Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:10): Thank you, chair of the inquiry, Mr Erdogan. I congratulate my fellow colleagues who participated in the report and the staff who assisted us. Mr Quilty and I felt the need to put in a minority report, because for a start, ‘beyond zero’ we believe to be impossible to achieve in any case, and the fact that the reliance might be on reducing speed limits in rural Victoria was totally unacceptable to us. We want the roads fixed. We do not want speed limits reduced. That is critical. We also believe there needs to be greater emphasis on preparing international drivers for driving on our roads, especially in my area of the Great Ocean Road, where 20 per cent of accidents are caused by international drivers. We are concerned also about the emphasis on safety that requires a rollout of billions of dollars worth of wire rope barriers as the solution to road safety. In many areas we find them more dangerous than the roads themselves. The potholes and the edges on the side of the roads are what are actually critical in reducing accidents and injury on our roads—let alone how the motorcyclists perceive wire rope barriers.

We are also concerned particularly about roadside vegetation and the roadsides where we see a conservation zone or a biodiversity area as the priority instead of safe roads. Roads should be safe. They should not be conservation zones or wildlife corridors, because animals actually do not look right, left and right again when they go to cross, let alone getting tangled up in wire rope barriers. So Mr Quilty and I produced a minority report. I hope you all read it.