HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-16 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

ROAD TRAFFIC (AVERAGE SPEED) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 2 May 2012.)

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (17:17): I indicate that the opposition will be supporting the Road Traffic (Average Speed) Amendment Bill 2012. We have no amendments (which the minister will be pleased to know), and I am the lead speaker on this important piece of legislation.

The issue of speeding is one that all of us in this place are very aware of; in fact, I think all South Australians are now, and there is no sympathy given to, nor should it be sought by, people who speed. I do not believe the majority of South Australians deliberately or recklessly speed, but there are some individuals who are just beyond any common sense or any understanding of why they do what they do, ignoring speed limits and speed zones and driving recklessly, ignoring public safety. Those people should be caught at every opportunity, and dealt with with all the force of the law.

We need to extend the number of speed cameras, or safety cameras, as we call them now. That is something I do not have any issue with, other than to make sure that those cameras are working properly and the accuracy of their speed determination is as it should be. The mobile fixed cameras we see about the place, those at the intersections, the safety cameras and the red light and speed cameras, and also those on the front of cars that we see parked on the side of the road are certainly a significant deterrent to people speeding. However they only seem to last, with the cars parked on the side of the road, anyway, as long as the car is there for that particular moment in time, if people are inclined to speed.

Unfortunately the need to expand the range of speed detection devices is seen by some people as a revenue-raising exercise. I do not believe that that is the case if the detection devices, whether they are radars or cameras, in this case, are as accurate as we all want them to be; and if people are given the tolerances that we know they should be given, because there are provable uncertainties in speed determination.

The bill deals with new point-to-point cameras, where you have a camera at one specific location, and then, after an accurately determined distance, you have another camera. As the vehicle goes through the first camera, a photograph is taken and, as it goes through the second camera, a photograph is taken. Using a law of physics—speed equals distance over time—there is no uncertainty in that. However, the uncertainty comes when you are driving a car, no matter how modern and how well maintained, and you can actually be doing a speed which is quite different to what you think you are travelling.

The equipment that is used to measure speed has, unfortunately, uncertainties, inaccuracies and errors that we need to take account of. It has always been a point of argument as to how large the tolerances should be, and a few years ago in estimates I asked the police commissioner about the tolerances, and he inadvertently gave out the Victorian tolerances. I think he copped a bit of flack from the Victorian police commissioner for that. Speaking of the police commissioner, Mal Hyde, I wish him well in his future, and I will not be posing those sorts of questions in estimates this year. I think it will be his last estimates this year.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

Dr McFETRIDGE: Perhaps, as the minister says, I should grill him intensely in estimates as it is his last one and give him something to go out on. I certainly hope there is not too much to question him on, but I fear that there might be some significant issues.

The bill is pretty straightforward. The opposition has consulted with a number of organisations: the Motor Trade Association; the Centre for Automotive and Safety Research; the Law Society; the RAA; and the Australian Road Transport Authority. We contacted the Bus and Coach Association and, to my knowledge, we have not received a response yet. With my interest in the determination of the accuracy of speed and speed detection, I consulted with a friend of mine (I like to call him now), Mr Les Felix, who is a metrologist. Metrology is the science of determination of the accuracy of measurement. I have received a lot of information over the years from Mr Felix, and of particular interest to this debate is a scientific paper that he put out back in 2004 entitled 'Vehicle Speed Measurement II'.

That paper went through quite a bit of detail about the uncertainties in speed measurement and I will address that a little more in a few moments, but the bottom line is that, because of everything from your dominant eye to the inbuilt uncertainties, inaccuracies or tolerances in speedos, to tyre pressure, tyre wear, loadings and the actual inaccuracies because of the physics of speed and light, there are uncertainties in the determination of speed both of vehicles and the equipment that is being used to measure speed.

As recently as 9 May, Mr Felix wrote to me in an email that at 100 km/h, a standard vehicle will have an uncertainty of plus or minus 13 km/h. So, he argues, and he is able to back this up with scientific evidence of the uncertainties, that a driver who believes they are travelling 100 km/h, and honestly believes they are doing 100 km/h, could actually be doing anything between 87 km/h and 113 km/h. To me, that opens up the need to make sure that all the equipment that is used to catch and fine motorists is as accurate as it possibly can be.

Mr Felix is a world authority on the determination of accuracy of measurement in many areas, and he talks about there even being an error in measuring distances. Over 50 kilometres, there is a plus or minus 0.1 of a kilometre (100 metres) difference, which may not seem very much but that may be enough to tick somebody over from one speed category to another speed category. So, we need to be aware of all these sort of things. Having said that, I do not condone any speeding at all.

I can honestly say that I try with all my heart to obey all of the speed limits at all times, despite going down hills and around through the hills. I did get a speeding ticket in 1984, when I was going from the 60 km/h zone to the 80 km/h zone outside of Port Augusta, going to Woomera. I thought I was in the 80 km/h, but I was not, so I copped a fine. It is difficult sometimes. Some of the speed zones are a bit confusing, and I have been through those before in this place. It is 60 km/h on Sturt Road at Marion. Why it is, I do not know, but there must be some reason.

We have a property down at Meadows, and we sometimes go down to Macclesfield. When you go through Clarendon, it is 50 km/h; when you go through Kangarilla, it is 60 km/h; when you go through Meadows, it is 60 km/h; and when you go through Macclesfield, it is 50 km/h. To me, the dangers and the risk associated with travelling through those towns is apparent, and I cannot see why it should not all be 50 km/h, quite honestly, because the shops, schools, markets and the bakeries are all there. There are little country towns where I think people should slow down just to have a look if nothing else, but we should not be doing that by setting arbitrary speed limits; it should be for a real cause.

The information that was sent to me by Mr Felix I did forward onto the government. The minister's advisers came to see me and answered all my questions as best they could at the time. They said they would get back to me on some of my issues, and they did. I received a letter yesterday from Mr Rod Hook, the Chief Executive of DPTI, outlining some of the answers to my questions. In particular, I did supply the government with a copy of Les Felix's document 'Vehicle Speed Measurement II', and some particular issues were raised in Mr Rod Hook's letter to me about that document. I do need, for the sake of Mr Felix's reputation, to correct some of the things that Mr Hook put in his letter. He said:

I understand the paper you referred to during the briefing was written by Mr Felix (circa 2002).

It was actually written in 2004. The letter goes on:

Mr Felix was employed by Abstec Calibrations....it is not known if it was officially released by Abstec Calibrations.

It was nothing to do with Abstec Calibrations. Mr Felix is an independent scientist in his own right in this field, and he produced this document not as part of his employment with Abstec. The letter also says, 'I am told the paper does not appear to be peer reviewed.' I can say that the paper 'Vehicle Speed Measurement II' was published in 2004, and it was peer reviewed by the head of forensic science, England and by the peer review panel from the National Measurement Institute. It was then accepted for publication by the Metrology Society of Australia in 2004. The paper is a genuine piece of scientific literature. It has been peer reviewed and should not be in any way discredited by people saying that it has not been peer reviewed.

The letter from Mr Hook, in the fifth paragraph, also refers to an 'unpublished report' about speed accuracy, speed determination and speedometer tests carried out by the Monash University Accident Research Centre. Mr Felix, in his response to this letter, which I had forwarded to me, said:

SAPOL [he was wrong, it was not SAPOL but Mr Hook] referred to the paper from Monash that was used by Victoria Police as a pivotal presentation to enact the small speed infringement tolerance that is presently used in Victoria. When I attempted to gain permission to use some of their data I was informed by one of the authors, Mr Newstead, that that information was gleaned from car magazines. It may be claimed as unpublished but it was used by Australian police departments to sway political opinion and enact laws.

That is what Les Felix sent me last night and I have no reason to disbelieve Mr Felix.

The other issue in the letter from Mr Hook is, 'After July 2006 the speedometer is required to show the actual speed, or a higher one.' That is quite true. The issue that Mr Felix points out is that 67 per cent of passenger cars travelling on South Australian roads (as is pointed out in Mr Hook's letter) were manufactured prior to 2006 and are under other design rules which allowed a broader range of uncertainties in speed determination. Mr Hook's letter then continues on:

You expressed concern that speedometer inaccuracy has an effect on the testing regime of a safety camera due to alleged inaccuracy of the vehicle used to test the system. It should be noted that vehicle speed past each fixed safety camera is tested with a SAPOL vehicle that has a calibrated and certified speedometer.

In his response Mr Felix said:

Tests conducted with the NSW police department involving some 80 different new tyres on the Ford and Holden police cars displayed a 4% error from—

He has 'OE tyres'. I think that is factory-fitted tyres. Mr Felix understands that the people who test these cameras do not record the brand of tyre nor inflation pressure on their test sheets for their drive-through vehicles. His concerns over the accuracy of calibration of fixed speed cameras should not be discounted at all. We need to do that.

Having said that, with fixed point cameras it is speed physics. There is a law of physics (speed equals distance over time) and you can be much more accurate there. We still need to be cognisant of the fact that some drivers, no matter what they do, will still not be travelling at the speed they think they are travelling at. As Mr Felix pointed out to me in his email of 9 May, a standard vehicle will have an uncertainty of 13 km/h at 100 km/h on the speedo. That is an extraordinary figure. I will leave it for the scientists at the DPTI to contact Mr Felix and talk to him about that. We need to make sure that every person out there is doing the best they can to obey all the road laws and is certainly not speeding in any way, shape or form.

Coming down the freeway yesterday, the police were sitting behind the tollgate. You have to reduce your speed from 110 km/h to 80 km/h to 60 km/h and you sit on the brakes most of the time coming through there. It can be quite dangerous because you have big trucks trying to swap lanes, because most of them travel in the inner left-hand lane in the 60 zone and then head off down Portrush Road. Swapping over there can be quite dangerous, so you really do want to be slowed down. How the police are able to identify individual trucks and drivers I do not know but they were out there doing their best to make sure people were not speeding.

I just mentioned the trucks coming down the freeway. We were promised cameras that were going to detect trucks doing more than 60 km/h as they came down the road. I think the technology is out there that could be used for that particular lane of the freeway and for particular trucks, but there are still a lot of issues with that technology because you get such things as phantom axles and cars travelling very close together which can cause issues. I think the photographic point-to-point cameras will certainly give us some assistance.

I drive down there obeying the speed limits—and I am not an expert in this field in any way—but my best guess is that a significant percentage of trucks are not doing 60 km/h. I am not saying that they are going at 100 km/h. Certainly some of the truckies are doing their best because they have 40 tonnes or 50 tonnes behind them, but I still think some of them have issues maintaining that 60 km/h speed limit.

We have seen so many accidents there and we do not want to have any more so they have to do what they can do. The design of the road is very good now with the run-offs and plenty of warnings and all the technology that we have with the variable speed signs and the other big signs—it is all working well. The need to alert everybody to which speed zone they are in and to give them the opportunity to do what they want to do, which, in 99.99 per cent of cases is obey the law, is something we should all be trying to achieve in this place. We should be making it easier, not harder, for motorists to obey the law.

This technology is a fairer way of picking up people who are speeding because it is over a distance; it is not just a moment in time, so to speak, a momentary lapse or a particular downhill run where the car just gets away a bit. This is a better way of doing it; however, I obviously will not be told the tolerances but I would like to see similar tolerances that are in fixed point cameras in this regime, because there are uncertainties. As I say, I do not believe that South Australians are out there recklessly or deliberately speeding.

With that, I say that the opposition does support the bill. I believe there are one or two other speakers who would like to make some comments. There may be some questions about how drivers are identified when they swap over between cameras and about how it will be enforced. Also, what happens when one driver says, 'It wasn't me,' and the other driver says, 'It wasn't me,' and nobody knows? I think there is a need to clarify that. I think it will be similar to what happens now with single point of detection, but I will ask the minister to inform the house about that when she replies to the second reading speeches. With that, I wish the bill a speedy passage so that we can make South Australian roads as safe as we possibly can.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (17:36): We are supporting the Road Traffic (Average Speed) Amendment Bill, and I note the comments made by the member for Morphett. The average speed that will be managed here will be ascertained by taking the time taken by a vehicle to travel between two camera sites and dividing it by the distance between the cameras. Obviously, if the average speed of the vehicle is in excess of the speed limit, then the driver of the vehicle has committed an offence.

I note that the government wants to introduce these detection systems initially on Port Wakefield Road, Victor Harbor Road, South Eastern Freeway, Dukes Highway (which concerns me because it is the road home and it splits my farm), Sturt Highway and the Northern Expressway. The expected distance between the cameras will be around 14 to 50 kilometres. We have consulted with the RAA, the South Australian Road Transport Authority and others, but those two groups certainly have no concerns with the bill and support point-to-point speed detection.

Some of the issues I have with what happens with speeding is that, a lot of times, when I go home from this place on the 130 to 140 kilometre drive home, you might see up to four or five speed detection devices. A lot of the road from here to Coomandook is dual lane all the way to Tailem Bend. I am not advocating speeding, but I think there are far more dangerous roads where people can be checked for their speed to see if they are breaking the law. I would hate to think it is just being used as a revenue-raising exercise.

I am also concerned about the roads close to suburban country roads (I will call them), such as the ones in my electorate, the ones up through the electorate of Goyder, and others on which the speed limit has been reduced to 100 km/h in recent times. I have roads that get me through to Goolwa, whether I come off towards Woodchester, or out of Murray Bridge or off the ferry at Wellington. A lot of these roads have been reduced to 100 km/h. Other roads in my electorate that head towards Mannum, right up through to Palmer, each side of the river to Mannum, have been reduced to 100 km/h. As I said before, many of these roads are in the member for Goyder's electorate.

What I find hard to understand in this day and age, when we have such good vehicles to drive, that the government's excuse for not spending money on road maintenance is to just bring the limit down. What happens? We will see the limits brought further and further down. There is a section of road between Mount Pleasant and Sandy Creek, and that is signposted 80 km/h. I am not saying we should not be thinking about road safety, but let's have some maintenance. We are not driving EH Holdens anymore. We are driving very good cars, latest model cars and, for the kilometres that especially country members have to do—and most do a minimum of 60,000 kilometres a year—time on the road is a longer time that you can be forced to keep awake and the more chance there is to go to sleep. It happens. Fatigue happens when you are out on the road for extended periods of time.

I look at roads throughout my electorate that need attention. There are roads through Wynarka, Karoonda, heading up through to the Riverland and Wanbi that all need attention and upgrading to bring them up to a suitable standard. There is another road between Pinnaroo and Loxton which is quite a thoroughfare where there is quite a lot of heavy transport bringing horticultural produce down from the Riverland through to Pinnaroo from Loxton. There is also a connecting route for many people that work at either end of that road. I know there are quite a few people who live in Pinnaroo and travel to Loxton for work. It is also because we do not have a resident doctor in Pinnaroo that we need to rely on doctors coming down from Loxton or the other way from Lameroo to conduct the health service at Pinnaroo.

Soon after I got elected, the ambulance crew at Pinnaroo said to me, 'We are going to give you a ride in an ambulance to see what it is really like going down this road.' There is a 10 to 12 kilometre section that is just shocking. It is really rough. A lot of transfers need to be done between Pinnaroo and Loxton and there could be people with hip injuries or other injuries and they need a gentle ride. The ambulance people said, 'We back off for patients. We back off to about 60 km/h through this rough section of road,' because that is probably about the comfortable speed, especially if you have someone strapped in the back as I was for the trial. They took me through it at full speed limit.

Mr van Holst Pellekaan interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Even with my amount of ballast, member for Stuart, I could not make that ambulance settle down. I am just so glad that our ambulance workers are good at strapping patients in because it could have got ugly.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It would have, wouldn't it!

Mr PEDERICK: It would have got ugly. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It just showed me how bad the road was and they certainly wanted to make sure that I realised how tough it was for people who use that road. It is terrible.

I look at other issues as far as managing our roads with speed limits and that kind of thing and I see about $100 million of mainly federal money that is being spent between Tailem Bend and there is some work down at Tintinara. A lot of that work is between Tailem Bend and where I live at Coomandook where they have put the 1.2 metre strip in the middle of the road which is a bit of a no man's land. I have said this to committees and I have said it in here before: why haven't we done the sensible thing and started dual-laning that road to the border?

I see all these projects here in Adelaide—$800 million-odd for a superway and they are talking about perhaps another part of that for the same money. For close to $1 billion, so not much more than that, we could get a dual lane on the Dukes Highway all the way to the Victorian border. It would be a far more sensible thing. In fact, the $100 million would have paid for at least 20 kilometres of that.

Even if you build the road with four lanes right next to each other—in fact, there is enough bitumen laid down there that I think you could have done it—just put the wire rope down the middle, two lanes each side. It is simple. There is enough wire rope getting put up around the place. It is unbelievable.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Yes, Mason Fencing. They do a great job and they are making a lot of money. The nub of the bill is the average speed and, yes, I think the average speed is a very good idea. We have to make sure that people are not just looking out for the odd spot where someone could be. Cruise control is a great thing, especially for those of us who travel any distance out on the road. It keeps us on the straight and narrow.

Something the minister may address in her response is what tolerances there will be in this average speed. For instance, if it is a 110 km/h zone, will the tolerance be somewhere where I think it is—the police will never tell you this—which is around the 114 or 115 km/h area? It used to be around the 119 km/h area, but there was an announcement that said they had pulled their tolerance back. I am talking about this in regards to 110 km/h zones.

So, I am just wondering what percentage of tolerances there will be in working out this average speed, because I can just see people challenging this if there is not enough tolerance in there. There are always differences and, as our shadow minister, the member for Morphett, was saying, tyre pressures and changes in conditions can alter the speed significantly. So, I would be very interested in the response to that.

Certainly, we are very keen for road safety at the appropriate speed limits, but I just think things could be done a lot better in this state in the maintenance of our roads, so that we can drive at appropriate speeds around this state and be able to do it in a safe manner. I commend the bill.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (17:46): I too rise to speak about the Road Traffic (Average Speed) Amendment Bill. I too support the bill and am very pleased to say that I think that average speeds are a very sensible, very practical, very appropriate way to manage speeding. The shadow minister, the member for Morphett, has certainly touched on accuracy and the member for Hammond did as well. I trust that appropriate tolerance will be provided, directly in line with the known accuracy of the instrumentation, so I will not delve into that again.

With regard to driving, I suspect that I have driven more than just about any other member in this house. Like many of our country members, I currently drive well in excess of 60,000 kilometres a year but, in a previous working life, self-employed, I drove well in excess of 100,000 kilometres a year and, in a few years, 120,000 kilometres a year, on outback roads. That does not make me an expert, but it does make me somebody who is comfortable in talking about this because this bill is directly related to country roads, by definition. There will not be too many average speed point-to-point setups in the city. They will all be out in the country and the outback.

It is also only fair for me to point out that my driving record is not perfect. It is not that bad, but I do get a ticket from time to time. In fact, since becoming a member of parliament, I have found it a bit more difficult coming down to the city regularly and getting pinged occasionally for 56 in a 50 and that sort of thing. So, I consider myself an extremely good driver and extremely experienced but not perfect.

The member for Hammond touched on speed limits. I will not go into this in great detail because I have here and in public put on record my great disappointment with the government's downgrading of speed limits from 110 to 100 on roads in our close country areas. I will not go through all of that again, other than to say I believe it penalises the wrong people. The people who have followed those rules, who are currently driving at 110 and are going to decrease their speed to 100, are not the at risk drivers: it is the people driving well in excess of that on our close country roads.

I will also very, very quickly add that I know my predecessor was a great advocate for 130 km/h on some roads and so am I, on some roads—on the good, distant sections of the Barrier Highway, Stuart Highway and the Eyre Highway. My opinion is supported by some of my colleagues but, in deference to them, I say that, far more importantly, it is supported by many police officers. Currently serving and previous police officers share that view, so I just put that on the record.

Minister, I have two key points that I would like to make specifically with regard to this bill that I would like you to consider, either in your comments by providing some assurance when you speak, or if you prefer we can deal with them in the committee stage. The first point is that, on a point-to-point basis, how are you going to deal with two drivers who both blame each other, and neither one of them is the owner of the car?

The proposed legislation, as I understand it, is pretty clear: the owner of the car will get the first expiation notice. If you can find any gaps in whatever stories you might receive about who else was driving then it should not be too difficult to try to expiate effectively and make sure the right person receives it. However, imagine a situation where a car is linked to two other people who are in the car and they both blame each other. If one person says, 'I wasn't driving at all; the other person drove the whole way,' and the other person says, 'I wasn't driving at all; the other person drove the whole way,' and they stick to their story, who is going to get the fine, the bill or the infringement? Please address that issue, minister.

The second point is that, as I understand it, the proposal is that, if somebody exceeds the limit on an average basis between two point-to-point cameras and also infringes the speed limit at one point through a fixed or a mobile camera in between, then the average would override and they would only be fined for the average. That is my understanding of the proposed legislation.

I would like to suggest that whichever is the greater of the two infringements is the one that should apply. There are two reasons for suggesting that. The first reason is that I think, if you are fairly pinged, then the greater of the two is the one that should apply just morally. Also, if you do not and the point-to-point average is going to override the single-point infringement, then I do not believe there will actually be many cameras, either fixed or mobile, placed between the two fixed averaging cameras.

I think what you will actually do in the real world is encourage idiots to speed. They may use that section of highway, probably late at night, as a place to race and roar up and down. As long as they do their calculations well enough and they do not leave the zone before the average of their time within the zone would drop back down, then all you have done is encourage quite deliberate idiots to take advantage of this. Therefore, I strongly propose that the greater of the two offences is the one that should apply, for those two reasons.

The last thing I would like to say is that I assume that the penalties that are in place now for an infringement are exactly the same penalties that would apply to an average. So, if you are going five, 10 or 20 kilometres over past a single-point camera, that exactly the same penalty would apply if you are five, 10 or 20 kilometres over the average.


[Sitting extended beyond 18:00 on motion of Hon. J.M. Rankine]


Mr VENNING (Schubert) (17:53): I want to speak very briefly because I have had a bit of a history on this subject, and I have been here a long time. I will not reveal all that history, but I have had a bit of a colourful history in relation to being apprehended for speeding. As the member for Stuart just said, both he and I do a lot of kilometres. In fact, I average 60,000 kilometres a year. In 22 years, that is a lot of kilometres, so I have reasonable experience in this subject. It is an interesting concept to have these cameras. I much prefer this type of detection than cameras that seem to sneak around the place.

If you drive on the highway and if you regularly exceed the speed limit, particularly the 110 km/h speed limit, I do not have any problem with you being apprehended and fined. People will know where these cameras are, and I do not know whether they will either drive around them or whether a detour will be built around them. I do not want to put any ideas into people's heads, but you do not have to be Einstein to work that one out, do you? When you know where the second lot of cameras are you will either make sure that you are behaving—hopefully you have been—or you will avoid it.

As I said, I will be interested to see what this concept does. I am very pleased that these cameras are up because other countries have them. I think that, eventually, we will even have barcodes on the roof of cars and particularly trucks. If there are barcodes then all sorts of information will be able to be read automatically, because there is nothing worse than speeding trucks, particularly the larger ones. I have no problem with the cameras doing that.

I am happy to penalise people, as I have said before in this place, who are a hazard on our roads. I am certainly very strong on road safety because, particularly for our young people, we want to be a good example. We expect people to have safe passage on the roads. I think it is an opportunity, again, to say to people that we should have driver training in schools, as we did many years ago. When I was first elected, so many years ago, the school had a couple of T Fords and people were taught how to drive.

That was a good idea. We had driver training for year 11 students. These cars were provided by the local Holden dealer, and it was very good. We cannot stress enough to the young ones because they all think that they are invincible. I can assure them that they are not. Even with my own three children, two have had accidents. I have been lucky, touch wood, they have not had a major accident.

I am very conscious about road safety. If you get pinged for doing over 110 km/h, I have no problem with you copping the fine. If you get pinged for doing over 80 km/h in an 80 km/h zone, I have no problem with you copping the fine. However, when you get pinged for doing 58 km/h in a 50 km/h zone (and we have had this discussion before), I have difficulty with that, because there is confusion between the 50 km/h zone and the 60 km/h zone. Some people are not law-breakers and they just assume that they are in a 60 km/h zone and they are actually travelling in a 50 km/h zone.

It is the inconsistency between the two that causes the problem. When people can wear a $380 fine and three demerit points, I do not think it is fair. In fact, I do not think that is what the law is all about. That is quite unjust and it really is a revenue raiser. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, a paper was prepared for me by a University of Adelaide student which quite clearly showed that these fines are revenue raising for the government—or was it all about road safety? It quite clearly said—and the minister made comment at the time—that it is more about revenue raising, because some of these cameras are not put in the accident black spots; they are put where the maximum dollar can be raised on the camera, particularly on King William Road, which is the best tax collector in the state. Absolutely millions of dollars have been raised by these cameras.

I have no problem because people have to obey the law, but it does annoy me that so much money is collected from the cameras. I do not think that it has turned out to be a deterrent because the amount of money collected from these cameras is consistent. It annoys me that this money is not automatically tagged for spending on the roads, to improve road safety, because, after all, I believe that a lot of the accidents occur because of poor road conditions and poor signage. I believe that if it was all spent that way I would not get quite so cross. I would be happy. I have been pretty good lately, Mr Deputy Speaker; I have not had a problem—maybe it is because I am getting older; maybe I am not in such a big hurry. I certainly support the bill and I will be interested to see what happens.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Rankine.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT