Second Reading
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:54): I am pleased to belatedly rise to speak on this bill, which comes under my portfolio of roads and road safety. I thank the member for Ovens Valley for stepping in to cover me as the lead speaker as I was –
Tim Richardson interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: I was having a crack at the government, member for Mordialloc – what a big shock. On budget day, yes, I was unavoidably detained by having a crack at the government. Members opposite will be pleased to know that I am not particularly going to have a crack at the government on this legislation – or at least not the legislation itself. Like the member for Mildura, there is plenty I can say about roads. I will acknowledge the former Minister for Roads and Road Safety at the desk. We were just having a bit of a chat about a couple of things in the budget that finally have actually been delivered for Gippsland South, in particular the planning money for what is known as kamikaze corner in Leongatha, the intersection of the Strzelecki and South Gippsland highways, which is just a basket case of an intersection. The Nationals committed to this money in 2022 to actually begin the process. So, four years later, it is very much belated but also very much welcome – finally something is going to be considered. One of my other disappointments about the budget today is the Sale College – a separate issue altogether from this bill but also one where planning money was committed, where land has been acquired but where nothing has happened. I hope the same does not happen with kamikaze corner, because we do need that intersection fixed, and likewise some planning money for the Mirboo North to Leongatha stretch of the Strzelecki Highway, which the minister and I were just discussing. It is unclear to me exactly what that is going to do, although it is a relatively windy stretch of road, where some straightening where possible and some additional road shoulder construction would certainly be helpful on what is a pretty busy stretch of road. So that is good.
This legislation is largely an omnibus bill. It has a number of different aspects to it; some are road safety and roads and some are in fact the ports and freight portfolio. I did thank the minister, actually, at the time this was introduced for doing so when there was a four-week gap, which gave me plenty of time to do the research and prepare the bill report. I would like to unthank whoever it was that decided it would be debated on budget day, because that has caused a few dramas. Nonetheless, we are here now. This legislation makes amendments to allow point-to-point speed cameras to cover areas where there are multiple speed zones. When we asked in the bill briefing what the genesis of this was, what the government is actually trying to achieve with this, we were told simply that it is about reducing the road toll. Whilst that is noble and we have no issue with that and certainly support it – that is good – there are two alternative notions that we would wonder about. One is whether this is about giving more opportunity for the government to raise revenue on fixed point-to-point speed cameras on some of our freeways. Secondly, the fact is that we are now amending this legislation to allow these cameras to cover multiple stretches of road but also stretches of different speed zones, so it might be a 4-kilometre stretch of road where there is both a 100 zone and a 110 zone or a 100 zone and an 80 zone.
We have seen an explosion in the number of speed limit reductions over the last 10 years under this government, sometimes for genuine safety reasons but generally speaking because the roads are in such appalling condition that the only way the government can do anything about them is to actually reduce the speed limit. I do have a bit of a question mark as to whether that is one of the reasons this legislation is being introduced, because we now have so many stretches of roads where there is not a consistent speed limit, and I think it is actually a road safety issue in itself. There are so many places now where there are greater speed reductions coming into or out of a town, sometimes now stretching for kilometres outside of towns in regional Victoria. I would be interested in what MUARC, the Monash University Accident Research Centre, might think about it, because I think there is a safety issue in that in itself, in that people get frustrated and people get confused because there are so many changes of speed limit. This is something that I think we need to do more work on, because that level of frustration is genuine from motorists on these issues.
There are a couple of other issues in this legislation. It changes some acts to allow the use of overseas addresses for the purposes, effectively, of fines. When a council issues a parking fine or a speeding fine is issued to someone with a hire car, at the moment it simply says ‘Residential address’, and that has been interpreted to be an Australian residential address, which has made it difficult for companies such as hire car companies to actually track down particularly overseas drivers and ensure that they are responsible for paying their fines. I think this is an issue that we certainly support being addressed. This small amendment will allow the use of overseas addresses when chasing fines under the operator onus scheme.
The bill also gives the head of Transport for Victoria powers to make a temporary declaration of a road. That is just to address the fact that once a road is finished, for all intents and purposes, there is always pressure for it to be opened, and as I understand, it can take some time for the full surveying and those sorts of activities to occur because they need to wait till literally everything is finished on a road. This gives a temporary declaration opportunity for the government for 12 months. It can be extended by the minister for a further 12 months. Again, we have no particular issue with this.
I am very pleased that there is a clause in this legislation to provide an exemption for emergency services drivers for certain Heavy Vehicle National Law requirements, particularly with respect to filling in driving logs. That is a sensible exemption that ensures that if you are on a fire truck for a period of time, you do not have to be doing what someone who is doing an interstate freight run, for example, is doing, and that makes sense. We certainly support that.
Finally, on the freight aspect to this legislation, which the member for Footscray talked about in particular, the bill imposes new requirements on both shipping companies and port operators with respect to providing data to the government both on containers – what is in containers, what they are doing, where they are going and where they are coming from – and on trucks and truck movements within ports. That seems to me a little bit surprising. I am told by the government that information is already provided but is done in an inconsistent manner, so this is about ensuring that it is consistent. There would potentially be a concern – certainly I had a concern – about whether this was additional red tape and requirements that were not necessary, but I have heard back from the Container Transport Alliance Australia, for example, who have indicated that they fully support this because they do need that data to understand things like truck movements in ports and things like the quality of trucks and what they are doing in and out of ports as well as containers, as I mentioned. That is the bulk of it.
There are a number of other miscellaneous amendments, which I will not go into, but I will highlight that our roads continue to be in an appalling state. We have seen announcements in the budget today and indeed an announcement a week or so ago that supposedly there is a record investment. What is not explained are the performance measures in the budget, which highlight that in fact for every single performance measure, regional, metro and inner metro, the performance measures are actually going backwards. If we are spending more money, we are actually seeing less output. Whether it is the road area majorly patched or whether it is the road area resurfaced, in all those areas they are actually going backwards on what they were two years ago – going backwards on the road area surfaced by an enormous amount compared to recent years. That highlights the spin that there is in this particular budget. We are being told one thing, but the reality of what is happening or what is going to happen on the ground is different. This legislation, though, we have no issue with, and I look forward to it progressing through the chamber.