ROAD TOLL CONTINUES TO RISE UNDER LABOR WHILE DATA AGREEMENT M.I.A.

Australia’s road toll continues to track in the wrong direction, as Labor continues to kick the can down the road on data sharing.

Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Tony Pasin MP, says the latest figures from the department show that for the month of June 2024, 93 people died on Australian roads, bringing the total for the 12-month period till the end of June to 1,310, a 11.7 per cent increase from the 12 month period ending June 2023.

“Monthly figures continue to tell us that we are well off track to achieving National Road Safety Strategy targets,” Mr Pasin said.

Mr Pasin said the need to collect and share road trauma data was paramount to measure the effectiveness of road safety initiatives and investment.

“We need a coordinated national approach to road safety data. The former Coalition Government was committed to establishing a national data sharing agreement with States and Territories.

“Despite the Labor Government announcing that the new federal funding agreement would include a data sharing provision, we are yet to see the new agreement that should have come into effect three weeks ago,” Mr Pasin said.

Current data collected by States and Territories is not coordinated nationally, and it lacks details in many key areas such as serious injury.

“Every death on our roads is tragic. While each death is so much more than just a number the statistics are vitally important as the data collected should be informing the path forward for policy makers,” Mr Pasin said.

“Labor’s failure to facilitate the timely, consistent, and open reporting of national road safety data after almost two years in government is preventing Australia from quantifying its road safety problem, developing evidence-based responses, or evaluating their effectiveness.”

“The Minister needs to come clean on the details of a new federal funding agreement for land transport infrastructure and what data sharing provisions are included as a condition of federal funding,” Mr Pasin said.