HAS LABOR ONLY JUST WOKEN UP TO THE ROAD SAFETY CRISIS?

Member for Barker and Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Tony Pasin MP says the Albanese Labor Government has been missing in action on the need to improve road safety.

In a statement released this week, the Albanese Government’s Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport announced that the Albanese Government will host a National Road Safety Conference in the first quarter of 2024, “as a matter of urgency”.

“The Albanese Government has clearly been too distracted for too long. The unfortunate reality being felt by communities across the country is that the road toll has been rising steadily for the past 12-18 months while the Albanese Government has refused to heed calls from industry and the opposition to act,” Mr Pasin said.

“One of the first actions taken by the Albanese Labor Government in 2022 was to remove road safety from the agenda for the Infrastructure and Transport Minister’s meeting. The following year saw life-saving road infrastructure upgrades delayed or cancelled across the country as part of the Government’s cost cutting infrastructure review.”

“Over 18 months in office and we still haven’t seen any action on a National Data Sharing agreement with the States and Territories. In fact, the Government’s Infrastructure Policy Statement released in November last year failed to adequately address the need for data at all,” Mr Pasin said.

Mr Pasin said the Coalition and the Australian Automobile Association had been calling for State and Territory data relating to road quality, crash causation, and law enforcement, to be provided as a condition of Commonwealth funding through the 5-year National Partnership Agreement on Land Transport Infrastructure Projects.

Negotiations for the new National Partnership Agreement on Land Transport Infrastructure Projects was scheduled to be finalised in December 2023, but even this has now been delayed until the mid-2024.

“Despite Labor’s pre-election promise to gather road data from states and territories in return for funding we seem to be no closer to the data needed to assess the effectiveness of measures being funded to reduce road crashes.”

“Road safety has been a matter of urgency for some time. The Albanese Government has simply been too distracted to notice,” Mr Pasin said. 

Figures published by the BITRE this week tell a sobering picture of Australian road safety with 1,266 deaths. This is an increase of 7.3 per cent from the previous 12-month period.