Road Safety

Mr DULUK (Waite) (15:18): My question is to the Minister for Road Safety. Minister, what measures is the government undertaking to combat reckless and dangerous hoon driving that is increasing in our community? Sir, with your leave and that of the house, I will further explain.

Leave granted.

Mr DULUK: Many constituents visit my office concerned with dangerous driving on Kalyra Road, Belair Road, Old Belair Road, James Road and other road passages throughout Mitcham and the Adelaide Hills. SA Police statistics from 2020 record 3,174 drivers were caught travelling at least 30 km/h above the limit, including 637 clocked speeding 45 km/h or more above the speed limit. What is the state government doing to counter these troubling stats and provide greater safety on the roads in my community?

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services) (15:19): I thank the member for Waite for the question. I do reject the assertion that the stats on the whole, across the board, across South Australia are getting worse. I think you will find that in many areas the stats are actually getting much, much better, whilst there is always more work to be done.

For example, if we look at one of the relevant stats of lives lost across the board, every life lost is one life too many. When we look at what happened in the 2020 calendar year, lives lost were considerably lower than in 2019 but well under the 10-year average of about 109 or 110. That particular reduction is certainly encouraging. There is always more to be done, and we as a government have invested millions of dollars in road safety campaigns right across the board.

I know that SAPOL's road safety unit work very hard, and they continue to help drive the message home through what is a vast array of targeted awareness campaigns to make South Australian roads safer. For example, we also have seen that our recent Rider Safe training reforms will happen down the track in the not too distant future. We know this house has just recently passed graduated licensing legislation to make sure we can do all we can to improve road safety outcomes from a motorcycle point of view.

This government has invested millions of dollars to make sure that we continue to work on road safety. Whether it is in specific advertising or whether it is through our road safety advisory committee that meets on regular occasions, there are a whole range of measures that this government is implementing to make sure that we can reduce serious crashes and also lives lost on our roads.

We know that a whole range of factors are at play here and relevant. In respect of the member for Waite's specific inquiries about particular roads in his electorate, however, I am more than happy to visit the member for Waite and pay particular attention to those roads and those particular incidents. We know there has been discussion in recent times. I have met with the commissioner, I have spoken with the Minister for Transport and also with the Attorney-General in relation to developing a suite of measures, if you like, for extensive high speed in our community, so we will be coming back and bringing something before the house at some stage in relation to that. There is also a bill in the other place in relation to dangerous driving.

At the end of the day, it is incumbent on every single person to do the right thing. Saying that, this makes the case for why we need these extensive road safety campaigns. SAPOL and I were at Adelaide University last week. We were actually in the morgue of Adelaide University in one of the buildings last week, whereby a very confrontational road safety campaign was launched, dedicated towards selfish drivers.

Whether it is better roads, which I know the Minister for Infrastructure is working very hard to deliver, or better legislation across the board, which we are working on together with the Attorney-General and the Minister for Infrastructure to deliver, or those hard-hitting road safety campaigns, we will continue to make sure that we can do all we can. But in respect of the specific roads in the member for Waite's electorate, what I will commit to do is to make sure that I meet with the member for Waite. Let's look at some of those statistics and see what we can do to help.