Sadly, the national road toll is moving in the wrong direction. In the second half of 2023, Australians experienced the deadliest six months on our roads since 2010.
Anyone who lives in regional Victoria and drives on our roads will know that a significant contributing factor to our road toll is the deplorable state of country roads.
One of the best ways we can reduce the road toll is to better understand the causes of accidents, the conditions of our roads and other factors — and that means looking at the data.
Last year, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Victorian State Government to access the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) data for Wannon.
This data revealed that hundreds of kilometres of roads through Wannon had received the lowest safety rating. The Victorian State Government collects this data for every road in the state but it keeps it a secret.
This data should be publicly available. Data transparency is one of the best low-cost opportunities to reduce road trauma. Death, trauma and traffic congestion would all be significantly reduced if the Australian Government chose to make data-driven road funding decisions, instead of ad-hoc and potentially politically motivated decisions.
Since I was elected, I have been campaigning for more funding to improve our local roads. The AusRAP data confirmed that Wannon has been ignored by the state Labor Government and that’s putting lives at risk.
I am proud to support the Australian Automobile Association in its campaign for the publication of road safety data. The Albanese Labor Government has the power to require state governments to publish their road safety data in return for federal government funding.
Before the 2022 election, the Labor MP for Ballarat, Catherine King, who is now the Transport Minister, made a commitment to make this data available. “We will cooperate with the states and territories to improve the timeliness and quality of road trauma data and look for opportunities to ensure we can extract better quality road safety data from state and territories in tern for funding of road projects,” she promised.
But nearly two years into this Albanese Labor Government and there has been no movement. It’s another broken promise, like the stage three tax cuts and the $275 cut to your electricity bill, that Labor won’t keep.
This should not be about special road funding deals for Labor electorates, this is about using tax- payers money to invest in improving the roads that will have the greatest positive impact on road safety. Transparency will lead to accountability and accountability will lead to safer roads in regional Victoria.
Published in Ararat Advocate
