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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 252 ..

problem at Torrens is a combination of inadequate parking, street congestion and insufficient marked crossings.

A hazard analysis conducted by the school P&C in August 2003 indicated hazard levels that were high, and even extreme, on some of the major safety benchmarks. Children alighting from cars on the opposite side of the street from the school in Ritchie Street are running the gauntlet. Granted, that is a parent problem. However, marked crossings are clearly needed there. We need to see a combination of community zebra crossings and school managed crossings along Ritchie Street and the others that bound Torrens primary school.

The point, too, is that Ritchie Street is being increasingly used by commuter traffic as a short cut from Tuggeranong to Marist and Melrose schools. The government, in the audit that we want them to undertake, must categorise streets that tend to be utilised as commuter traffic through-flows that are also major alighting areas for those schools. Firm policy decisions in light of these assessments will then need to be made about whether to assist schools to relocate their alighting areas or whether to impede traffic flows and put in school and zebra crossings.

It is my observation that there are breaches of OH&S in respect of traffic management across the ACT school system. Schools need to be supported by the department to ensure that they adhere to good OH&S practices. Schools want to exercise good OH&S practices and we know they are trying hard to do so, but a school principal can only write so many letters appealing to parents and children to arrive at school and deal with traffic movements safely. It is incumbent on the department to ensure that every school has an adequate number of school crossings and alighting areas for buses and cars, and there is every indication that our community is falling far short of this requirement.

It is incumbent on the government to ensure that schools are safe. I assume that the government is driven to pursue this objective, and I am sure that the minister means to see that safety is in place. Children arriving at school are in danger on any given day, even in the best of weather and traffic conditions. Little children have yet to fully develop their senses and their commonsense. Coupled with this, harried parents are understandably under pressure in the madhouse of school arrival and school pick-up times and, sometimes, under pressure they make mistakes. Parents often have to supervise three or more frisky, excited kids leaving cars, banging mum in the knees with their heavier and heavier schoolbags. Mum or dad is rushing to get out of this madhouse and off to work.

Concurrent with all of this, in too many schools there are now increasing short-cut commuter through-flows of traffic bypassing major roads and, regrettably, hastening past school front gates. Boil all of these dynamics together and the risk of accident outside of schools is high—at the best of times. We believe that in far too many schools the risk factor is increasing greatly. I am feeling pretty uneasy about that and, I suspect, so too are my colleagues on all sides of the house.

This is why we are seeking to move urgently to see the safety audit undertaken. Anecdotal, informal information to my office is disturbing. I know that some other MLAs, not necessarily in my party, feel the same way. Let’s take action on this. Let’s direct the department to risk analyse quickly what the situation really is in schools across

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