Page 4483 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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measures are motorcyclists. They represent 3 per cent of registered vehicles in the ACT, but account for 20 per cent of fatalities compared with only 9 per cent Australia-wide. I should add another fact, and that is that pedestrians represent 15 per cent of road fatalities since 1989.
The cost of all this, Madam Speaker, is the reason why I have put those statistics on the record. A recent NRMA and ACT Road Safety Trust study estimated that road accidents are costing the ACT $150m a year, and, of course, there are inestimable, non-quantifiable costs which come with road tragedy. Other projected factors to note in relation to the costs of road trauma and road accidents are as follows: Our population is increasing and is ageing. This will lead to more drivers on the road. Moreover, there will be a higher number of aged drivers and pedestrians. Australians spend more time engaged in leisure and recreational activities than the people of any other nation. The ACT's geographical position means that there are significant volumes of traffic flowing into neighbouring New South Wales, especially to the coast, the snowfields and Sydney. Moreover, these volumes are often concentrated into dangerous peak flow periods, usually associated with holidays.
Madam Speaker, the level of car ownership in the ACT is the highest in the country. Perhaps surprisingly, ACT cars do more kilometres per year than vehicles elsewhere in Australia. Road transport in the ACT is set to grow by something like 25 per cent by the year 2001. This is simply the projected national average and thus is probably a conservative estimate, Madam Speaker. While more people will shift to public transport, and there will be a higher proportion of people shifting to bicycles, this latter fact will create its own safety hazards to be factored into safety programs and strategy.
I have tried to place on the public record some of the costs that this community is expected to deal with. I have used, in the first instance, the economic cost that this community in the ACT is expected to deal with in relation to road trauma, road accidents and road safety. I reckon that I have addressed the initial premise of Mr Stevenson's MPI. We are providing a facility which is now being used seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, concentrating on road safety for professional drivers, for motorcycle riders, and for young drivers, as well as the reskilling of an existing driving population who may not have had other forms of retraining and driver tuition since they originally gained their licences many years ago. This facility is specifically for the purpose of reducing road trauma, reducing road deaths, and increasing the professionalism not only of the professional drivers around the ACT and the region but also of our general driving population. This arrangement facilitates driver safety, driver education and the reduction of road accident trauma.
For Mr Stevenson to suggest that there is an economic cost because there is a peppercorn rent arrangement or some other arrangement is absolute hypocrisy. He does not take into account the benefits derived from making this facility available. Indeed, were this facility not able to be provided in the form and format that the Government has accepted, I would suggest to you that the statistics that I have been able to give this afternoon, indicating that in the ACT we have an increasingly enviable record compared to the national statistics, would go the other way. What we have here is a government decision which says, "On the one hand here in economic terms is the real cost of inattention, inappropriate training and so forth, and on the other hand here is a cost which
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