Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Economy and Infrastructure Committee

Inquiry into the Impact of Road Safety Behaviours on Vulnerable Road Users

Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (11:09): I rise to speak on the Legislative Assembly’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee’s inquiry into the impact of road safety behaviours on vulnerable road users. While I appreciate the findings of this inquiry, the truth is that road safety is impacted by the state of the roads across Victoria. Day in, day out we hear from members across this place raising local road issues. In fact all of the speakers before me who spoke to this report raised road issues in their electorates, and we hear them from across Victoria. They are Victoria-wide. Labor cannot manage money and they cannot manage our roads.

The people in my electorate know all too well what it is like to be vulnerable on unsafe roads, including on the dangerous intersection of Marbert Court and Kangaroo Ground-Warrandyte Road, where a man tragically lost his life in a crash just months ago. My constituent Kim Williams, who lives on Marbert Court, raised safety concerns about the intersection with my predecessor in 2020, who too had raised it with the minister as many residents felt that an accident was inevitable due to the road’s design. Sadly, on 12 May their worst fears were realised when a motorcyclist was killed and another was left clinging to life in hospital. This has devastated the local community and left residents of Marbert Court scared and shocked, and every day residents turning in and out of this court face this dangerous intersection where a man tragically did lose his life.

Of course I will never pass up an opportunity to speak about one of my electorate’s highest priorities, the dangerous and perilous Five Ways intersection. The people in my community have been waiting and wondering when the government will finally fix Five Ways intersection in Warrandyte South. Will it be when there is another casualty? Will it be when there is another road incident? I recently asked the Minister for Roads and Road Safety whether there were any short-term measures being implemented to mitigate the immediate safety issues surrounding the Five Ways intersection, and the minister responded that the Department of Transport and Planning’s preliminary investigation did not identify short-term measures to implement in advance of a significant upgrade. This is simply not good enough. We are hearing time and time again, accident after accident, that this tired Labor government want you to believe that they cannot even change a speed limit on a road. It is simply not good enough. I ask the minister why, despite the many safety issues that surround this intersection, the Labor government cannot fix the Five Ways intersection, and I get this same tired old line, day in, day out. I have raised it six or seven times now in the Parliament, and this is what she says each time:

Given the complex geometry and physical constraints of the site, including the locations of the staggered intersections, significant modifications are likely to be required including land acquisition and the relocation of several utility services.

Well, you know what, it may be unparliamentary, but I am calling it out. I call BS. That is simply and categorically untrue. We need to be looking at this. This is a serious road issue, and let me list this: in 2014 –

Belinda Wilson: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, we are talking about committee reports. I do not believe that the member for Warrandyte is talking about a committee report.

Tim Bull: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, the committee reports, particularly today, have been very, very wideranging in their content, and I would ask you to please give the honourable member the same latitude.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Alison Marchant): On the point of order, it is relevant to the topic, but it is a committee report, so I do ask you to come back to the committee report.

Nicole WERNER: On the committee report, as we are speaking about the inquiry into the impact of road safety behaviours on vulnerable road users, let me tell you a story. It was on my 18th birthday in 2009 that I got my licence, and I remember this very road because it was so challenging to navigate as an L-plater as well as as a P-plater. It was the intersection of Stintons Road and Tindals Road in Donvale, and many in my electorate will know it. That very same intersection had across five years four crashes involving casualties. It was incumbent upon the mayor at the time in 2014, who looked at this being an issue and was able to deliver funding and a roundabout as a solution to this road issue. It made a world of difference as I was growing up and learning to drive, and this is the same thing. We are looking at an intersection that is so hazardous, that has still not yet been fixed, that I am asking and calling upon the government week in and week out in this place to finally fix, not just in Warrandyte but across the electorates, across Victoria. We need our roads fixed. It is desperate.