Page 5337 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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continue through 2010. Public consultation will also be part of this process, with public forums planned to be held during 2010. I will certainly welcome input from members of the Assembly as that work proceeds.
I believe that, with support from politicians, stakeholders and the community, the next ACT road safety strategy can be a step up to the next level, with a much stronger vision component, a more proactive approach and clearer activities to address cultural change.
As part of this, the following issues would need to be addressed. The aim of zero road deaths would need to be shared with and owned by politicians, stakeholders and indeed the entire ACT community. Measures to embed a cultural change in relation to speeding would be required, given the critical importance of speed management in delivering a safer road system, particularly for vulnerable road users. Best practice road engineering using safe system principles, including a focus on the needs of vulnerable road users, would require significant infrastructure investment, and we would need to explore possible measures to obtain these additional funds.
We would also need stronger efforts to educate and encourage all road users, not just car drivers, to obey the road rules and to be unimpaired and alert when using the road system. A lifetime learning approach to road safety has been suggested. And there is a need for the ACT community to become less tolerant of offenders and more serious about traffic enforcement measures.
I look forward to the support of all members for the next road safety strategy when I bring it forward to the Assembly in due course. I repeat that this is an issue which the government takes extremely seriously. All of the identified stakeholders convened two well-attended roundtables this year, at which every one of the stakeholders that I just referred to was able to bring to the table a particular perspective representing a particular constituent organisation within the ACT community and at some levels nationally.
They were very positive and productive meetings. There is a genuine will within all of those within our community that have an interest in roads, road engineering, road construction, road safety, the welfare of the community and the rehabilitation of members of the community impacted or affected by road safety to do something about the appalling tragedy, loss and hurt that road crashes cause here within the ACT and indeed throughout Australia and the world.
It is one of those issues which—because of the nature of road crashes or road death, road injury or road trauma—we do not respond to individually in the emotional way that we respond to other tragedies where there are perhaps mass deaths. It is a comment that I have made recently—and I believe it is part of the issue around behavioural change, or the lack of behavioural change or lack of response to road deaths—that they happen on an individual basis. They affect a particular family, and a particular workplace perhaps, but they do not impact emotionally on the broader community. We do not respond or change our behaviour in the way that these appalling statistics would suggest that we ought. We ought and must change our attitude to driving and to road safety when we as individuals get behind the wheel of
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