Page 2685 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 26 September 2007
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MR SPEAKER: Come to the subject matter of the question.
MR HARGREAVES: The thing about the gain from this revenue is that it will be money that goes into consolidated revenue from which I will seek permission from the Treasurer to install that fixed speed camera on Long Gully Road that Mr Pratt wants. This will be the Steve Pratt memorial speed camera, sitting there on Long Gully Road, as soon as I can get money to do it, because I believe that he is right: it is a dangerous stretch of road. But did you know, Mr Speaker, that the mobile speed camera vans are regular visitors to that particular road? So, too, are the police traffic group; they go out there by motor vehicle or motorcycle. That area is highly patrolled in both those two speed apprehension activities. We will give a lot of consideration to that matter.
I have said to this house before that I do not determine where they are going to go. We have road safety experts who decide where they go, based on proper data. Mr Seselja asks: “What are you going to use the money on? Are you going to use it on road safety?” The answer is yes. We invest a lot of time, energy and money with the road safety trust of the NRMA. I noticed yesterday, at the NRMA road safety trust launch of the postgraduate research into road safety, that Mr Mulcahy was there, and I am very pleased to acknowledge that he was there. Did I see the shadow minister for transport there? No. Did I see anybody else from the opposition? No. What is that organisation doing? It is doing research into things like prescription drug testing on the roadside. It is looking at young driver behaviour. The NRMA road safety trust is putting $690,000 into road safety initiatives.
Where do we get money from to contribute to that? Consolidated revenue. And what contributes to consolidated revenue? All of that voluntary tax that people pay because they go through speed cameras. Really, if you have a massive, great sign up twice before you get to a speed camera, and the speed camera is taking a picture of you going away from that site, how silly is it to go through there and get an infringement notice? None of the other activities have that. These fixed camera sites have plenty of warning. I can only surmise that Mr Pratt wants another memorial speed camera traffic pole for himself and/or he is encouraging people to speed down the parkway, when we are doing everything we can to change that driver behaviour.
MR SPEAKER: Is there a supplementary question?
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, could you outline for the Assembly the increased road spending in the past two years and how that correlates with increasing revenue received from speed cameras?
MR HARGREAVES: I have just indicated that the money received from the speed cameras goes into consolidated revenue. I would suggest that Mr Seselja do something which is really quite unusual—that is, go and read some budget documents for the last couple of years.
Mr Seselja: That means he doesn’t know.
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