Page 3412 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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26 years and over. This reduction in crash rates coincided with the introduction of the revised GLS in 2000, in this case, a minimum of 120 hours’ logged experience over 12 months on L-plates.
In Victoria, a GLS evaluation found 42.5 per cent fewer drivers aged 18 to 23 years were involved in fatal or serious injury crashes in the decade since the GLS was introduced in 2007-08. I can go on with other examples from Queensland and Western Australia. All of these jurisdictions have brought in various changes.
As has been noted in my amendment—and I think Miss Burch touched on this in her remarks—in the ACT between 2006 and November 2017, 15 young drivers aged 17 to 24 have been killed, with five of those drivers’ deaths occurring between midnight and 5 am. Similarly, for the period 2011-15 eight vehicles were involved in fatal crashes between the hours of midnight and 5 am. Five of those drivers were aged 17 to 24, and three of those five had at least three passengers in their car. These statistics go on. Between 2006 and November 2017, cars driven by young drivers aged 17 to 24 killed 23 other drivers, cyclists, passengers or pedestrians on the roads. Ten of those deaths were between midnight and 5 am.
There are a number of other elements to the proposals other than those that have been focused on today around the curfew and the peer-passenger restrictions. I will not go into details of those, being conscious of the time. I will turn to the specific ask from Miss Burch and my amendment.
I want to be really clear that I do not intend to rule anything in or out on the floor today. We are in the middle of a consultation process. We have received extensive feedback and we are working through that now. But I assure members that there will be changes. The elements on which we were consulting was not a final package; it was never intended to be, so I reject the tone of some of the commentary contained in the motion.
As my amendment makes clear, we are listening very carefully to the public feedback. We need to make sure that we come up with a scheme that is practical. We need to come up with a scheme that the community can accept. There are differences in the community on this. Miss Burch cited the figure the government publicly released; we have been very transparent about this. In the what we heard survey report 50 per cent of respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed with restrictions on first-year P-platers driving between midnight and 5 am. But, interestingly, 40 per cent agreed or strongly agreed. That shows our community has diverse and, frankly, opposite view on this.
As the minster responsible for this policy area I now need to think through what is a good outcome for a community given the very different views that are out there and some very practical suggestions that have come through. My amendment notes that we are listening very closely to the community. That is why we ran community consultation and we expect to shape the package to reflect both the best road safety evidence and the community views out there.
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