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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-07-28 Daily Xml
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SPEED CAMERAS

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (12:19): I move:

That this house calls on the state government to follow Victoria's lead and introduce complete public disclosure of all mobile radar camera sites at the start of each week, create a commissioner to monitor speed cameras and other speed measuring devices, and require the Auditor-General to undertake a review of speed cameras to determine if the cameras are being used efficiently and effectively to reduce road accidents or to raise revenue, or both.

Mr Acting Speaker, you know a lot about this issue, not from the wrong side, but from the good side, shall we say. Members would be interested to see that in New South Wales—and I put a copy in their pigeonholes today—following a review, I think undertaken by the Auditor-General there, a quarter of all their fixed cameras are being decommissioned because the Auditor-General's Report indicated that they were focused more on revenue raising than saving lives.

I am not against speed cameras. I think they are a very useful device, and clearly you have to monitor drivers' behaviour, otherwise you would have Rafferty's rules out there and serious consequences. What this motion highlights is that other states, in this case Victoria, see the need to have a review of the way in which the cameras are being used. I do not believe anyone in this parliament is advocating a cowboy approach. I think it is fair to say the opposition is not anti-camera. What it wants, and I want, is that they be used efficiently and effectively to reduce road accidents, to save lives.

That is what the Victorian government is doing. I would say to the government here, 'You would be very unwise to keep ignoring the call for a review.' No-one is arguing to get rid of the cameras altogether. All we are saying is that they should be used properly, so that you get the best outcome in terms of road safety from them. If you ignore what the public feels is an issue, then it will come back to bite you come election time, because it did help to elect the Baillieu government in Victoria.

In terms of this motion, the police here, SAPOL, does publish on its website the locations of many, if not most, of its mobile radar camera sites. I do not know whether members are aware of that. The problem is that unless you are sitting on your computer first thing in the morning you will probably not be able to determine where those locations are. The Advertiser prints some detail; they are called 'selected sites'. That has a double meaning; it is hard to know whether those sites have been specially selected or the publication relating to them has been selected.

What happens in Victoria is that in the Herald Sun at the start of each week there is a complete page which is devoted to identifying every single mobile camera location in Victoria during that week. Some people have said, 'Look everyone's got a computer.' Well, not everyone has, and not everyone has access, as I say, first thing in the morning, to go online and look to see where the cameras are going to be that week.

I acknowledge that SAPOL does have a website. It does have selected locations in The Advertiser for mobile cameras, and the media, the TV stations and radio stations, do highlight some of those locations, but what Victoria does is publish what is in effect a comprehensive list, which I think is more fair and transparent.

The other thing the Victorians are doing is creating a commissioner to monitor the use of cameras and speed measuring devices. I think that could be a useful role, because there are often complaints about cameras. I had one recently. Someone came to my office and we said, 'Did you ask for the photograph?' This was in relation to a fixed camera. When he got the photograph, it was obvious that it did not apply to his vehicle and then the police did not pursue the matter. So, errors occur, and I think it was information secured by the member for Morphett, from memory, last year, that something like 5,000 clerical errors were identified in relation to issuing expiation notices relating to cameras.

The other thing, which relates to the New South Wales experience as well, is that Victoria is requiring the Auditor-General to undertake a review of cameras. There is no reason why that cannot be done here; it would simply be a request from the government of the Auditor-General to have a look at whether the cameras are being used efficiently and effectively to reduce road accidents or to raise revenue or both. It is not going to cost a lot of money. The Auditor-General would have the people with the expertise to carry that out, and then you would allay all these concerns. If there is no substance to them, then the Auditor-General would obviously be able to show that.

At the moment, there is a suspicion that the government uses these cameras particularly to raise revenue rather than to reduce road accidents. From the recent budget, you see that we have by far the highest fines of any state in Australia for exceeding the speed limit at the lower level. Where someone is speeding at less than 15 km/h, our penalties are a lot higher; likewise for the category 15 to 30 km/h over the limit, where we have the highest fine of any mainland state.

One could argue that if the government was trying to send a message, they could move towards using demerit points more rather than simply taking money off people, many of whom find it a struggle to pay a hefty fine—someone on a pension or a self-funded retiree, in particular. I do not need to labour the point too much. I think it is quite clear what the motion is saying. As the member for Schubert sought to do, and others have tried, we want an independent assessment of the cameras. Are they being used in the way that is the most effective and efficient? The Auditor-General can draw on expertise from the road research body at Adelaide University.

I may have mentioned this in here on another occasion: within the department for transport, they have told me that some of these cameras are purely to make money, including the one on Henley Beach Road near Bakewell Bridge. They said it has nothing to do with road safety. There is no lengthy list of serious accidents at that spot; likewise, there is not either near the Royal Adelaide Hospital or the St Peter's Cathedral. Those three cameras are the big money makers for the government, yet they are not in areas where you have a serious accident or injury risk. I commend this motion to the house. I believe the government is foolish if it ignores what is a reasonable request to get the Auditor-General to have a look at the way in which the cameras are being used.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (12:29): Again, I am very pleased to support the member for Fisher. This has been a bit of a long campaign, particularly for him, and not quite so long for me. I do not believe speed cameras reduce the road toll in all cases. I have shown in the previous debate, which was lost in this house, that it is reasonable to say that the government is using speed cameras as revenue raisers. I note an article from New South Wales on ABC News, dated 27 July 2011 and headed 'Speed cameras axed after safety audit', as follows:

More than one in four of the fixed speed cameras across New South Wales will be immediately turned off because they have had no significant effect on road safety. The State Government has ordered the RTA to act after NSW auditor-general Peter Achterstraat this morning released a report into speed cameras. Mr Achterstraat found on the whole that speed cameras do change driver behaviour and make roads safer, but not in all cases.

The auditor-general says 38 of the 141 fixed cameras across the state have not produced a discernible road safety benefit. His report suggests the RTA continues with plans to review those cameras. But Roads Minister Duncan Gay has decided no further review is necessary. 'As of this morning I contacted the acting CEO of the RTA and instructed her to turn off those 38 cameras,' Mr Gay said.

Mr Gay says the cameras will eventually be removed, costing the Government about $10 million a year in lost revenue. Mr Achterstraat has found no evidence that revenue raising was a factor in choosing camera locations. He says revenue from speed cameras reduces the longer they operate.

That is fair enough. That is exactly what we have been saying in this house. As the member for Fisher said, there will be some political ramifications if this continues because more and more people are being affected. The people who are contacting our offices are not law-breakers, they are not criminals; they are responsible citizens and they are extremely annoyed when they get picked up and have to pay the exorbitant fees that are now in place.

I have no problem, as I said earlier, with the open road being policed. In other words, if you are doing more than 110 on the open road you deserve to get pinged. I do not care where the camera is. I like to see the fixed cameras over the road on long bars where it takes a photograph of you going through and if you get to the next one inside a certain time then you were obviously speeding. I have no problem with those because you know they are there and, if you are going to do that, you deserve to get pinged.

I have no problems with 60 in built-up areas. I have no problem with that, either, but it is the confusion—and that is what it is—between 50 and 60 where a huge amount of people are detected and then fined. As the member for Fisher just said, this is also the area where the biggest increase in the fine has been—in the 50 to 60 area—and it is ridiculous. I think it is irresponsible of government and other people, and even the police commissioner. When we broached this with the Minister for Police he said, 'It's a police matter; you take it up with the commissioner.' When you speak to the commissioner, he does not actually say it this way but it is a directive of government. So who is responsible?

I do not think it is fair at all that people, as they go around the community (particularly in the Barossa where the speed limits are all over the place) do not see a sign and assume the speed limit and get it wrong, then pay a pretty hefty fine and get three points. If you get too many points you lose your licence. If you take a licence away from a country person, it is a lot higher penalty than it is for a metropolitan person.

I am quite happy for this motion to be put forward. There ought to be public disclosure of all mobile radar camera sites at the start of each week and the creation of a commissioner to monitor speed cameras and other speed-measuring devices. I certainly support that because I never get to hear where these cameras are. I think the whole idea of putting them in the paper is really quite ridiculous and also putting it on the radio because at some point it is self-defeating. It just tells you who is smart enough to read the paper at a certain time and knows where to look and remembers where they are.

Irrespective of that, the laws ought to be decent in the first place. We ought to be getting rid of the 50 km/h signs on all major roads and only have 50 in the suburbs where houses are on both sides of the road and where there are families and perhaps children have a habit of walking on the road. I have no problem with 50 there but 50 should be out on all through roads, particularly the major throughput roads. It is ridiculous. Even in the Parklands here, how ridiculous is it? It is 60 on one and 50 on the next. It is inconsistent.

Why is King William Road 50? It is the major thoroughfare in Adelaide and that is where the biggest revenue-raising camera is, right there on the crossroad. People come down the hill, it is a wide road, they are not quite thinking and bang!—300 bucks thank you very much and three points. I think it is a disgrace. A lot of people being picked up are visitors to South Australia and what sort of message do you think you are sending home? Why is King William Road 50 km/h? Nobody can tell me why. It is like that so that the government can raise money.

I fully support the member for Fisher on this. Again, I commend him on the long case that he has taken on personally with the police and the authorities on this matter. I am sure (and I believe that he is correct) that he feels that he has been vilified, and I hope for the sake of all of us that he is successful.

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (12:35): I rise to oppose this motion. It will be no surprise to the member for Schubert and the member for Fisher, although I appreciate and acknowledge their contributions, and I think the minister will make a contribution later on as well. I also want to acknowledge that I have had many conversations with the member for Fisher about this, and other motions and bills of a similar nature, but I oppose this motion. As the member for Fisher acknowledged, within South Australia the locations of fixed and mobile speed cameras are currently communicated through the media, including television, radio and newspaper—and you do not need to be a genius to listen to the radio, member for Schubert, you just listen to the radio in your car while you are driving, or while you are speeding.

We communicate these locations through massive signs on the side of the road saying that there are speed cameras ahead. In particular, the SAPOL home page publishes mobile speed camera locations up to seven days in advance by street and by suburb. In my discussions with the member for Fisher, I have tried to impart some of my experiences as a police officer. I have seen, and I have been told, about the results of some pretty horrific accidents as a result of speeding. Sometimes it is not as a result of much speed, but if you are speeding a little over the limit in a built-up area it can have some devastating consequences, and if you talk to any police officer they will agree with you. This is not about revenue raising: it is about stopping people speeding.

Research relating to the effectiveness of speed cameras continues to be released regularly throughout Australia and globally. A comprehensive study was recently released by the University of Queensland entitled 'Speed Cameras for the Prevention of Road Traffic Injuries and Deaths Review'. This report concluded that speed cameras are a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of traffic injuries and deaths. Again, if you ask any police officer they will tell you the same thing.

The relative improvement in crash injury statistics range from an 8 per cent to a 50 per cent improvement where speed cameras are used. DTEI continues to review reports related to speed camera use and their effectiveness as they are released, and this will include any findings released by the Victorian and New South Wales state governments from their reviews. I will leave it there. I think the minister may want to add to the debate, but for these reasons I do not support this motion.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland—Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing, Minister for Road Safety, Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister Assisting the Premier with South Australia's Strategic Plan, Minister Assisting the Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education) (12:37): I will make a few points on this issue, and it is very topical at the moment as people know. It has been in the paper because of the actions taken in New South Wales. I will say this: when speed cameras catch you speeding, you are breaking the law. To say that someone should not be penalised, apprehended or caught for breaking the law in particular areas is a nonsense.

Mr Venning: The law is wrong. Ask Don Dunstan, that is what he said.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: So, you should be allowed to speed? It seems that the member for Schubert thinks that speed has no bearing whatsoever on accident rates, contrary to police advice that about one third of all fatal accidents involves speeding.

Mr Venning: I am not saying that at all. You are distorting the facts.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: You are saying that the law is wrong. The member for Schubert said that the law is wrong, and the law is that you do not exceed the speed limit. The member for Schubert, by saying that the law is wrong, seems to be advocating that people should be allowed to speed.

Mr Venning: I did not say that at all.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: You said that the law is wrong.

Mr Venning: We make the laws and if they are wrong, you have to change them.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: You said the law is wrong and the law here that I am talking about is speeding. Do not exceed the speed limit. So, you are saying that people should be able to speed?

Mr Venning: Tell that to 60 per cent of South Australians; tell them that at the next election.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: Because people think they should be allowed to break the law, we should break the law?

An honourable member: And not pay taxes.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: No, that is not how it works. That is not how it works and it should not work that way. When people are speeding, they are breaking the law, and if they are breaking the law, they should be caught no matter where it is. There are numerous studies right across this state and right across the world that show that reductions in average speed reduce crash rates.

That was our own experience in the last 10 years when, in 2003—and I think, Mr Acting Speaker, it might have been you who did it, and to your credit—the speed limits were reduced in the city from 60 km/h to 50 km/h and across a large number of streets in our network and the death toll dropped almost immediately from 150 down to 120. One change, and 30 people's lives are saved per year as a result of the actions of the Acting Speaker. If you do not mind me saying so, Mr Acting Speaker, that is a lasting legacy that you will leave on this state well beyond your time on this earth, and that is something I aim to replicate as Minister for Road Safety, that long-lasting impact on this state by saving lives, and reducing the average speed saves lives. Enforcement measures—and in this case it is speed cameras—are part of that.

We have fixed speed cameras with signs right in front of them stating, 'You are entering a speed camera zone', and people still get caught speeding. How does that happen? It is just inattention. Inattention is another one of the killer five, another leading cause of fatalities on our roads.

Mr Venning: Have you ever been pinged for speeding?

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: Of course I have been pinged, and I should have been pinged for speeding, because I was breaking the law. When you break the law, you get caught and you just pay the fine. This is my great quibble with the member for Fisher, because he has run this big long case on speeding and has taken particular issue. I do not know the facts around it. He may or may not have a case, but chances are that was not the only time he has ever exceeded the speed limit driving around this city.

I think most people would just say, 'It's a fair cop. I got caught this time, but there are other times when I haven't been and I will just wear it.' But, no, we get into this righteous indignation about speeding, and somehow speeding has no effect on what goes on. We can speed our way around this city with no effect, but there is an effect from speeding in a third of all fatalities. Approximately 40 people die each year because speed is a factor in their death. Where they are breaking the law by speeding, they should be caught. It does not matter where they are speeding, they are still breaking the law, and speeding and speed have an effect on road safety in this state.

The police, the government and everyone who has been involved in rolling out speed cameras in this state have my full support, because it has been an effective strategy of gradually reducing the road toll over time. In the 1970s, when our road toll peaked at about 350, there were 400,000 cars on the road. There are now 1.2 million cars on the road and our road toll is about 120. While the number of cars on the road has tripled, the number of deaths has a bit more than halved. It has probably come down by about 60 per cent in that time. It is actually a bigger reduction than it looks.

Over that time, we have seen the compulsory wearing of seatbelts have a massive effect, drink-driving campaigns and the introduction of breath testing, speed cameras, radar guns and reductions in speed limits. All of these enforcement measures have dramatically contributed to the reduction in our road toll, both per 100,000 people on the road and in absolute terms of the number of people killed. This motion by the member for Fisher, ably supported by the member for Schubert, encourages silliness on our roads. They pander to a populist political campaign that somehow speeding is okay and we should not be fined for it and it is all just government revenue raising.

The government would gladly give up the $60 million a year in speeding revenue because we would save more than that in the health budget. What is more, if the residents of this state were to conspire against the government and all conform to the speeding laws and not give that revenue of $60 million a year to the government, we would probably have such a reduction in our crash rates across the state that we would be able to reduce the compulsory third-party insurance premium, because speeding contributes to crashes. When you reduce the number of crashes by reducing speeding, you are going to reduce the premium because you will reduce the number of crashes.

The Hon. R.B. Such: If you are not after money then why not issue demerit points and they lose their licence?

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: People need to pay a penalty. The member for Fisher might know that the fines came about to get people out of the Magistrates Court. It was a process to de-clog the courts and to make people still pay a penalty—an automatic penalty—and we could all get on with life. Defending people who speed is ridiculous because speeding contributes to road deaths. I think the member for Fisher should get over his speeding fine, pay the fine, move on with life and continue to obey the law, as I am sure he does on almost every occasion.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (12:45): Look, let's not beat around the bush on this. No-one in this place wants to see the road toll going the way it is or where it is—nobody. Nobody wants to see the effects on families, the effects on the health system and on lives and everything else that goes with it—nobody. But the simple fact of the matter is that the government is not right on this, it is not correct. There is absolutely no question or doubt in my mind whatsoever that those things are used as revenue raisers. I see it time and again within my own electorate between here and the South Coast—time and again. They are there to revenue raise.

There are fools on the road; you cannot blame the cars, it is the idiot behind the wheel—we all know that. But, by the same token, if the government wants to run around and talk up this business, it ought to get a few of its own things right, which includes such things as removing speed limits and restrictions when roadworks have taken place five and six months ago and the department has not been there to do it. It still has it down to 80 km/h when it is perfectly fine. Do something about the contractors out there who are putting zones down from 100 to 80, or 60 to 50, or to 25, or whatever, miles before you get there and miles after the finish. I have talked about contractors such as tree loppers. It is absolutely ridiculous as they are slowing down cars on country roads. It is all very well if you live in the metropolitan area or in suburbia and you so choose, but some of us who live in the country have to get from A to B.

To give another example, I have one road some 60 kilometres in length in my electorate, and the government has stipulated that the speed limit one way is 100 and you come back the other way and it is 110. How damn foolish is that?

Ms Bedford: It's downhill.

Mr PENGILLY: It is because they have not fixed it up. We actually have to get from A to B. The member for Florey is fired up over there—let her go—but no-one knows better the ramifications, apart from the member for West Torrens, the minister, and the impact of speeding than does the member for Flinders. He knows all about it as he lives in an electorate where he has to go hundreds of kilometres to get from A to B. We have long, straight roads.

The Northern Territory amended their speed limits. The former member for Stuart prevailed long and hard on governments for years to get some sense into speed limits on country roads and do a decent speed. You can do 130 or 140 quite easily on these outback roads, and you need to do it to get from A to B. To have cameras set up around corners, in places where you do not know where they are, is pure revenue raising: it is nothing about road safety. It is a nonsense to suggest that it is.

We want to get on and get where we are going, from A to B. I support what the member for Fisher is talking about. I think it is total nonsense, and, as he said to me just a few minutes ago, there is an officer in the parliament who turned around a street into another road, a well-known street in Adelaide and it is a workplace—there is no indication it is a workplace—and got stung. It is blatant revenue raising.

If you want to sit over there and preach to us about it, get a few facts and figures right, get your departments right, get your subcontractors right, and fix up a few things out on the roads instead of preaching to us, as the minister did a few minutes ago. I bet there are people on this side of the house whose lives have been dramatically affected by severe road accidents, and no-one here wants that. We do not want that. But you cannot stop people being stupid with alcohol, and you cannot stop people being stupid with drugs.

The minister referred to inattention. Every now and again I become inattentive on the roads—there is probably no-one in here who does not. You get distracted, but you have to concentrate. You have to do it all the time. My father brought me up and taught me that everyone on the road apart from yourself is a idiot and to treat them as such. It was not bad training actually, because that is right. You want to get it right as it is an enormous issue out in the community. The member for Fisher I do not agree with all the time, but I think on this one he is probably halfway right.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:49): I do need to take up just a couple of minutes because of the comments the minister made. He was suggesting that the opposition was saying that the law was wrong. I do not think that the law is wrong but I do think that speed limits in certain places are wrong. That is the issue. We have imposed ridiculous speed limits.

Mr Acting Speaker, you are aware of this because we have had this debate before, and I think you were transport minister at one stage. You can hop in your motor car and drive up to the freeway, and when you get just past the Stirling turn-off the speed limit goes to 110 km/h. You can drive down the South-Eastern Freeway (and slow down through the various towns all the way to Bordertown in the north of my electorate), some hundreds of kilometres on the open road, at 110 km/h.

As you pass Bordertown—I think it is 17 kilometres of road from Bordertown to the Victorian border—you have to reduce your speed to 100 km/h. I cannot for the life of me understand how or why that occurs. The reality is that that piece of road was reconstructed a few years ago. It is probably the best piece of that whole drive from the Victorian border to Stirling, yet on that 17 kilometres you are obliged to travel 100 km/h whereas you can drive on the rest of the road at 110 km/h.

As chance would have it, that piece of road, I am reliably told, is policed more heavily than the rest of the road all the way from Bordertown to Stirling. The exact same thing occurs on the other road that heads to the east of this state—the Princes Highway—going down to Mount Gambier along the coast. You have travelled at 110 km/h along the highway all the way to Meningie, and between Meningie and for the next 60 kilometres to Salt Creek you are obliged to travel at 100 km/h.

I travel that road on a very, very regular basis and, more often than not, I see a police vehicle or a vehicle with a camera in it on that section of road. I am far from convinced by the minister's contribution that this is all about road safety. I am far from convinced, and I think that the member for Finniss put it quite well: people out in the country actually have to get from A to B and they do not need this sort of nonsense where there are changing speed limits confusing them and giving the police some easy targets to pick on.

The same thing happens in the city where we have ridiculous speed zones and no rhyme or reason as to why we have certain speed zones in certain areas. Again, it confuses the motoring public and it is easy pickings to pick up fines on a regular basis, worth, as the minister said, $60 million or $70 million a year. Nobody believes that this is not about revenue raising.

Motion negatived.

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