Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1115 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, there are questions that need answers and, therefore, there is a need for an inquiry. There is a need to look at any available evidence to find out whether bicycle helmets do reduce serious injury or whether the helmet causes more head injuries than the accident. We do not know the answer to these questions because there simply has not been any substantive study carried out to find out this information. There was no substantive study on which the policy was formulated initially and there has been none since. There is a need to assess whether the same laws should be applied to adults and to children. We need to determine whether there is a need for compulsory helmet-wearing for children, for example, but a law that allows adults to choose. What we really should seek to find out is what is the healthiest policy for our society.

I remind members that we got this policy in the ACT because of black spot funding. It probably ought to have been called blackmail funding, because we were told that we could have funding from the Federal Government to deal with some dangerous intersections, provided we introduced bicycle helmet laws. It was very difficult for this Assembly to ignore the opportunity to resolve dangerous intersections. The only reason the legislation was passed in 1992 was that the ACT Government was bought off, effectively, and the Assembly as a whole, by the threat of withdrawal of that funding. Yet, for a fraction of the cost of that program, we could have had a rigorous monitoring system to establish the costs and benefits of universally approved bicycle helmet usage.

It was not just this ACT Government that failed to assess the efficacy of bicycle helmets; it was also the Federal Government before they put this kind of pressure on governments around Australia. Governments have failed to evaluate the efficacy of helmets, and the standard of this sort of policy-making is thus degraded. Our current helmet laws distract attention from other measures to prevent accidents and to provide public education, and that is something we need to assess.

A group of people within the ACT community have resisted bicycle helmets, and they have done the work in assessing the policy and trying to determine its efficacy. That is why I am not calling for a rejection of the policy at this stage but saying that we now, five years later, have the opportunity to determine whether it actually has made any difference, whether the imposition on adults of something such as this has been worth while, or whether it is important to look at other methods. One of the arguments put in this Assembly at the time, as I recall, was that we have no choice because we know that helmets will reduce injuries, therefore we must put them in. If that had been a genuine belief, rather than just a convenient argument for debating's sake, we would have had a policy within this Assembly that required the wearing of similar helmets in motor vehicles. There is no doubt that head injuries caused from the impact of heads against the sides of motor vehicles are far greater than injuries caused by people falling off their bicycles.

Mr Berry: Yes, but a few more people get around in cars, too.

MR MOORE: Mr Berry interjects that there are a few more people getting around in cars, too.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .