Page 449 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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the comments from Mr Hargreaves about the way that the government intends to proceed. I share Mr Pratt’s concern that too many people are dying on our roads and I certainly agree that more must be done. But we must be guided by firm evidence in the solutions that we adopt because of the potential to impact on people’s lives while failing to actually address the problem. Until that evidence is available, we must implement better education programs about the links between drug consumption and impaired driving, and tackle the pressures that the trucking industry imposes on its drivers.
We need to have alternatives so that people do not have to use their car if they find themselves in a situation where they recognise that they are not in a fit position to drive. In some instances, we are talking about people who probably cannot afford to use a taxi. If we are really going to tackle this, we have to make sure that we offer alternatives to driving cars, and that means a good public transport system. But setting up a legislative regime that encourages people to disclose, rather than hide, their intake of drugs will assist us in gaining the evidence on which to base fair and effective testing regimes.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (12.23): Mr Speaker, most people are very well aware of the real dangers of driving a car while under the influence of alcohol but it still seems that far fewer are aware of the threat posed by driving whilst under the influence of illicit substances. For different reasons, I am disappointed with what has been said by the previous two speakers. In relation to Dr Foskey, the matter of illicit drugs has always been the Achilles heal of the Greens in Australia. They do not like tough government policies. They take the soft side and they scream like squealing pigs when people make media capital of the fact that they have got a soft policy in relation to drugs. So it causes me no surprise when I hear the Green’s representative in this chamber get up and think of all sorts of spurious reasons why it is not appropriate to do this.
It would not matter if I wheeled in here trolley loads of research, which does exist, that demonstrates how much evidence there is of the impact of road safety on people’s lives. I would be more than happy to send this to Dr Foskey’s office but I am amazed that she has not seen it. I imagine that many of her advisers would have read about this material. There is an overwhelming body of evidence that shows the impact that this is having. The reckless use of illicit substances by people who then choose to drive is taking the lives of innocent people in this city and elsewhere. `
I could paint you a compelling case casting doubt on RBT legislation for alcohol. I was part of an industry that worked very closely with road safety authorities and police and I can tell you of research done in the West Australian police laboratories that shows that some people can drink glass after glass of light beer—in one case, 20 glasses were consumed—and still not go over the limit. So do we go out and say, “Well, there are exceptions there. Sometimes people with different metabolisms do not go over the limit as early as others; so let us throw it all out because there might be that exception. There might be that one or two per cent of the population who really are quite capable of driving even though they have had six beers”? Well, I am sorry but I do not accept that. I will live with the constraints—and I know all of the members here will live with those constraints—that if you want to go out and drink you have to adhere to a very strict regime.
We have accepted that the body of evidence is such that we have to have laws to protect our community from people who drink and drive. I cannot accept the credibility of the
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