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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-04 Daily Xml
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SPEED CAMERAS

Adjourned debate on motion of Mr Venning:

That this house establishes a select committee to examine the effectiveness of speed cameras and other speed measuring devices used by South Australia Police.

(Continued from 6 April 2011.)

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:10): I rise to support the motion by the member for Schubert to establish a select committee on speed detection devices. It is interesting to note that the Rann Labor government has indicated it wants to raise an extra almost $45 million from speeding fines over the next three years, which indicates that it has used speed cameras as a source of revenue and not a road safety device.

There certainly has been plenty of discussion about where speed cameras are located. I note some discussion on the radio this morning about the camera on King William Road near Sir Edwin Smith Drive, which has collected over $1 million of revenue. Although that device is overt and open to see, it is usually after you have gone past it that you see it.

I appreciate, as anyone in this house does, that if you do not break the law and if you do not speed you do not pay the fine, but I question how big a blackspot that part of King William Road is. I know it is a 50 km/h zone, but there is a lot of confusion on the roads. A flat 60 km/h limit was the default limit in our state's cities and towns but now it is 50 km/h unless it is signposted. I certainly wonder how many cameras are in blackspots and actually do help curtail our road toll and the massive injuries that can happen from severe accidents.

I note that where I live on the Dukes Highway we have had more horrific accidents recently. There have been three deaths in a matter of days, and they just keep happening. On the road near Ki Ki two people in a car went under a truck and could barely be recognised. The truck tipped over in the accident. People were saying the road is only a class 2 road. I have driven that road all my life and it is a lot better since it was modernised about 30 years ago. The stretch between Coomandook and Coonalpyn was a horror stretch. There were lots of hills and corners, and it has certainly been straightened out. This accident happened on a straight stretch of road on a bit of a rise and, in my view, there was really no need for the accident to happen, although I note that it has a rating of 2, I believe, by the authorities for being a dangerous stretch of highway.

This is why I question the real intent of speed cameras. I do not question that we have to obey the law, but why are they not in places that actually save lives? These deaths on the Dukes Highway will keep happening because the government does not have a priority to dual lane the Dukes Highway through to the border, so I question the commitment. Since those accidents, there was a camera blitz. Over Easter, you only had to have the UHF radio going to hear about 'flash for cash' here, 'flash for cash' there, 'there is a double one there' and 'one running here', and cars doing laps.

This is after the event of two tragic accidents. I guess my area of the Dukes Highway is in a fatigue zone where people are about two hours out from the centre of the city. A lot of people who come out there are not used to long drives and these accidents happen further down the road towards Keith, Bordertown and through to the border.

Recently, I spoke to the Public Works Committee about the $80 million project to put in more overtaking lanes and other road works to improve the Dukes Highway. In my verbal submission I asked, 'What price a life?' Too many times there are too many accidents happening and friends of mine have to go out in the CFS trucks and help to extricate bodies which are in a mutilated state. They also have to console truck drivers who are jammed in their trucks on their sides because they have just gone over someone and killed them. The drivers cannot get out of the trucks and they have to talk them through before they can get them out.

I have been told the cost of getting the dual lane through to the Victorian border, which is about 191 kilometres, is about $1 billion—close on $5 million per kilometre. So I would have thought, in the light of saving lives, if that is the intent of things like speed cameras and our intent in this place to make the state a better place to commute in, it would have been far better to put the $80 million into providing more dual lanes down the Dukes Highway.

We should start on the work, and whether it takes 10 years or whether it takes 20 years, one day we will get to the border. We are doing bandaid measures, like putting in more overtaking lanes and more rest stops—and I do not disagree with the rest stops—but we should be making it so that we do not have these horrific head-on accidents. They are horrific and end up with a massive loss of life. If people are serious about keeping their speed down and if they think that the speed cameras are effective in saving lives, perhaps there should be more of them in these stretches of road, instead of coming after the event of several fatal accidents.

With those few words I would like to support the member for Schubert's motion. I understand that one has to obey the law but sometimes it appears that these cameras are set up in locations that are just there to fill the government's coffers. I certainly think there needs to be a committee looking at the effectiveness and accuracy of speed cameras. My father received an alleged speed camera fine one day—this allegedly happened in Adelaide but his car was parked at home on the farm and was nowhere near the place. Once that was resolved, quite quickly, with the authorities, it was thrown out but there certainly can be mistakes made like that. With those few words, I support the motion of the member for Schubert.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Police, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Motor Sport, Minister Assisting the Premier with the Olympic Dam Expansion Project) (11:18): As Minister for Police, it is appropriate for me at this point to make a contribution. From the outset may I say that I am not in any way reflecting or passing any judgement on the sincerity of the concerns of members opposite about those who have lost their lives, be that on country roads or in suburban Adelaide. However, I want to make the point that bashing up on speed cameras has been a feature of this parliament for as long as I have been here, from both sides of the house, and from various individuals from time to time. However, one fact is that if the Liberal government were to be formed at the next election, or the one after or the one after, it will make no changes to the current approach as to how speed cameras are deployed. And the reason they will not—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I beg your pardon?

Mr Marshall: You're writing our Liberal policy?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: No, and that shows the naivety of members like the member for Norwood. The decision to place speed cameras is an operational matter at the discretion and the decision-making of the police commissioner and his or her delegated authority.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I beg your pardon?

Mr Marshall: Are you setting any targets?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Elected ministers, should they attempt to interfere with advising, suggesting or requiring the police commissioner to set or to place speed cameras in certain areas, would do so at their ministerial peril.

Mr Marshall: Is there a revenue target?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: No, there is not. There is not a revenue target. There is a revenue estimate, of course there is, but there is not a revenue target.

Mr Marshall: What's the difference between the two?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Well, if you do not know the difference between a revenue estimate and a target—

Mr Marshall: You said a revenue estimate and you don't require them to actually work towards that.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: No.

Mr Marshall: What is the target?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: As the former treasurer, I have a little more experience on this matter than the would-be leader. The revenue is always estimated, and I recall in a number of years that the revenue estimate was under-achieved by a factor of 25 per cent, and that is a good thing—that is a damn good thing.

Can I say that no government that I have been a member of—and I am pretty confident that I can say this about the former Liberal government as well—set a revenue target that the police were required to achieve. That just does not happen.

One of the great furphies of the debate about speed cameras is that the government somehow requires police to have a cash-register approach to speed cameras. In fact, what that does is reflect very poorly on those we entrust to safeguard our roads.

The simple fact, as much as it may be unpalatable and not well received by those members from the country, is that roads do not kill people, roads do not cause accidents: people do.

Mr Whetstone: Lack of education.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Often it is a mistake in driving, often it is a lack of skill in driving, often it may be the driving conditions, as my colleague mentions, with weather, etc., and it may well be the actions of another person and not the innocent who gets hit. But roads do not kill people.

I have no doubt that the previous Liberal government would have implemented measures that would have been successful. However, as my colleague the Minister for Education just remarked, if you have a look at what you achieve in government over the course of a government, probably without question the most important measure this government ever undertook in terms of the life quality and longevity of South Australians was the decision to reduce speed limits in metropolitan Adelaide.

That measure alone has saved lives. We will never know how many, we will never know who, but what we do know is that, on all the evidence available to us globally and nationally, that measure alone means that there are many tens and tens, if not hundreds (perhaps, who knows), of South Australians not only alive but also without a serious handicap as a result of a car accident.

I recall as the Motor Accident Commission minister that statistically (and it is difficult to measure with all the variables that are involved in terms of actual fatalities) one measure you can see, read and analyse quite subjectively is the number of crashes, and that is down (the last time I was looking at these numbers) at least 15 per cent. So, a reduction of 60 to 55 equalled a 15 per cent less number of recorded crashes of all types.

Mr Marshall: Not at the Britannia roundabout.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Sorry?

Mr Marshall: Not at the Britannia roundabout.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Well, I am trying to make a sensible contribution.

Mr Marshall: Well, so am I. It was your own policy in the 2006 election to fix that roundabout.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Why don't you just, for once, try to get off your yippee beans and just be constructive. The Victoria roundabout, I think, functions—

Mr Marshall: No, it's the Britannia roundabout.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The Britannia roundabout functions quite well. I can tell you, if you want to start listing problems that we have in metropolitan Adelaide, there are a hell of a lot of issues with junctions and intersections that I would rate much higher in terms of the need for assistance than the Britannia roundabout. I am trying to make a constructive contribution, not a confrontational approach, which seems to be the only way the member for Norwood thinks he will get recognised in this place.

The number of crashes, as I said, and therefore the consequential human damage, the effect on society and the dollar impact is greatly reduced. You would think that somebody like the member for Schubert—who has been in this place far too long (and that is his own side saying that)—would be mature enough in approaching this to know full well that the police approach their task with great diligence, with great planning and with great skill in deciding where they will place speed cameras.

Speed cameras are a massive deterrent against speeding. The police will place those cameras where they think it is an appropriate place, from the whole of state and whole of city strategies. Ultimately, they are the ones, along with the SES and CFS volunteers, who, quite often, on country roads at least, are the first on the scene to deal with the carnage that is the result of a car accident.

In all the years that I have been police minister—and I have been police minister for at least probably 3½ to four years in two stints—and certainly not as treasurer have I ever had a discussion with the police commissioner where we have sat around the table with a map of South Australia and said, 'Crikey, I reckon we could get ourselves a couple of million if we stick one here.' That does not happen.

For it to be suggested, I think, is both offensive to the men and women of our road safety branch and to the management of our police in this state. If all the member for Schubert can do, after 30-plus years in this place, is put a motion up that is attacking the placement of speed cameras—

Mr Venning: Twenty-one.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: That's right; that's Rob Lucas in another place. He is the one who can't get himself a job in the private sector and has to hang on for ever in this joint. Speed cameras—

Mr Venning: Are you saying I can't get one?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: No, you don't need to. You are independently wealthy. Speed cameras are a necessary and vital weapon in the fight against carnage on our roads. I think we should have more speed cameras. It would be great—

Mr Whetstone: How about educating them?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The member says, 'Educate people.'

Mr Whetstone: Educate the young.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: If you don't know now that speeding kills, if you don't know now that not wearing a seatbelt quadruples the rate of serious injury and death, well then, give me a break.

Mr Whetstone: It's not the break, it's the stone wall and the tree that they hit.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: That is the fault of the driver, not of the road.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: We do educate kids. Come on, I educate my kids.

Mr Whetstone: Not in the country you don't.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I don't live in the country.

Mr Whetstone: I do.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Well then, educate your kids.

Time expired.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:29): I support the member for Schubert's motion. It may surprise the Minister for Police that I agree with quite a bit of what he said. I totally agree with him that it is an operational matter for the police. However, I sometimes seriously question where the police are operating.

Let me give you an example. On Monday, I had to go up to the Riverland through the 110 zone from Murray Bridge through to Loxton. I sat on cruise control—110, 111, whatever, but well within the limit—and I was regularly passed by any number of vehicles. I was passed on double white lines, I was passed on hills, I was passed all over the place. To me, that act of arrant stupidity by those people could have resulted in a critical accident, involving them, myself or any number of other people. I did not see one police car the whole way up, and I did not see one police car the whole way back. However, on Monday evening, I had to go just out of the town and come back in at around quarter to six, and there was a police van sitting under a tree in the 60 zone going into Loxton; being totally useless, in my opinion.

I would suggest that, without knowing, they were strategically located there because it was probably near their meal break. This is the stupidity of it. The revenue flows if you speed. The member for West Torrens knows only too well how much that costs, and he did not even tell the Premier. However, I say to the house that to have speed cameras is one thing, but to put them in locations where they are actually doing some use would be a whole lot better for the state of South Australia in lowering the road toll.

This is regular. I see it time and time again on the road between here and the south coast—Victor Harbor, down through Middleton and Port Elliot—these cameras are in places where they are totally useless. You do not need to tell me that you put a camera on a straight stretch of road into town, where there is probably no history of injury or accident, or very few accidents—or even zilch fatals, I would suggest—for any other reason than to raise money. This is why the member for Schubert has good case to put the motion to the house.

The last thing I want to see is more accidents on the roads; the very last thing. I have enough fatal accidents in my electorate alone—indeed, I have had one in the last couple of weeks—and the number of fatal accidents that sadly occur on the Adelaide-Victor Harbor road is testament to people's stupidity. As the police minister said, it is the nut behind the wheel—well, he did not say that—but, it is the nut behind the wheel, not the road. The road conditions add a fair bit to it, but for heaven's sake, if they are fair dinkum about it, get them out on the road where they are actually going to do some good on the bad sections of road, and ping people out there, not in silly situations like long straight roads—60 km/h drives into towns—where there is little or no danger to anyone.

The Hon. R.B. Such: King William Road, 50k!

Mr PENGILLY: Yes; and it's all very well for the Minister for Police to talk about these things when he has been driven around by chauffeur for the last nine years. That is another case. I do not know how much driving he does. He may drive in his private time, or he may walk up the footpath or do what he wants to do—that's his business. However, the reality is that if you are going to be fair dinkum about speed cameras, you should have a good look at it and, in my view, put them where they are doing some good—out on the road sections where people do stupid things.

Those of us, particularly country members, who are out there all the time see it time and time again. There would not be a country member in this place—possibly including you, ma'am—who has not seen acts of arrant stupidity on the road, not only by cars, but I include trucks and motorbikes. Only yesterday on the South Eastern Freeway, I was tailgated by two motorbikes with New South Wales plates, from Tailem Bend right back through to Adelaide, sitting behind me. Not a police car to be seen anywhere on the road, not a speed camera to be seen anywhere.

That is just another thing to do with this. I thought it was unwise to remove the warning signs 'You have been past a speed camera'. What is the secret? You have been through. If you were speeding, you get done, if you were not speeding, you do not get done. I do not think that is the smartest thing that the police commissioner has done, by a long shot, quite frankly.

I do think there is some justification for the member for Schubert's motion. Just to correct the record, ma'am: he has not been here for 30 years, he has been here for, I think, around 21. He is going shortly—that is the good news for him. He will be able to retire and go home to Crystal Brook, and enjoy life and spend time on the roads.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I call the member for Morphett.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:34): Madam Speaker, many people in this place would know that I have been questioning in this place for quite a long time not the efficiency of speed cameras, as this motion talks about, but the accuracy of speed cameras. The science of metrology is the science of determining the accuracy of measurement, and I have been dealing with world authorities in the science of metrology over a number of years to try and ascertain whether the speed detection devices that are used by South Australia Police are as accurate as the government would have us believe.

There is an association called the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA). It is an authority which ensures that all sorts of instruments are as accurate as manufacturers and legislators would have us want them to be, including the water meters in homes, the meters on bores and dams that are being installed around the place, right through to weighing machines in shops.

Yet, to the best of my knowledge, I think that the current—and I should have checked that this morning—position with the South Australian police speed detection devices and the calibration of those devices is that it is not done in a NATA accredited laboratory, as is done by every other police authority around the nation. It is so important that we protect our police officers by making sure that the equipment they are using is calibrated to the highest degree, the same as your water meter at home has to be. Surely, that is not too much to ask.

So, protect our police. Let them do the job they want to do by giving them the funding to make sure that their calibration laboratory is NATA accredited so that they can have that fallback to say, 'Yes, this equipment is accurate; NATA accredited.' We do not have that. If that is the case, if it is still suspended, as I understand it, then that is a disgrace because I have been going on about this for many years.

In fact, I remember in estimates a number of years ago, I asked the Commissioner of Police about some of the tolerances that were there and the in-built errors that were involved in detecting and determining the speed of cars, motorcycles and trucks. The police commissioner, inadvertently, released the tolerances that were then used by the Victorian police, and there was hell to pay in Victoria. I understand that the commissioner received some fairly terse emails, phone calls and letters about him releasing those tolerances.

Good on the police commissioner, because you have to have tolerances. There is no way that you can compensate, calibrate, equilibrate, or in any way build in the in-built errors in speed determination and measurement in motor vehicles, trucks and cars. Tyre pressure, loading, wind speed, your position in the car, your dominant eye, it is as simple as that. There are many things which need to be taken into account.

I have just been handed a note by the member for Fisher, who has been championing the whole accreditation of SAPOL's equipment, to say that it has now been accredited. As I said though, it was suspended from 2006 to 2010. I hope that accreditation has been due, in some small part, to my efforts because the police needed that protection. I have said that many times.

We need to protect our police and make sure that they are able to do the job that they want to do, because they are hardworking, diligent men and women who are upholding the laws of our state. They are not out there to catch innocent people. They want to stop speeding. They want to deter speeding. Speed detection devices are not always used by the police, they are sometimes used by traffic speed camera operators who are not sworn police officers, but, nevertheless, the equipment needs to be accurate. I am very pleased to be informed by the member for Fisher that SAPOL does now have a NATA accredited testing laboratory to calibrate their equipment.

The effectiveness of speed detection devices, cameras and other speed measuring devices used by SAPOL is the motion here, that they are effective in the catching of people speeding. We need to make sure that they are accurate but we also need to make sure that they are effective in deterring people who have been speeding. The Minister for Police said that, with a Liberal or Labor government, we would not change anything. Well, things were changed. They were changed by the minister's government.

Former police minister Wayne Matthew insisted that the signs warning of speed cameras were before the camera, that they were placed on the side of the road before the camera to warn that there was a speed camera in the area, so that if you were speeding it alerted you to that. It was not about revenue raising, it was not about catching innocent motorists who were inadvertently going down the hill at the wrong time, or something like that. It was about making sure that safety came first. They changed the name from speed cameras to safety cameras. They had the sign after the camera, and now they have taken it away completely.

As was the case with one of my constituents a couple of months ago, if you are going down Anzac Highway into Glenelg, you go from 60 into a 50 zone—nothing changes; it is still four lanes, very busy and commercial. However, hidden behind trees (and that is the only way you could describe it) were signs saying 50 km/h. I wrote to the Minister for Police about this. The motorists were not warned they were going into a 50 zone. They assumed, quite sensibly I think, it was still a 60 zone.

If you want a classic example of the inconsistency of speed levels being set in South Australia, go to Military Road at West Beach. It is a huge, wide road there—50 km/h. There is some traffic coming in and out, sure—caravans, buses and boats on cars—but 50 km/h an hour. Then you go to Sturt Road at Marion, next to one of the biggest shopping centres in the Southern Hemisphere. You have bus interchanges, commercial properties on both sides, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings, and it is 60 km/h. I do not understand the inconsistencies.

The 85th percentile rule in setting speed zones should be used more widely. In Singapore, they use the 85th percentile rule. In other words, 85 per cent of motorists are doing this speed so it must be a safe speed to do. In Singapore, they have actually put up the speed on some roads by up to 20 km/h using the 85th percentile rule. This government does not use that rule; they use some arbitrary measure, as can be evidenced by Military Road at West Beach and Sturt Road at Oaklands Park. This is not the first time I have mentioned this in this place. It is so inconsistent. If it was consistent you would not have people who are quite innocent going into a zone where they think that nothing has changed but it has changed.

Let us be consistent. Let us look at all the ideas we can to make sure people are not being pinged inadvertently. Let us make sure that the speed detection devices that are being used by our police officers are as accurate as they should be, that they are being used in the correct way and that people are not being used as a source of funds for this government, because that is the perception out there. Whether it is right or wrong, that is the perception out there. Let us make sure that the whole issue of speed detection and speed detection devices is above board, is open to scrutiny and open to review even with a review panel or an appeal panel, where you pay your fine but have an appeal. Let us make sure it all works and works the way it should. That is what this motion is about and I support the motion by the member for Schubert.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Piccolo.

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