Page 3265 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012

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Services aims to install flashing lights at all school zones as part of a longer term child pedestrian safety strategy, based on a standardised and rigorous assessment of priority.

I did not see too many dissenting comments in this report from the Labor members. I did not see too many comments saying that they were too concerned about the carbon emissions to install flashing lights. Perhaps we should get rid of every single streetlight in the ACT, get rid of them all, if that is going to be the new criteria, if we suddenly value avoidance of embedded carbon emissions over safety in school zones. That is what the Greens are advocating. That is one of the reasons why Ms Le Couteur said she could not support this motion.

Dr Bourke called this policy bizarre. I would like see whether Dr Bourke shares that same assessment of Ms Le Couteur’s contribution to this debate.

The need for the flashing lights, I think, is apparent across Canberra. I think we have all seen people speed through school zones, whether they be ones in the middle of the suburb on seemingly low-speed roads, or often older schools on arterial or sub-arterial roads.

One school that I know that faces regular issues with regard to road safety is St Thomas Aquinas in Charnwood. I have been contacted by parents, by representatives of the school and others about concerns they have for their children’s safety. And despite my repeated attempts, and perhaps those of others in this place, the government has done next to nothing to combat speeding outside that school zone. Flashing lights would help improve the safety at that site.

In fact in a letter from Mr Stanhope, when he was the Minister for Territory Municipal Services, he said:

Outside St Thomas Aquinas on Lhotsky Street, the results indicate that motorists travelled at an average speed of 42 kilometres per hour during school times and 54 kilometres an hour outside of these times.

Both of those were above the speed limits. Forty-two is an average at Lhotsky Street; yet the government has said no lights. I explicitly asked for flashing lights for this school a couple of years ago. The government said, “Can’t be done.” The average is above the speed limit.

To not prioritise this issue and perhaps avoid this issue altogether because of embedded carbon emissions in the construction of flashing lights, I think, is absolutely absurd. The staggering thing is that in spite of this school zone having an average speed above 40 kilometres an hour, it is No 38 in the list of priorities for traffic calming devices. If you have got a school zone with a speed limit of 40 kilometres an hour and people are driving at 42—and that is No 38; there are 37 worse scenarios in the ACT—then it really is a worry and it shows me that there is a systemic problem with road safety outside our school zones. A systemic problem needs a systemic solution, and the solution that we put on the table today, flashing lights, we believe is a good one and we believe the community deserves it.


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