Page 709 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 28 March 2006
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change, then the opposition would want to come back and amend things. But that may not be the case. Let us see how those issues which I have raised are, in fact, factored in.
The opposition supports this bill. Minister, thank you. Let us see what you have to say in response to those requests for clarification.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.51): The ACT Greens will support the Road Transport (Alcohol and Drugs) Amendment Bill as well. We are very concerned by the increasing number of lives being lost and injuries occurring on our roads and are keen to participate in strategies to reduce this. However, I am not really sure how this bill will do that. While it makes some changes to the Road Transport (Alcohol and Drugs) Act, they are really quite minor changes. This bill does not suggest the government has developed any new strategies for dealing with drug or alcohol-impaired driving.
The November 2005 progress report for the national road safety strategy indicates that the ACT’s road death rate was improving—by which I mean “reducing”—significantly until 2005. From 1997 to 2004, the annual road death rate per 100,000 people decreased from 6.2 to 2.8. We could be very proud of that. In the 12 months leading up to September 2005, this dramatically increased to 7.1 per 100,000 people. So we do have an issue of great concern on our hands. When you read through the progress report and see the steps that the ACT has taken to implement agreed actions, it is somewhat disappointing.
The five key action areas are safer roads and roadsides, safer speeds, safer vehicles, safer road users, and other supporting measures. While comments could be made on each of these, it seems most relevant to this debate to focus on safer road users.
Action 1 is to enhance drink-driving deterrents. The ACT’s progress note is that ACT Policing will continue to target random breath-testing. But how does continuing to do the same thing actually enhance a program? This strategy, we all know, works best when people can reasonably expect to encounter a booze bus on the way home from the pub, from the club or from a party. We need regularity and the creation of a perception that driving under the influence of alcohol will not be something that people get away with.
Action 2 is to promote more extensive use of alcohol-interlocked programs to change the behaviour of repeat offenders. While most other states have implemented or are implementing alcohol-interlock programs to change the behaviour of repeat offenders, the ACT is still conducting research and developing guidelines. I would be keen to hear from the minister how far we are away from our own implementations and how long this action has been undergoing research.
One further action that has been raised previously in this Assembly is to develop and evaluate improved drug deterrence measures. The ACT Greens agree in principle with Mr Pratt’s concern about the impacts of drugs other than alcohol on driving, but we raise a number of issues that need further clarification before the introduction of random drug-testing. Meanwhile the ACT government, I believe, maintains that it is monitoring measures in place in other jurisdictions for possible application in the ACT.
While the debate about testing is important, there is another side to drug deterrence that seems to be missed, and that is education of the public about driving under the influence
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