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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 3 Hansard (23 March) . . Page.. 663 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

I also had contact with the Motor Trades Association and found that they also had had no consultation. These people had a contribution to make and I felt their advice was quite valuable. Mr Speaker, I also contacted a former police motorcyclist, just to see whether or not those advices were correct. I also called upon my own experience over many years of riding motorcycles and whether or not my intuition was backed up by the advices that I had received from these other people. I was concerned that that consultation did not go on.

Mr Speaker, it is often said in this place that we should do something just because New South Wales does it. I do not agree with that, I am afraid. There is a distinct possibility that the people in New South Wales could get things wrong. Indeed, it would not be for the first time. The legislation presented to us here is not consistent with the New South Wales stuff. It should be noted that in New South Wales they have arrangements within their Act for mature-age drivers who are, say, over 30 years old to be exempt. We do not see any exemption here for people over 30 years of age, people who have proved that they can be mature motorists. They have had a licence for a fair time. We do not have those sorts of provisions. So to say that we are hitting novice drivers is not consistent with what is happening in New South Wales.

I do not think proof has been given about the effectiveness of capacity limits in achieving safety outcomes. Interestingly, of the three motorcycle fatalities that happened last year, two of them involved riders on 250-cc motorcycles. I do not think anybody in this chamber would doubt how dangerous a 250-cc trail bike is in the hands of a person who is not used to it. You can have had a motorcycle licence for many years, restricting yourself to road bikes, and then get out into the pine forest with a 250-cc motorcycle and wrap it around a tree very easily. I guess, Mr Speaker, I am going to the relevance on this. I just do not see how it can possibly be.

A lot of these claims relate to reductions. I notice in today's paper that the director of casualty at the hospital was talking about the number of road accidents and things, but he made no link to it. There was no link at all between reductions in motorcycle accidents and movements towards changing the regimes. I did not really see that there was a connection. I thought it was an irrelevant comment. Furthermore, that director of casualty in that hospital has not been here all that long and he has not got the faintest idea of what norms and cultures exist in the ACT. No doubt he is using cultures which come from another place. I would not doubt that they are valid, but I certainly doubt that his comments here are valid. I do not believe that he is right about the position in the ACT. I do not think we can single out any one factor as to why crash rates have reduced nationally. No doubt there are numerous reasons.

One of the biggies for motorcycles is the educational process. We train people how to ride motorcycles responsibly. We train people about what sort of bike they should be riding. This sort of legislation also is an insult to people who run those safety programs. Those people are charged with the task of training our motorcycle riders. They are not going to be about to embark upon a training regime for some inexperienced rider who turns up with a hotted up 1,000-cc motorcycle. They will send him away. So, let us pay these people a courtesy, Mr Speaker, because they know what they are doing.

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