provide for an increase in the penalty to be applied to bodies corporate failing to nominate a driver. Those penalties in relation to these regulations provide for an increase from $300 to $1,800 in respect of a single offence and from $600 to $3,600 for two offences that occur at the same time.

That might, perhaps in light of the member for Lee's remarks just now, be seen in the context of the body corporate levy that applies to business vehicles on the South Eastern Freeway that are, in the circumstances that the member for Lee described, in the tens of thousands and reflect the desire of government to ensure that steps are taken to identify a driver responsible in circumstances where the vehicle is registered in the name of a body corporate.

I refer to that matter in particular in opening my remarks. I do propose to confine my contribution in relation to the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill 2019 to those aspects of the bill that provide for amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1961, and I have already referred specifically to those that would affect the penalties to apply in those circumstances of a vehicle registered to a body corporate where the driver is not identified.

It perhaps has ceased to be a matter of real debate that speed is a significant if not the chief contributing factor to serious injuries and fatalities caused by vehicle collisions on the road, and that is at a variety of speeds. Considerable data indicates that as speed increases so, too, does the risk of fatality and, moreover in relation to speed in excess of a relevant speed limit, there is a considerable increase in the risk of serious injury or fatality.

So it is for that reason that inquiries over a long period of time have found that those responsible for taking measures to keep our roads as safe as they can be ought have particular focus on speed management measures and on enforcement. I would refer specifically in this regard to the Inquiry into the National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020, published in September last year, and the 12 key recommendations of that report, which highlight both of those aspects in particular—speed management and enforcement—and those aspects will have come as no surprise to those considering the report.

It is important as well to note that the authors of that report highlight that this is not a simple matter, and that measures to control speed alone will not be sufficient to solve safety issues on our roads. That is a matter that might also be regarded as uncontroversial. There are a variety of safety measures, including those which have been referred to by previous speakers in this debate.

Suffice to say that speed, especially excessive speed, is clearly a major contributor to serious injury and fatality on the road. It is important in the context of these measures, the subject of the bill, that, in increasing the fines applicable for driving at speeds that are significantly in excess of relevant speed limits, we bear in mind the road safety imperatives at the core of the government's responsibility to make our roads as safe as possible.

The changes to the Road Traffic Act 1961—which have the effect of updating court-imposed penalties set out in the act for excessive speed so as to be greater than the new expiation fine—which remove the existing corporate fee from the act and replace it with the provision that enables the corporate fee to be made by regulations and change the provision in the act that limits the maximum amount of the expiation fee from the current amount of $1,250 to $2,500, are accompanied by the changes to the regulations that are the subject of the Road Traffic (Miscellaneous) Regulations 2014. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.