Road safety
Motion
Hon Julie Freeman (1:06 pm): I move:
That this house:
(a) notes with grave concern the alarming number of road fatalities recorded to date in 2025, continuing the deeply troubling trend of rising deaths on Western Australian roads, particularly in regional and remote communities;
(b) recognises the tireless efforts of first responders, health professionals and advocacy organisations working to prevent road trauma and support those affected, and further acknowledges the significant mental health toll on survivors, bereaved families, emergency service workers, and frontline responders;
(c) calls on the Cook Labor government to urgently strengthen its response to the road safety crisis by adopting a whole-of-community approach—coordinating with local governments, law enforcement, health services, and industry stakeholders to address the unique and pressing road safety challenges across Western Australia; and
(d) further calls on the Cook Labor government to prioritise funding for critical road safety measures, including improved infrastructure, trauma support services, comprehensive driver education, and increased capacity for traffic enforcement and emergency response across the state.
As we sit here today, 132 Western Australians have lost their lives on our roads in 2025. Let me say that again—132 lives gone. That is 132 families shattered by grief, 132 communities left reeling and a road toll that continues to rise month after month with no end in sight. As of the end of July 2025, 112 Western Australians had already lost their lives—the highest year-to-date toll in 18 years. This follows 188 deaths in 2024, with more than 61% occurring in regional areas, despite those communities making up a far smaller proportion of the population. Between 2020 and 2024, the toll was staggering—842 deaths and 7,605 serious injuries. That is over 8,400 families forever changed. In regional WA, the fatality rate sits at 18.7 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with just 2.84 per 100,000 in Perth, a sixfold disparity. Western Australia is consistently ranked second or third worst in the nation for road deaths per capita, behind only the Northern Territory. In 2024, our rate was nearly double the national average. That is not just statistics; that is a gross inequality in public safety.
Where you live in this state should not determine whether you survive the drive home, but right now it does. The Western Australian Road Fatalities and Serious Injuries 2024 report, which records the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) on our roads, recorded 188 fatalities last year, a 14.9% increase over the previous five-year average; 1,600 people killed or seriously injured from 1,381 crashes—a fatality rate disproportionately affecting regional WA, which accounted for 61% of deaths despite its smaller population; a 60% increase in deaths in the Wheatbelt compared with the five-year average; and a 32% increase in fatalities on state roads, even while KSI numbers were declining slightly overall. In 2025, we are already on track to exceed those devastating numbers, with 132 lives already lost by September this year. This year may prove to be even deadlier than last.
We are not heading in the right direction; we are hurtling further into a crisis. Every time a fatal crash occurs, there is a ripple effect. It does not stop at the scene; it extends into our hospitals, our emergency services, our court systems and, most painfully, into our homes and hearts. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the police officers, paramedics, SES volunteers and firefighters who are the first at the scene; the doctors and nurses, especially in regional hospitals, who perform miracles under enormous strain; the counsellors and trauma professionals who support families and survivors long after the headlines have moved on; and the families who have lost a child, a parent, a sibling, a mate—you are why we must do better. The emotional and mental toll is not abstract; it is daily, visible and growing, especially for first responders and healthcare workers who face trauma repeatedly, often without adequate support.
What is truly galling is that at the very time our state is experiencing this deepening crisis, the Cook Labor government has produced a budget in which Main Roads Western Australia's net road safety funding is being reduced to one-third of what it was last year—page 571 of budget paper No 2, volume 2. This government keeps reminding us about its impressive surplus, but it seems reluctant to spend it on the things that matter to the people they were elected to represent, like getting to work and home again safely.
I acknowledge the government's recent commitment to expand the regional road safety program to include local roads. It is something the RACWA and the Western Australian Local Government Association have been calling for for several years, and its eventual adoption should not go unrecognised. We know these upgrades work. We have seen the results on regional highways, where lives have been saved. But let us be clear: this investment is too little and it has come too late. The business case developed by the RAC, WALGA and Main Roads WA called for $552 million to improve more than 8,000 kilometres of high-speed local roads. During the campaign, the Nationals WA committed to $276 million, to be matched by Commonwealth funding, to get the whole project completed. The Cook Labor government has promised $250 million, but half of that is dependent on matching federal funds that are not yet secured. The state's real commitment is just $125 million—one-quarter of what is needed.
Communities and advocacy groups were asking for this long before the government finally acted, and while we welcome the upgrades, we also know that they take time—years in some cases—to deliver. Time is one thing we do not have. In the meantime, for example, roads like the Minilya–Exmouth Road leading to the tourism growth area of Coral Bay, a community looking at an additional thousand visitors per year when the new resort is opened, is narrow with crumbling shoulders, forcing caravans and trucks close together when passing each other and making overtaking nearly impossible. Both state-owned and local government roads are in desperate need of basic maintenance and low-cost treatments that will make driving safer and save lives.
It has now been 12 months since the Cook Labor government held its much-publicised road safety round table. The former Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Nationals WA asked to have a seat at that round table, recognising that this crisis goes far beyond politics, but were refused. At that time, Western Australians were promised collaboration and progress, but what has been delivered? It was a talkfest and nothing more. Today, more Western Australians have lost their lives on our roads than at the same time last year. The reality is simple: under this government, road safety has gone backwards. The numbers do not lie. The government has failed to prioritise and bring forward spending on road safety initiatives, has delayed and deflected while continuing with overbudget high-spec vanity projects like pedestrian bridges that light up and the Metronet behemoth, and will wait until the third term of government before starting to invest in crumbling regional roads. Those decisions put lives at risk. Road safety has taken a back seat under this government, and Western Australians are paying the ultimate price.
We already know where the problems are and they are not new—regional roads with narrow shoulders, no overtaking lanes, poor lighting and unsafe intersections; limited trauma and recovery services outside the metro area; driver education that ends once a P-plate is earned; and law enforcement stretched too thin to deter dangerous behaviour over long distances. In the RAC Risky Roads Survey for 2024–25, over 18,000 Western Australians identified the roads and intersections that make them feel unsafe. In Perth, it is Baldivis Road at Kulija Road, Armadale Road at Eighth Road, and the Mitchell Freeway. In the regions, it is Great Northern Highway, Great Eastern Highway and South Western Highway. These are not hypothetical concerns; they are real communities pointing to the black spots where lives are lost year after year. Yet despite knowing all this, the government has opted to not match the net spending of previous years to address these urgent gaps. Once again, we are expected to be satisfied with better late than never. I say: too little, too late. We welcome road upgrades, but they take years to deliver. Western Australians cannot wait.
What we need now is a surge in enforcement. It is time to throw everything at this problem. In just the first quarter of 2025, more than 60,000 drivers were caught speeding, unbelted or on phones, yet most received warnings and not penalties. AI-enabled cameras have been deployed at over 100 sites, but fines will not commence until October. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of dangerous acts go unpunished. International evidence shows that speed cameras reduce serious crashes by up to 44%, with a visible police presence being one of the strongest deterrents. Regional WA, where more than 60% of fatalities occur, is often unpoliced terrain. Long stretches of highway see little or no patrols. That culture of impunity must end. We call for a doubling of enforcement resources in regional WA; weekly random breath and drug blitzes; cameras backed by police action, with penalties issued and not warnings; and targeted campaigns for high-risk groups, such as young drivers, middle-aged men and fatigued truck drivers.
The Road Trauma Trust Account must be used transparently and effectively. Western Australians are rightly angered when funds are directed to projects with questionable safety benefits, such as the 2017 purchase of a police helicopter against the advice of the Road Safety Council. The Auditor General has made it clear that critical reforms to the RTTA have not been implemented. Although the RTTA collected $127 million in 2022–23, the Auditor General found that funds were released without ministerial approval, clear priorities had not been set, applications were poorly assessed and outcomes were rarely measured. As of 30 June 2025, the RTTA held an $86 million balance—money sitting idle while Western Australians die. The government plans to draw this down to $54 million by June 2026, but this follows years of criticism that funds have been stockpiled rather than invested in measures to save lives. We cannot repeat these mistakes. Every dollar must be spent on interventions with a proven capacity to save lives. This cannot be solved by Main Roads Western Australia or the Western Australia Police Force alone. We need a coordinated, whole-of-community approach involving state and local governments planning and prioritising high-risk roads. We need health services to support trauma and recovery, and law enforcement that is equipped to enforce speed, fatigue, seatbelt use and drug and alcohol offences. We need stakeholders in the freight, mining and agricultural industries. We need schools and education providers to deliver consistent driver education, and we need culturally safe engagement with Aboriginal communities who remain vastly over-represented in fatality statistics. We also need a stronger and more visible police presence, impactful advertising campaigns and regional voices shaping local solutions.
We stand at a crossroad. Fatalities are climbing. Western Australia is falling behind the rest of the nation and regional communities are bearing the brunt. If these deaths were caused by a natural disaster, a health epidemic or a mass workplace incident, there would be a national outcry, but because they happen on roads individually, quietly, and almost daily, we seem to tolerate them. We must not do that. In a state as prosperous as Western Australia, with its much-celebrated surplus, I cannot understand why the Cook Labor government is not throwing everything it can at this appalling toll. This motion is a call to action. It calls for a whole-of-community response, immediate enforcement, urgent investment in infrastructure, trauma support, education and above all, accountability in the use of the Road Trauma Trust Account.
The opposition proudly supports this motion because Western Australians deserve more than empty strategies and delayed frameworks. They deserve safe roads, strong enforcement and a government that puts lives first. Every death is a tragedy, every fatality is a call to action and every day of delay is unforgivable. I commend the motion to the house.
Hon Samantha Rowe (Parliamentary Secretary) (1:22 pm): I rise this afternoon to give the government's reply on this motion and to highlight the significant targeted and evidence-based investments that our government has made to assist in reducing road trauma and fatalities across Western Australia. The government broadly supports the intent of this motion. Working on ways to reduce deaths and accidents on our roads has always been supported by our government. We believe that a significant amount of investment and work has already been done to reduce fatalities and harm on our roads, and that we are already working with a whole-of-community approach.
I say from the outset that the number of fatalities on our roads is an issue that touches many Western Australian families. It is a really important issue for this house to discuss today. I also want to acknowledge the frontline workers who have to deal with the consequences of an accident, whether it be our police, St John Ambulance officers, trauma specialists right across our hospitals or the countless community advocates that this motion correctly recognises as well. In my contribution this afternoon I want to outline the investments made and the improvements in our roads that our government has made. I also want to address some of the claims that were made by the member opposite and to correct the record. The simple truth is this: we are delivering a significant amount of investment into our roads, especially throughout our regions, to ensure that we target and change driver behaviour so that we can save lives on our roads.
After convening the road safety round table in 2024, our state government announced more than $32.5 million for additional regional and road safety initiatives. That $32.5 million was spread across a number of different sources to ensure that those initiatives were targeted and effective. We provided $8.6 million for two new breath and drug testing buses in regional areas. We also provided $2.1 million for increased police traffic enforcement in regional areas, plus high visibility police vehicles; $1.8 million for improved traffic data gathering; and funding that included $20 million towards the WA Labor government's landmark Regional Road Safety Program. That additional funding takes the total allocation towards the Regional Road Safety Program over the next four years to $241.5 million. The program was launched in 2020 to specifically target single vehicle run-off road crashes and, to date, almost 10,000 kilometres of the state's regional road network have been upgraded with safety treatments. Some of those safety treatments include audible edge lines and shoulder widening to minimise run-off road and head-on crashes. It has also included funding for new breath and drug testing buses in regional areas and increased police traffic enforcement, including the high visibility patrol cars that I mentioned earlier, as well as the very important traffic data gathering.
In the recent state budget, our government committed $125 million to expand the Regional Road Safety Program to local government roads because shires and towns in our regions deserve the same safety focus as our highways. Since this program commenced in 2020, almost $1 billion has been invested to upgrade WA roads. These types of changes and investments will help us to address those small driver errors before they become fatal mistakes. These investments are based on best practice to save lives in rural and remote settings, often where ambulance response and retrieval times can be longer and can make the difference between a scare and a tragedy. We have also funded 23 new signalised pedestrian crossings, an investment of $17.7 million, including the replacement of 19 warden-controlled school crossings around the state. These upgrades protect our children, our seniors and people with mobility issues. They are needed at places where vehicles and vulnerable road users meet every day.
On the enforcement and deterrent front, we are investing more than $22 million in a comprehensive anti-hooning package to catch and deter hoons on our roads. This is not about headlines but sustained enforcement using modern technology to target repeat and high harm offenders. We are also building capability with a $15.4 million commitment to establish the state's first dedicated heavy vehicle driver training facility. With more heavy vehicles servicing our regions and supply chains than ever, better training for professional drivers is not just good policy, but essential to protect all road users.
Another thing that our government has done to improve road safety is to understand that novice driver safety is a huge concern. This was raised at the road safety round table because we were losing too many young people, so it was really important that we listened to that and acted. "Tom's Law" was introduced and passed in November 2024 to immediately address fatal crashes involving young people. Under the new regulations, both new and existing red P-plate drivers are limited to carrying only one passenger at all times with sensible exemptions in place. This is a targeted measure that reduces distraction and peer pressure dynamics in the car, and it gives novice drivers the best chance to build good road safety habits.
Our government has also rolled out state-of-the-art safety cameras, including fixed cameras on the Kwinana Freeway, and fines will be issued from 8 October.
In the regions, of the six safety camera trailers, two are based in Albany, rotating throughout the Great Southern and the South West, and two are in Geraldton, deployed across the Mid West and northern Wheatbelt. These safety cameras can detect drivers and front-seat passengers not wearing or incorrectly wearing seatbelts. They can also detect illegal mobile phone use, including holding or resting a phone on the body or even on the lap. Since January more than 170,000 mobile phone and seatbelt offences have been detected, with more than 60,000 caution notices issued during the transition period.
Our government also understands that safer roads require safer choices, and that means education and social marketing that actually changes behaviour. This year our government launched the Road Smart Kickstart road-safety school incursion program, which is already rolling out in the South West, Great Southern and the Wheatbelt, reaching 1,292 students so far. We are also increasing our investment in education from the Road Trauma Trust Account, and it has gone from $11.1 million in 2017–18 to $19.4 million in 2025–26. That includes $2.9 million targeted at school students and the Department of Education's Keys4Life, $8.45 million for the Road Safety Commission's advertising and social marketing, $5.5 million for community partnerships and $2.57 million to develop and deliver to new incursion programs for years 7 to 9. We are also running targeted campaigns such as "Red plate. One mate", reminding novice drivers about "Tom's Law"; "Drink Driving? Not worth the ‘beeping’ risk", highlighting the shame and social embarrassment of losing a licence; "Speed shatters your excuses", challenging our culture of just a little bit over; and "Wheelmates", a leaver-specific plan to get them home safely.
The government has also backed the five-year, $5 million investment into road safety research led by the University of Western Australia's Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research under Professor Teresa Senserrick. This research targets driver behaviour and culture, with a particular focus on young drivers. It will sharpen our interventions, validate what works and ensure our policies are responsive to emerging trends. This is how systems improve. Engineering and enforcement are essential, but research and evaluation make them smarter and more effective over time.
We also know that sometimes enforcement saves lives when it is visible, predictable and targeted. Through Operation Regional Influence, WA police have increased road policing enforcement, with high-visibility deployments across our regional roads. Up to August 2025 these deployments have delivered an additional 140 patrols, with 52,672 kilometres covered, 1,010 hours deployed, 3,928 random breath tests, 70 roadside drug tests and 1,478 on-the-spot infringements.
One of the other pivotal ways in which we are improving road safety, especially in our regions, is investing in road maintenance. In 2022 our government took the decision to bring Main Roads maintenance services back in-house. That has created 557 new jobs, mostly in regional WA, and has delivered better pay, stronger conditions and more responsive services. That reform has already saved taxpayers over $25 million and is projected to boost gross regional product by up to $335 million over the next decade. It is more than just numbers; it is about people, local workers, apprentices and Aboriginal communities that now have meaningful, stable employment.
Another issue on our regional roads is the number of trucks. Our government is commencing negotiations to bring WA's freight rail network back into public hands. That issue is important for most regional members so we can make our roads safer and we can be more efficient, and it is better for our economy. The federal Albanese government, our federal colleagues, is committing to a feasibility study backing a plan to reclaim the freight network, because together we want to make sure that WA is prepared for the next 25 years of growing freight demand.
One of the other issues I would like to touch on today is the whole-of-community approach that is mentioned in this motion. As I have already outlined today, our state government has been doing that. We are engaging and investing in road safety with local governments, with the Western Australia Police Force, frontline responders, health and industry. The road safety round table, brought together last year, was with a group of people involved in building our roads, policing our roads, treating trauma, insuring risk, riding, driving and delivering freight. It included law enforcement, which was led by the Commissioner of Police; local government, through the CEO of the Western Australian Local Government Association; health services, which included the State Director of Trauma at East Metropolitan Health Service; and the CEO at St John Ambulance. It also included industry stakeholders, so RAC, Transport Workers’ Union, WA Centre for Road Safety Research, Motorcycle Council of WA, Insurance Commission of Western Australia, WestCycle, road safety advocates and the Australasian College of Road Safety. The outcomes from the roundtable are already being delivered—from "Tom's Law" to expanded regional, safety cameras to educational programs, research to transport infrastructure investment. We are listening, we are co-designing and we are implementing. This is a whole-of-community approach and we welcome you to support that, members.
One thing I would like to touch on before I run out of time are the comments made by Hon Julie Freeman that funds have been cut by one-third. That is just not correct. She raised the issue during the estimates process. During that process one of the advisers from Main Roads addressed it and I also followed up to point out that the figure she referred to included large-scale road projects that had already been completed. That automatically comes out of that account. During that estimates process she thanked us for the explanation, so she gave an indication that she understood what we were saying. Yet, she has still, quite frankly, given a very misleading media alert on her website saying we have cut funding by one-third. That is just not true. I think it would be appropriate to correct the record because that is not what occurred.
In closing, I return to where we began. Every life that is lost is one too many and behind every statistic is a grieving family, a traumatised first responder and a community that will be forever changed. It is our responsibility as a Parliament and a community to make sure we take the most effective actions available to us, to measure their impact and to keep going until we have done everything we can. Our government has listened, acted and invested, and we will continue to do so.
Hon Steve Martin (1:39 pm): For the benefit of members, I intend to speak in support of this motion, but I will not use my full time. There are a number of members who want to speak on this excellent motion. Before I get to the substantive motion and the details behind it, I want to respond to the remarks of the parliamentary secretary regarding the demonisation of the trucking industry. I thought it was an unusual contribution as part of her response to this motion that the freight rail buyback would somehow make our roads safer. The very clear understanding is that we will be removing trucks from the road and our roads will be safer. Every single thing in the shop you go to this evening, everything we eat for lunch and everything that arrives in any home or shop or business in this state gets there at some level in a truck. It is an extraordinarily important industry in this state. Look at the data, by the way, from the Road Safety Commission that has been compiled over years and tell me that the trucking industry is anything but a safe, well run, efficient and effective industry in this state. I think it was an extraordinary comment from the parliamentary secretary to say that, as part of our response, our yet uncosted and unbudgeted possible buyback of the rail freight network would somehow contribute to safer roads.
I will come back to that. I just want to congratulate Hon Julie Freeman on the very timely nature of this motion. There was some excellent detail in her contribution, as we have heard, about where we are in 2025, very sadly the worst year for 15 years, I believe, with 132 deaths this year to date. That is simply too high. I want to touch on a number of points in this motion. As a regional member, I want to start with the impact on regional communities, from the families involved in every single road tragedy, from the people who largely volunteer to run the ambulance and first responder services in many regional towns and communities, to the disproportionate impact of road safety in our regions. For members' benefit, I served in my community on the Road Safety Council 15 years ago as the local government rep on that body. I think that it did some wonderful work. In my farewell speech after serving on the council for four or five years, I asked the entirely metropolitan-based members of the council to think when they went home that evening and had a look in their street whether they would know how many people and homes had lost a family member to a road fatality. Most of them said probably none. There was the odd person who did. In my circumstance of my eight to 10 neighbours on my farm, five of them had lost someone to a road fatality. That is about half of my neighbours impacted by a fatal crash. Give that a try at home tonight when members get home to their street. Imagine every second house is a road fatality and the impact on that street and that suburb. That is what has happened, sadly, in regional Western Australia.
For some reason that I do not quite fathom, the Wheatbelt, where I live, is appallingly bad. It has been and continues to be. The number of deaths we have for the Wheatbelt for the five years to 2024 is 161. Most members have been to the Wheatbelt and know how sparsely populated and infrequent those towns are. There were 161 deaths in not quite half the metropolitan area over the same period. We know that millions of people—1.8 million or whatever it is today—live in the metropolitan area. There are almost half as many deaths in the Wheatbelt on those roads. That is an extraordinarily bad safety outcome. There are a number of reasons for that. Government investment is clearly one of them. I get told, and the data backs it up, that speed is important. It clearly is. I also drive on the Kwinana Freeway at 100 kilometres an hour in all sorts of conditions—day, night, wet, dry et cetera. The safety outcomes on the Kwinana Freeway and the Mitchell Freeway are extraordinary given the level of traffic on that road. They are extraordinary. There are a couple of reasons for that, clearly. It is very well lit, it is very well paved and it is wider than it needs to be, so it is an extremely safe road. Lots of roads in the Wheatbelt are narrow, certainly not lit at night and not maintained to the level that the Kwinana Freeway is. I think that plays a role in those safety outcomes. Regional people do not have the same road network and, therefore, they are not as safe on the roads.
I want to touch on a couple of other things. There are a number of metrics used in the 2024 Western Australian Road Fatalities and Serious Injuries compiled by the Road Safety Commission. There is all sorts of data in it about the statistics that confront us. I could go through it in some detail. I think I will refrain from that. I touched on the Wheatbelt. There are things we know, like speed and people—alarmingly—still not wearing seatbelts, who account for 16% of the fatalities. Of fatalities, 65% were motor vehicle occupants and 16% of them were not wearing a seatbelt, which, in 2024, is just extraordinary. There is one I think quite glaring omission in this document, and it is referred to on page 23. There is a footer at the bottom of page. The page refers to the reasons for the fatalities and serious injuries of speed, fatigue and inattention. I think there is a box or two clearly missing from this document and that is alcohol and drugs. Surely, the Road Safety Commission would actually collate the data, the information about the impact of that key metric on our safety outcomes, but it does not. I double-checked this with someone this morning. I read the document three or four times because it must be there, but it is not. It says why at the bottom of the page:
Alcohol involvement is not available due to changes in data sharing arrangements.
I will just read that again:
Alcohol involvement is not available due to changes in data sharing arrangements.
This is not recent, apparently. This has been going on for some time. I would urge the government to see whether there is some spare funding around to work on those data-sharing arrangements. There is an old saying: If you cannot measure it, how do you deal with it? Apparently, we cannot measure the involvement and the impact of drugs and alcohol on our road safety outcomes. Apparently, we cannot even find out in this document how many drug and alcohol tests were done, let alone their impact on safety outcomes.
There is another part of this. We hear about the fatality number, as horrible as it often is. It is 132 this year to date. That is a number that I think Western Australians would be alarmed at were they more often aware of it. In the road safety statistics, we see the killed and seriously injured. The number of people killed is, quite frankly, appalling. The number of Western Australians seriously injured—this is not a scratch; this is lives ruined and wrecked—in the two years to 2024, was 3,000. That is 3,000 people scraped off the road who had their lives put back. We know about the trauma and the lifelong impact of people and loved ones who are lost in road accidents. Again, the impact on the seriously injured is often lifelong and on thousands and thousands of Western Australian families. When it comes to investment and a government and public response to this, I have to say we are almost immune to the horrors on our roads, are we not? If this many people were being killed and seriously injured in almost any other sphere of our lives, there would be outcries and changes in laws and legislation. I do not want to draw the comparison too closely because gun violence is a different thing—it is a very different thing—but in those same two years when 330 people were killed and 3,000 people were seriously injured, 20 people lost their lives tragically to gun violence in this state. However, the previous Minister for Police declared that removing firearms from our streets will keep us safe. I think more attention needs to be paid to this topic that was raised in this excellent motion today by Hon Julie Freeman.
I want to thank again not just the volunteers, but everyone involved in our first responders—our ambos, our SES and the police. Again, particularly in regional Western Australia, we can almost all remember that moment when either our family has had that phone call or someone we know has had that phone call and you have heard about it. You know where you were when such and such happened because, as I described earlier, it happens all too frequently. Can members imagine this? I know this has happened in dozens of communities where the first responder, the St John Ambulance volunteer, knows the person they are either trying to get out of the car or pick up off the road. Quite frankly, I have no idea how they go on with their lives after an event like that. They keep volunteering and again, how they do that is almost beyond me, but they do. So thank you very much to every single one of them, paid and unpaid, who do that wonderful work for us and will continue to do so.
In closing, I want to touch quickly on one issue related to road safety in Western Australia. In recent years, I have had something to do with Lara Jensen. I am sure most members will have either heard of Lara Jensen or met her. Her brother died in a rail crossing accident 25 years ago this year, very tragically, in Jennacubbine. I spoke to Hon Darren West earlier today—I think he is honourable, being a three-term member?—because it happened at the back of his property just by the Jennacubbine turn-off. I heard him speak in this place a couple of times about that particular night when he heard the train go past. Quite tragically, just after that, the car being driven by Lara's brother and the two young women with him was hit and they were all killed. All three were killed and there was a coronial inquiry after that event by Coroner Alistair Hope. I would like to read some remarks made by him at the time:
… the Yarramony Road Railway Crossing was not "reasonably conspicuous" – in other words, not readily noticeable – and that the train itself was "not adequately lit".
Coroner Alistair Hope went on to say in his report:
… trains "were the most dangerous and poorly lit of all large vehicles which motorists may encounter at night" and recommended all locomotives be fitted with flashing lights to help motorists easily distinguish them from other vehicles.
That report was made nearly 25 years ago. As of today, we still do not have mandated lighting—I believe adequate lighting—on our rail network. This is a complicated issue, otherwise it would have been solved before now. It is a state and federal responsibility—primarily federal, but the state can play a role. I just do not think our state and federal politicians on both sides have given this the attention that it deserves. I know Lara and her family, and the other families impacted on that night 25 years ago, are still working very hard to get a result that they believe could have saved those lives 25 years ago. I wish them all the best in that fight. We will certainly be doing everything we can to help. I would again like to congratulate the mover of the motion.
Hon Dr Brian Walker (1:54 pm): Thank you to Hon Julie Freeman for bringing this motion and also thank you to the parliamentary secretary for giving that response, because I think there is a great deal of truth on all sides. I really want to bring a different measure of context to this because I do not know that many people in this chamber have actually attended a fatality at the roadside in the context of trying to save a life. I have in a number of ways. The last person to die in my arms was in a road traffic accident—a multiple fatality road traffic accident. I had the unenviable duty of telling the police officer to cancel the rescue helicopter because it was a waste of time, effort and fuel; there was not a saveable life there. As his life expired gently in front of me, I realised that there was nothing anyone could do. You are helpless standing or sitting there, cradling this life gently, becoming cold and still.
Road traffic fatalities are nasty. I have had good outcomes in patients I have seen in the Wheatbelt who have survived after 12 hours lying unconscious after a major accident. They have come into my hospital to be saved and to recover with a great deal of success, despite the fractured neck, despite the rip to a major artery, despite major risk of death in my emergency department, leaving me very nervously looking at what I am doing and how I am managing that nursing team with the ambulance officers, wondering how best to manage what could very easily have been a fatality. This is just my personal experience. So when I see these results and speak to the survivors and speak to those who are bereaved, I have a very different point of view than simply looking at the statistics. But let us look at the statistics just now, because very properly, the parliamentary secretary mentioned the amount of dollars that are being spent on enhancing the roads, enhancing safety. I have to ask: Has the increase in funding resulted in lives being saved? The answer is no, it has not. We therefore cannot equate funding with doing the right thing. We are failing in finding the right direction, are we not? We need to look at three main areas: first is the individuals involved, second is the infrastructure and third, of course, is the policy being set by us here in Parliament.
If we take paragraph (a), we can all allow ourselves to be alarmed. The numbers of people dying on our roads are unacceptable. Even one person dying on our roads is unacceptable. There has to be a cause; why has this happened? If we identify the fundamental underlying cause we can reduce the incidence, can we not? It is actually multi-factorial, it is not one single thing that results in someone dying on the roads. There are multiple things that can go wrong. We can look at the responses—our first responders—and again I will reiterate the thanks from this chamber to the first responders at the scene, those in the hospitals and those who are managing the aftercare of those 3,000 survivors.
All of us, at every level, must have a response. All of us—individually, as a Parliament and as a community. Not one of us can stand back and say, "It's nothing to do with me." I find this very challenging because this is part of my life. It is part of my clinical life. To speak about it at a distance, talking about the statistics and what we can do about it is quite confronting for me because I see people's faces in front of me. I see the blood. I see the damage caused; I feel it in my bones. All of us have a responsibility. What can we do in that case? There are many things that can be done. I mentioned earlier that the amount of dollars does not actually have an impact on the number of deaths. It was asked earlier about the statistics for the involvement of alcohol and other drugs in road traffic fatalities. I can tell members the answer because I asked a question on notice in this Parliament. It is 70% of all the road traffic fatalities in two consecutive years—70% had alcohol involved to some degree. If I take that one step further, since 2021, in Australia there have been more than 9,000 deaths due to alcohol alone. That is 9,000 deaths over five years. It was said earlier, if we look at the road traffic fatalities, there must be an action. No-one is going to take this. It is outrageous—intolerable, but 9,000 deaths we can somehow tolerate.
Did members know that the safe level for driving with alcohol is actually zero? The current level of .05 is an approximation. At that level, roundabout, the risk of an accident is increased 300% over the sober state. That is a 300% increase due to taking alcohol at what is considered a safe level, and we allow this. In other parts of the world, more sensible parts of the world, the safe level for alcohol is zero: if you drive, do not drink. This is the advice that we give to people right now in our state: if you drive, do not drink; if you drink, do not drive. That is the only safe response. In that time, by the way, the number of fatalities—this is not saying what is the cause of the fatality; it could be pedestrian being hit by a car—over two successive years due to cannabis alone was two out of 129, yet we find that confronting! Let it be said very clearly that no-one should drive impaired for whatever reason. Sleep impairment gives one a risk of an accident on the road of 800% more than when you drive well slept. How many of us have driven sleep impaired coming back from late evenings here when we started work at six in the morning? How many of us have been fully unimpaired on the roads going back home?
What could we do, though? If we are misdirecting the funds available because we are doing the best we can, is it enough? Is that the right direction? Clearly, it is not. So, what else could we do? One of the simple things we can do is recognise what is causing impairment, and look at all the different signs on the road that take our attention away from what we are doing on the road because we look at the signs. The multiplicity of signs has been shown time and again to be associated with a lack of an ability to appreciate risks on the road, yet we consider that signs on roads are necessary. The more signs, the better! Tell people what to do, where to go and how to behave—yet still no action is taken there.
Another one is looking at the lack of police on the road. It is all very well saying that we will punish people for doing the wrong thing, but would it not be far better to have more police on the roads? Like other members, I have driven on many regional, rural and of course metropolitan roads. I have driven down the Kwinana Freeway, and members have mentioned how safe that road is. Have members seen how drivers are driving, though? Have members ever sat behind someone who is blocking the overtaking lane, refusing to move, while driving at the same speed as someone in the lefthand lane with a stack of traffic behind and drivers becoming more and more angry and frustrated? Do members think we will have more accidents because of frustrated drivers trying to deal with one idiot blocking the road? Is that the case even if the driver says, "I'm travelling the speed limit. You should not go any faster than me"? If members were in a police car, I can believe that to be so, but, in most cases, no.
How about signalling left when you are going to move left instead of moving in suddenly, and then deciding to signal after you have moved in? How about if you are tailgating someone because you want them to move faster? Do you move up behind someone and flash your lights or honk your horn or just sit there looking threatening? Is that safe behaviour on roads? Why do we not have more police on the roads observing this to pull people over and say, "Right, fella; you're nicked for your unsafe behaviour on the roads!" We do not have the police there. Why? Do we have enough police? Are they off doing things they should not necessarily be doing like chasing, for example, purveyors of cannabis, which has killed no-one in 100 years, rather than being on the roads and looking after us in going about our normal day-to-day business?
How is it that we simply do not have enough police doing what they are trained to do, like detecting all kinds of impairment, not just the presence of alcohol. I suggest that no-one should have any measurable alcohol in their systems at all ever when driving. Therefore, what do police do when they see someone who has behaved a little bit oddly? Does a police officer pull them over, check them for their ability to actually respond and their lane-keeping abilities? Is there anything else in their behaviour that suggests that they may not be functioning quite so well? I do not know about other members, but I have certainly called the police—at least I have asked my wife to call the police—because I saw someone behaving most erratically on the road; namely, unable to keep in the lane, driving at different speeds and behaving very dangerously.
Has anyone ever tried to call the police to advise them of someone behaving in a dangerous manner on the road without dialling 000? There is no answer for the other number. By the time one gets through, the problem has gone. There are no police around to take someone off the road who is clearly a danger to other road users.
We have a systemic problem here in that we are not devoting enough time to the underlying causes of accidents, and we are directing our funds in a way that is not bringing the promise we expect from it. We are wasting our money if we are not going to get results from it. While I appreciate what both sides of politics have done in the past, and what the current government is doing—I appreciate that—but it is not bringing the rewards that we expect. Therefore, doing more of the same is actually a sign of madness. We have to do something different.
That refers to paragraph (c) of the motion looking at every level, the whole society, with local government, road signage and state government. That is what we should be doing here. The responsibility is there with our federal government as well, but what about an individual's responsibilities? How about letting our youngsters learn how to drive safely? After they get their licence, the next step is to advanced driver instruction. How do you manage this car when the weather is not so good, the roads are slippery, leaves are on the road and visibility is poor, and the rain is very heavy when it eventually comes? Why do we not have as a standard that all drivers learn how to take driving to the next level, not simply, "I can pass a test and then they let me go and see how I manage"? Those who survive will be safer drivers; I have no doubt—"those who survive"!
We have spoken about road infrastructure. Anyone who has been on a regional and remote road will know just how poorly those roads are maintained. They are not as wide as one would like. There is no signage on the side of the road. I love the concept here of the rumble strip on the side of the road that the parliamentary secretary mentioned. This will wake up many a driver after their third hour on the road. I do not know how many lives it has saved, but it has certainly saved lives—and mine being one of them. Fantastic! We need more of that. We need every road to be as safe as possible.
I turn to traffic enforcement. Having these nice cameras that detect a problem so we can send drivers a letter stating, "Right, now you've got fine of $200" or "You have to appear in court" is nice and good after the event. People can behave in a dangerous manner, and then two weeks later a letter comes with a fine, the money from which goes into that fund to hopefully protect other people. But what about at that time? Why is no-one on the road stopping such people and pulling them over to say, "Right, this is wrong. Stop it! You must behave on the roads like a responsible driver."
I have not even begun to speak about a 17-year-old driver out with his mates at night hoping that they will not be caught. He is the one who has had not quite as much alcohol as his friends as he drives them home. They do that. How do we stop that? It is through education of course. Make it absolutely normal that alcohol is not drunk at all if you are going to go anywhere near the car.
I loved that police told us at the estimates hearings—was it police or roads?—about this No-one Plans a Crash campaign, with a picture. Excellent. We must have more of this. We must have more understanding in the community about the need to take individual responsibility and not rely on other people's behaviour or, indeed, hoping that the police are there. The camera is not working.
We have a lot to do. But we ought to focus more on the pressing problem, which is that we are allowing 9,000 citizens to die in Australia in five years and doing nothing about it. Also, 70% of our fatalities are being caused, to some degree, by being affected by alcohol when driving, and we sit back and say, "Well, we're not going to do anything about alcohol because it is part of our life." This is just abhorrent. This is ill. This is sick. It is our problem. We let people drive while impaired, do not detect it, and then find other things we can do to fix the problem. It is a misdirection of our efforts and our funds. It should be addressed, and we should address that problem.
Therefore, I thank Hon Julie Freeman for bringing the motion to the house. I thank the government for what it is doing in spending and doing all it can. But I would ask, I would beg, that the direction be reassessed and reviewed by both sides of the house, whoever happens to be in power at the time. We need to find a better approach. I do not want to have to attend another cadaver in a car. I do not want to see a friend of mine, as I have once done, and identify him by his jaw because nothing else was identifiable. I do not want to come across a man who is as flat as an empty rubber doll because he has been crushed to death in a road traffic accident. It is just not nice. I cannot think of a single person who is involved in first responses who would like to see more of that. I ask members, on behalf of all first responders, please let us do better.
Hon Rob Horstman (2:09 pm): I am very grateful to be able to stand here today to talk to the excellent motion Hon Julie Freeman has put forward. One death on our roads sends shock waves through the community. In 2025, there have been 132 shock waves sent through Western Australian communities. Our first responders are first to see the harrowing images at those scenes and they face the terrible truth of what they might encounter on a road accident call-out. Those scenes stay with our first responders for a long time and with their families possibly even longer because they see people struggle with the trauma associated with being one of our emergency service frontline responders. It may be that people in this house are ambulance and firefighting volunteers, and this topic may bring up issues for them, but they are not alone. People dealing with this issue are not alone because the first responders in our great state are with you.
The thing is that many times distressing scenes are avoidable. No-one plans to have a crash when they get into their car. No-one hops into their motor vehicle to drive home from a footy game or work expecting to end up in a crash. Unfortunately, that is what happens. In an emergency every second counts. More specifically, I am talking about the golden hour. The golden hour is the first 60 minutes after a crash in which critical injuries have occurred. If traumatic injury is seen to, attended to, it significantly increases the chance of survival of the people or persons in the crash. In the context of an emergency services response, the concept highlights the importance of rapid assessment and people being tended to at the site of a motor vehicle accident.
We must do better. We must do better for our first responders. We must do better for our communities. We must do better for Western Australians who are left waiting. Firstly, we need to do better for our first responders. They are the people who keep us safe. Main Roads WA five-year crash data reports that there were 126,996 vehicle accidents from 2019 to 2023. Of those, 36,638 resulted in a person requiring medical attention or hospitalisation or in a death. Our first responders were at the scene to near on 40,000 motor vehicle incidents during that timeframe. First responders did not see distressing images at all of those incidents, but that definitely does not devalue the experience of first responders when that did happen.
When our first responders are cared for, they are in a better position to care for us. The reality is that we must do better for our first responders, and there is one way that this could occur. We must extend presumptive PTSD support to our volunteers. Emergency service personnel, whether they are paid or volunteer, are three times more likely to suffer from PTSD compared with the general population—three times more likely. Currently, presumptive post-traumatic stress disorder protections are not afforded to our emergency services volunteers. The government has taken the step to provide presumptive PTSD coverage to paid firefighters, police and ambulance officers. This simple government measure will ensure that it is presumed career firefighters, career police officers and career ambulance officers with a PTSD diagnosis received the injury as a result of their service. My question is this: Why do our emergency services volunteers not also deserve presumptive PTSD measures? Former member of this house Hon Martin Aldridge stood many times in this place to advocate having a presumptive PTSD diagnosis extended to the 30,000 emergency services volunteers in this state. I will continue that work of Hon Martin Aldridge with the sincere hope that at some point a presumptive PTSD diagnosis will be extended to those volunteers.
These protections are important. They will take away altogether, in fact, the need for emergency services volunteers to have to go through the incredibly bureaucratic red tape legal battles and struggles they go through at the moment. It is a process that is often traumatising or re-traumatising for those people. Every time they have to retell their story, they relive that trauma. They put themselves through it again and their family also goes on that journey with them. We need to look after the people who run towards danger to protect us. It should not be too much to ask for; it really should not.
In Coral Bay and many other regional towns, it is very hard to get volunteers. They are really struggling in Coral Bay. They have limited resources and rely heavily on the nursing post, which at peak times has only three nurses, and during normal, I suppose, business, they have only two. When a motor vehicle accident occurs, there are only two ambulances in Coral Bay that are able to attend. One is currently out of action, which is putting even more pressure on the volunteer services and the nurses. Exmouth is the closest locality to get support for people, but they can be left waiting for one and a half hours or more for that support. The best short-term outcome, and I believe it has been touched on by all members who have spoken to this excellent motion from Hon Julie Freeman, would be to reduce the pressure on our regional roads. More specifically, in the case of Coral Bay, it would be the Minilya–Exmouth Road. In just 12 months, five serious accidents have occurred on that road, with two leading to fatalities. The community has continually called for improvements to the surface of the road and the shoulders, and to this point only two kilometres of the 24-kilometre stretch of road in question has been actioned. There is still no dedicated regional road maintenance fund, which could alleviate this issue.
Last footy season, I was standing with a parent watching footy training in Northampton—home of the mighty Northampton Rams—and the parent's phone went off. Soon after that, the gentleman in question left. He took the call and left. Then a footy coach's phone went off. They had to leave footy training at very short notice. I knew they were volunteer ambos; I was aware of that. It is a small community and we know who our vollies are. I suspected that they had been called out to a job. Obviously, they are not allowed to convey that messaging or let anybody know that is the case. I was concerned and worried that there might have been an accident. As it turned out, there had been. I remember reflecting on that day. At the time, there was one lad missing from training who was always at training. He was always at training; he never missed training. For a horrible moment, I found my mind wandering and thinking, "Is it that lad who's in this accident?" And I am forever grateful for the fact that it was not that lad who was in the accident. Although, when I reflected on that, I remember thinking there was every chance those two volunteer ambos were going to an incident, to a crash, and they might well know the person they will have to attend to and care for and that they would have to then wait for other emergency services to come and help save that person's life. I will always remember that in terms of what volunteers do. Again, I echo the sentiments of every speaker who has stood today and contributed to this motion in thanking our emergency services volunteers for all they do. Paid volunteers, career firefighters—I could go on and on and list everybody who does that. It is incredible what they do.
Linked to the golden hour and the response times we need are the rescue helicopters that are often a lifeline for our regional and remote communities. The 2022 inquiry into aeromedical services reported that 70% of emergency helicopter responses were to primary emergency response road crashes and high trauma incidents. When a helicopter gets called out, it is almost certain it is going to be or potentially be a bad outcome. RAC rescue pilot Ron van Heerden estimated that he had attended more than 100 road crashes during his career. He went on to say that attending so many of these crashes has an incredibly traumatic impact on his crew, and I will quote from Ron van Heerden, the RAC rescue pilot:
A lot of the time, we have very good outcomes. Those keep us going, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, we don’t have good outcomes, and that stays with us—it’s always there.
We need more people like Ron, and we also need more rescue helicopters. The government has recently launched its new fleet of Leonardo AW139 rescue helicopters to overhaul the ageing Bell helicopter fleet that is based at Jandakot and Bunbury. There is no question that these new aircraft are very impressive. They can go 300 kilometres further and they can travel up to 309 kilometres an hour. There was a glaring omission from this $26.7 million investment, and that is that the Mid West and north are still left dangerously exposed. As far as I am aware, there is still no plan to expand that rescue helicopter network permanently outside of the South West and Perth. This failure comes despite repeated warnings from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, the State Coroner and the Chief Health Officer that the most logical place to have one based is in Geraldton in the Mid West.
The 2022 aeromedical inquiry was clear about this. One of the quotes was about the fact that a state as vast as WA needs at least nine helicopters. This is a quote to back up the rationale behind principal recommendation 5, which is to improve regional rotary wing aeromedical capability:
The findings of the Inquiry strongly support a networked expansion of capability. Interstate benchmarking of rotary wing capability (per population) suggests a need for WA to at least double its rotary wing fleet and when geographical challenges are factored, the WA Rotary Wing fleet should be in the order of 2.5x the current. Additional technical backup fleet may increase the fleet size further to a future total of 7-9 aircraft.
Geraldton has one of the busiest Royal Flying Doctor Services in the state. In an emergency, every second does count. That golden hour does count. Every Western Australian, regardless of where they live, deserves equitable access to life-saving services. Emergency responses should not be a postcode lottery for Western Australians. Regional people are over-represented in our road toll and under-represented by emergency service access. In an accident, response times by first responders is the difference between life and death. Although the Mid West and the north are left exposed, Western Australians in serious road accidents all over the state are left waiting. Volunteers deserve presumptive PTSD measures. With our first responders, mental health is vital to the role, as is support for their mental health. This is not optional. This is something that all our first responders need, whether they are career or volunteer.
I will end my comments now and thank Hon Julie Freeman very much for putting forward this motion. I commend it to the house.
Hon Tjorn Sibma (2:23 pm): I note that Hon Kate Doust wishes to speak, and I think she has a unique perspective on these issues, so I will keep my remarks as tailored as I possibly can. First of all, I want to acknowledge the very fine work of Hon Julie Freeman in bringing this motion to the house's attention. I acknowledge that notice of this motion was provided on 14 August this year. I make that observation because I think it speaks to the member's genuine commitment to, and focus on, the matter. I say that because an alarming media statement was issued by the RAC some weeks after the honourable member gave the house notice of this motion. It was dated 2 September, so it is not very old; it is rather recent. The title of the release puts the situation in very stark and accurate terms: "WA's road trauma crisis deepens". I will quote from it:
So far this year, the state has recorded 128 road deaths, compared to 122 at the same time last year. The figures come 12 months after the Premier held an emergency roundtable to discuss options to address the growing road trauma crisis.
RAC General Manager External Relations Will Golsby—
A person I know quite well—
said that while some important initiatives had progressed, broader change was needed.
He went on to observe:
"Funding for the Regional Road Safety Programs, the introduction of P-plate passenger restrictions, and a review of the graduated licensing system are all good recent steps which RAC welcomed – but we need to see more action to address road trauma …
"WA once had one of the best road safety records in the country, however since 2006, and under successive governments, we have consistently had one of the worst."
"For over a decade the warning signs have been flashing, with two Auditor General reports calling for improvements to road safety governance in WA.
Mr Golsby goes on, but I have chosen to end my quotation of that document there for this reason: the tone of my address is not to castigate the government. I think the government, as Mr Golsby has mentioned, has made some novel, encouraging and positive steps in recent years and I think Mr Golsby is absolutely correct; under successive governments, we have dropped the ball on road safety. We have; the evidence is incontrovertible. I also acknowledge the constructive tone of Hon Julie Freeman's motion. It is to encourage the government to prioritise funding and to look at new safety measures and the like. I quoted Mr Golsby's comment for one particular reason, and that is that he identified the issue of governance. Governance is important, and I think it is sometimes an essential element that is overlooked when we talk about road safety, generally speaking.
As Hon Dr Brian Walker acknowledged in his contribution, the issue that we are dealing with is bedevilled by all these multiple factors acting simultaneously. We are talking about co-opting and encouraging better road behaviour among road users. How do we do that, though, when there have been either perceptions or actual observations of genuine governance failure or a lack of confidence in the institutions that convey road safety messages and the like? There has been, since 2006 at least, a decline in the community's regard for the institutions that are designed or have a mission statement to improve road safety, and there are three that I will identify.
The first is, I think unfortunately, the failure of road safety plans themselves to be implemented in a comprehensive way. We are at the halfway mark of the present road safety strategy, which aims to reduce road trauma on Western Australia's roads by between 50% and 70% by 2030. We are so far off that target that there is probably cause now to really rethink the wisdom of that strategy.
The second issue that Hon Dr Brian Walker mentioned and other members also acknowledged in their contributions is an overwhelming reliance upon technology to do the heavy lifting in road safety. I do not for one moment think that we can have a technology-free solution, but we have become lazy and dependent and reliant on a multiplicity of camera and camera technologies to deliver us road safety outcomes. They are important and necessary, but they are not sufficient. Unfortunately, the rollout of these cameras breeds perverse counterproductive behaviours. They breed cynicism amongst road users, who consider them as mere revenue raisers, and to some degree they are accurate—they are not entirely accurate, but they are not entirely wrong, either.
This leads to the treatment of the revenue. If there has been a profound failure of governance, it is in the governance of the Road Trauma Trust Account. Two observations have been made by the Office of the Auditor General about the governance of the various road safety programs and measures that are funded out of that account. If it is the mission of this Parliament, as it should be, to turn around this dispiriting trend in the road toll, road trauma and accidents more generally, perhaps it behoves us to think about undergirding and improving the institutional architecture that is designed to encourage and then enforce appropriate road user behaviours. We cannot, unfortunately, compel people to do the right thing if they perceive government or agencies as not doing the right thing at the same time. We are all in this together.
The other dimension here, which gets to perceptions of credibility, is the unfortunate absence of police on the roads. Everybody notes it; members of this chamber who have driven on Western Australian roads over the last 20 or 30 years would have observed the notable absence of police traffic branch officers doing their job. I remember driving from Perth to Margaret River as a 19-year-old, seeing at least four or five police vehicles on a one-way journey. I can now travel down south with my family and not see a single marked police vehicle in the course of a week-long trip down south. My observations are my observations, but I do not think they are solitary. We absolutely have a problem with the absence of a police presence on the roads and that needs to be addressed. Perhaps that could be addressed, frankly, with better and more transparent utilisation of the moneys that are being diverted into the Road Trauma Trust Account. We know that that account will grow inexorably with the rollout of additional camera technology, which is picking up, frankly extraordinary behaviour. I will address the behavioural dimension now, while I can.
I think we are at a real crossroads in our community on a range of fronts and it is reflected in driver behaviour. I believe that driver behaviour has deteriorated, not only in a quantitative metric, as these lamentably sad statistics will tell us, but even in people's general observations and the qualitative and subjective analyses that people make every day. Something strange has happened. People are looking more atomised and fragmented and believe that their vehicle and their vehicle's passage on the road is entirely their own domain. There is no concept of the roads as a shared or community space, which gets to the heart of the issue. That degree of separation and atomisation, unfortunately, has accelerated through the perversity and proliferation of digital distractions. It has gotten worse.
On my way here today in the middle of the day, I travelled down Canning Highway for about five kilometres and in the lane next to me I saw a young lady—probably 19 or 20 years of age—on her phone for the entirety of that trip. Hon Dr Brian Walker observed that it places us in an invidious position, because that person is not only a danger to themselves; they are also a danger to absolutely everybody around them. The blithe sense of ignorance and entitlement of that woman presented a real threat to everybody. There were no police. I am not saying that the police should be there all the time, but no policeman was there. Who was I to call? Was I to pull over to the side of the road, call 131 444, wait to be patched through to a police station and report the incident? That person was now five, six or seven kilometres down the road. It is actually pointless to do it. We have a behavioural issue. We have a behavioural problem.
The other issue that I cannot believe we are seeing is the lapse and retrograde performance in the use of seatbelts. Sometimes we take certain things for granted. Getting people to use seatbelts was a generational task. It was normative. We taught our children to put on their seatbelts. Now it has become a little bit laissez faire—an encroachment on one's personal liberty. I am of the conservative strain, which is about as anti-libertarian as you can get, because I think these people are, frankly, utterly irredeemable in their comport with other human beings. That has become a problem. We are seeing the emergent threat of digital technology and phone distraction, retrograde in previously improved behaviours, which is going backwards. Frankly, I am slightly doubtful about the success of advertising campaigns that are multi-channelled and not targeted on a specific segment of the driving population. This is perhaps where I might differ.
If I am to make a constructive contribution to this debate, it would be this: I think we need to tackle younger drivers first. If we want to see an uplift in improvement, we need to grip hold of the new generation of drivers—which is not to say that we forget about the rest, but I think their behaviours and attitudes need immediate correction. My view is that it is far too easy to get a probationary licence. It should be a longer and more difficult undertaking. I know that is confronting, but we have to be able to make some trade-offs. I agree with Hon Dr Brian Walker; our approach to a vehicle driver's licence is that you get it once and that is it. There is no continuing professional development or incentive to improve one's driving skills. That concept is worth reflecting upon. Unfortunately, the problem is so bedevilling, it is a topic that stands in stark contrast to the technology that should be improving the outcome.
I will return to the last point. Investment in technology is important. Investment in roadside treatments is obviously important. A lot of work should be done on the improvement of regional roads, in particular. I note that the government is doing that in concert with the local government sector, but probably not fast enough. There is a lack of clarity of where, when and what the priorities are, but that work is ongoing. Focusing specifically on the technology without focusing on the behaviour will deliver exactly the same result. If the government wants to shift the behaviour, I encourage it to look very, very seriously at rehabilitating the institutional reputation of the Road Safety Commission and make the use of the Road Trauma Trust Account far more transparent, scientific and evaluative. I would like to see a far greater presence of Western Australian police on Western Australian roads. I think that absolutely goes without saying. If we want to improve behaviour on the road, there is nothing like the visible presence of a police officer.
I hope this has been somewhat of a helpful and constructive contribution. It behoves this chamber to return to this topic on occasion more frequently than we ever have in the last two Parliaments. I acknowledge the sterling efforts of Hon Julie Freeman and recommend the motion to the house.
Hon Kate Doust (2:39 pm): I also thank Hon Julie Freeman for raising this matter today. This is a significant issue. There have been 132 road deaths this year, and that is 132 deaths that should never have happened. It is not just the deaths but the significant number of people who have been injured as a result of those accidents. We are all of the same view: that it is beholden on governments, no matter what their colour, to do everything they can to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries on our roads throughout our state. I will not talk about the numbers that my colleague Hon Samantha Rowe has been through, but I will talk about some other issues.
I know that Hon Julie Freeman lives in the country and she has probably lived in the country all of her life. She has probably driven on country roads more than I have. I will say that I grew up in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, so I used to spend a lot of time on the roads, travelling between those towns and to the city. Obviously, in the 1960s those roads were a lot quieter than they are now. For 17 years in my working life as a trade union official, before I came here, I used to spend a lot of time on the road—not just in the metro area, but doing my country runs all the way through every town up to Kalgoorlie, to Kambalda and down to Esperance. I would spend a week, or sometimes almost two weeks, just on the roads. I would go to Geraldton, Albany and a range of places. I would obviously not have driven as far as Karratha, as I would have flown, but I would certainly drive around those areas. As I got older I would see a number of fatalities while driving on those roads. I would see trucks turned over just outside Coolgardie, on the road to Meekatharra.
I recall two incidents. I was on P-plates when I started doing my country runs, and on my first run I almost totalled myself coming out of Yellowdine. That was a wake-up call for me to make sure it did not happen again. I recall coming back from Geraldton late one night after a run and there was half a bridge down. I must say that the lighting was not bad, and it was due to quick thinking that I did not end up going through that part of the broken bridge and instead deviated.
I fully appreciate some of the issues raised about the standard of lighting, signage and things like that. Having grown up in the bush, I know that road fatalities are not uncommon. We lost a family friend when I was a child who came off second best with a kangaroo just out of Southern Cross one night. We lost another very close family friend who was coming home from Kambalda, on Kambalda road as they used to call it, which had an outrageously high fatality rate. As that town opened up, people would go from Kalgoorlie to Kambalda on a daily basis to work at the various mine sites. Whilst I do not have Hon Julie Freeman's current experience, historically I have seen some of that myself. It is difficult, not just for families but their communities, to recover from a fatality or to see family or friends significantly injured.
I will come back and talk about the injury rate. I am not the only person in this chamber who has had to deal with that, and I am probably the least of individuals, but I will refer to the fact that, as members would be aware, in May this year I came off second best in a car accident, and I must say that it has taken me more than three months to recover. In fact, last week was the first week in which I was not in daily pain from my broken rib. I was very fortunate in the outcome of that accident not to have the fractured spine or broken jaw that it was initially thought I had. I must say that I am not a very good girl locked up in a neck brace for a couple of days; I do not manage that very well. I still cannot turn my neck fully and I still have some leg issues, but those things will ultimately resolve themselves, but other people are not so lucky. I think about the other family who was in the accident with us. Their ongoing health issues and trauma are different from what I experienced, but they are still there.
We think about the physical impacts on people, but we do not always think about the other types of impacts. In this case, the mother and child were unconscious after their involvement in the same car accident. That person was due to fly out on a FIFO job the next day and because they were not there, they lost their job. That had a financial impact on their family. They continued to have issues with concussion over an extended time. The little boy was so traumatised that they could not get him back into a car for several weeks.
There are lots of other different flow-on examples. I am sure that in every accident in which somebody has been injured, depending on the severity, people will present in different ways or have longer-term implications. I have been very tired as a result of my accident. I have found it difficult to do some of my normal activities. In fact, I have only just had my first Pilates class after three and a half months. Some members will know that exercise has always been very important to me. I used to box, I do Pilates a couple of times a week and I do weights and cardio training. For three and a half months I have been climbing the walls because I have not been able to do that. I must say that, three days after, my legs are still jelly and I hope that will improve over time! Having a car accident can have significant short and long-term implications for people. Some people recover faster and for others the trauma can be lifelong. I just wanted to use that experience.
I know I have acknowledged them before, but I am eternally grateful to the doctor who happened upon us almost immediately after our accident and to the fireman who sat with me for more than an hour while I waited to be cut out of the car. I just met him again last week. He has just retired. He is a lovely, lovely man. I think he had worked for 28 years as a professional fireman and he said to me that it was very rare for him to meet somebody after an accident and hear about how they were going and their recovery. I had the president and the secretary of the fireman's union with me, and they said to me that it was unusual. The secretary of the union said to me that in his 30-odd years of working in the business, he had only had about 30 examples of firemen being able to meet people after an accident to have some closure. It was really important to them to know that people were recovering and back on their feet. I was also lucky enough to meet with the two ambulance officers who looked after us all the way through until I got to a space at Rockingham General Hospital. We talked about their training, their skill set and the fact that they had dealt with accidents on every turn-off point along the road where we had the accident, which was Ennis Avenue in Rockingham. That is a pretty significant road. I just want to talk about that as an example of a very recent situation.
I agree that we have a significant issue. Hon Tjorn Sibma outlined people's behaviour. I am pretty sure we can all give examples. I recently tried to turn into the driveway of my house. It is on a reasonably quiet street. I had indicated and all of a sudden as I was turning into my driveway a person tried to cut me off. They had been behind me and they came in. I literally stopped the car and thought they had to be crazy. I do not know whether people have just got a bit batty on the roads, but people are not indicating, they are speeding, they are stopping, they are cutting across—I just do not know. Behaviour is a significant issue and there needs to be ways to adjust it. I just do not know what the solution is. My colleague Hon Samantha Rowe articulated a range of programs already in place that are predominantly targeted at younger people. When Michelle Roberts was Minister for Road Safety, she used to run a program leading up to country football finals games hoping to encourage people not to speed or do other things during that time.
I agree with the member; maybe we need to update and make some changes. Technology plays a significant role in how people manage themselves on the road. It is not just the signage on the roads or the fact that cars now are so high tech to drive that people have perhaps become a bit lax about paying attention to how they do things. A lot of cars now have cameras in them, so drivers do not have to turn their head to watch behind them and instead they rely upon their camera. People then have bingles or might hit somebody. It is not just the distraction of the phones. There has been a serious campaign to try to get people to stop looking at their phones or stop using the phone as that distraction. It is in that nanosecond of distraction when an incident can happen. That applies to fatigue as well. We recently had the tragic death of two little girls on a country road when their mum had that nanosecond of fatigue. That was a tragic outcome for her and her family. I think it is tech on the roads, but it is tech in the cars and tech that you have got on you—all these things are distractions. We could run any sort of program we want, but Hon Tjorn Sibma is right, it comes back to the individual about how to manage those distractions. If drivers have Apple Play in their car, text messages come across the screen and members cannot tell me that it does not divert their attention. It does not matter whether they are on a busy freeway like Kwinana Freeway or whether they are on a country road where haul trucks might be zipping past them, that moment of distraction can be the moment that they end up under the back of that haul truck or off the road.
There are a range of issues. Hon Tjorn Sibma also talked about the seatbelt issue. I agree with him. It is a problem and people have become complacent and maybe do not think that they need to buckle up all the time. I recall when I was growing up in Kalgoorlie that we did not have seatbelts in those days—that shows how old I am. My mum was going through an intersection on our way back home in South Kalgoorlie and my sister was in a bassinet in the back seat at a few months old. They did not even have car seats in those days. They put them into a cane bassinet and a bloke hit mum's car. My sister, who was only a few weeks, maybe a couple of months old at most, rolled out of that bassinet and under the back seat. Luckily, it was a minor injury, but it unfortunately sustained until she was a teenager. It was fortunate with everything else. It is just that instant when something can go wrong. I note that the statistics talks about the frequency of accidents and where they happen. It talked about how 18% happen at intersections. It talks about the age demographic, and sadly we note that the age demographic for the highest number of incidents are younger people. It does not break that down into gender.
I pick up on Hon Dr Brian Walker's comments about alcohol; that is a serious issue. But I also believe drug use is a serious issue on the roads now. It is often hard to detect. I am pretty sure that when incidents happen, the police usually take not just a breathalyser, but they also do a blood test.
Hon Klara Andric: They do random drug tests as well.
Hon Kate Doust: Yes, they do the random drug test, but I know that certainly in my incident, blood tests were taken and I know what was proven—I am not going to talk about those outcomes today.
A lot of factors have led to this continuing growth in accidents that should not be happening and could be prevented. I really do think the government could spend an enormous amount of money and could rectify the problems, but at the end of the day, it comes back to how people manage themselves as well. You should not get into a car after you have had booze. You should not get into a car after you have had drugs. You should not get into a car when you are hyped up or distracted, because things will go wrong. I have been amazed at how many accidents have been reported in the media this year—both metro and country. These are incidents in which deaths have occurred and perhaps in that nanosecond of distraction or speed or other issues, they could have been stopped. Some of them are quite freakish accidents. I think a lot of it comes back to those issues that most members have talked about today. Education is significant, be it for a young person or an older person coming into driving, because it is not always just young people. Perhaps it is dealing with complacency issues. The research element is important. The testing issues are significant. The tech, whilst a bonus, might have created some of its own sideline issues over time. Fatigue is an issue, certainly on country roads where there are long haul drives. When I used to do my Kalgoorlie run, more often than not it is one point of the drive. I would be driving straight home and it would be six or six and a half hours if I did the straight run without a stop. It was not sensible; hindsight is always a good thing.
If someone were looking at this from a systems thinking arrangement, they would be calling it a wicked problem, because so many different factors lead into this issue that could lead into so many different solutions. Money is not always going to be the solution. The human element also has to be factored in and we have to work out how to modify behaviour. Money and legislation is not always the answer to modify behaviour. I do not want this to be taken the wrong way: you cannot legislate against stupidity sometimes. I am not saying every driver is stupid, but stupid behaviour sometimes leads to an accident and a fatality. It is not always the case, but sometimes. Even in my own local community, we have seen some tragic incidents. We lost those young blokes on Orrong Road about a year ago when a number of them were coming back from a sporting event—I think two or three of them did not have seatbelts on—and went at high speed into a tree. It was a tragic loss of young life. It is a significant issue and it is something that, certainly, whilst it may not be what we want to see happen, the Labor government has money going into a range of projects that have already been articulated by my colleague. I will say that reference was made to Kwinana Freeway and how it seems to run smoothly. I use it all the time and I see accidents on it all the time. Some accidents will shut the whole place down; there are some quite significant accidents. It is a whole series of factors that lead to those issues.
Another thing that we do not always think about is something I experienced as a result of my own accident. This new thing has come up around scamming. It is not uncommon for victims of accidents, particularly those with an injury, or perhaps even families of victims who have passed away as a result of the accident, to be contacted by scammers about third-party claims. That is what happened to us. Can members imagine a few days out after an accident and whatever state you are in, you are getting this phone call from a quite aggressive scammer wanting you to sign up for them to manage your third-party claim? It is an interesting sidebar issue that we perhaps need to tackle. As a result of my incident, I discovered that we are the only state that currently does not have claims harvesting legislation. That might be an interesting opportunity down the track for the government to tackle to deal with that.
I just wanted to say a few words. This is a significant challenge for whoever is in government. Given the vastness of our state, it would be wonderful to be able to provide the solution in one hit, but it is obviously something that is progressively changed or updated. To pick up on the third tranche, I think this government has demonstrated that it is keen to work with local authorities to bring about these changes. It is keen to work with law enforcement, health services and frontline services. I cannot speak highly enough of the frontline service people. I said to the union that I fully support the firies in particular and the ambos receiving a much better renumeration package. I certainly am in agreeance with the honourable member's issue around post-traumatic stress disorder arrangements for firemen. I have had that experience with my father, who was significantly injured as a voluntary fireman when I was a child and has never really recovered from the extent of that injury. I am always grateful to the people of Coolgardie for having looked after us during that time. This is a significant issue. I agree, this is a matter that we should talk about openly and regularly and seek to improve it to reduce the rates. Well done for raising it.
The Acting President (Hon Dr Brian Walker): Before I give the call to Hon Klasey Hirst, I advise you that after five minutes, I will be giving the call of the right of reply to the mover.
Hon Klasey Hirst (2:59 pm): I just want to make a small contribution to this motion, especially given the time left. I acknowledge Hon Julie Freeman for bringing this motion to the house. Quite frankly, 132 deaths this year, the highest in 18 years, is shocking. As someone who has lived regionally in Kalgoorlie for seven years, I have spent a significant amount of time going up and down Great Eastern Highway. A week after we moved to Kalgoorlie, my Mum had a stroke, and so very quickly we were going up and down that road a lot. I then had my own medical issues in 2016, which meant more unplanned trips, and these were always on the road; as we simply could not afford to fly or even catch the train, we drove every time.
Then, in 2019, my husband and I renovated our house back in Perth very much on the smell of an oily rag. He worked an eight and six swing at the time. He would finish his last day of work, we would hop in the car at five o'clock, drive to Perth, work five days on the house, and then we drive back again—rinse and repeat. That stopped only when COVID kicked in, and we got stuck in the Goldfields for a bit. I know that road like the back of my hand. My husband and I like to think we had it down to a bit of a fine art. We would pull off at Boorabbin or Southern Cross, run around the car, do the same thing at Kellerberrin, and then drive into Perth. Of course, that was not always the case because each time we drive is different. Nevertheless, I am fairly well driven. I have done many other long drives. Of course, being in Kalgoorlie, we go to Esperance all the time, and my friend Hon Kate Doust mentioned the road to Kambalda; it still has that reputation.
Hon Kate Doust: Do they still have the road blessings?
Hon Klasey Hirst: I am aware from driving at dawn and dusk in particular that the road is often full of goats as well.
Hon Kate Doust: They had the road blessings every year. They used to have a road blessing every year because of the fatalities.
Hon Klasey Hirst: I cannot quite remember. That road is notorious. We did trips up to the northern Goldfields and Menzies, Leonora, Laverton and Leinster. We have driven across the Nullarbor many times. On one trip in particular, I recall seeing a red kangaroo that—I am not joking—was bigger than our car, and we were in a four-wheel drive at the time! I remember thinking: "If we hit that, we're dead."
The Acting President: Order, member. I would like to give the call now to Hon Julie Freeman to give her her right of reply.
Hon Julie Freeman: I am happy for the honourable member to continue.
The Acting President: Very good. Hon Klasey Hirst.
Hon Klasey Hirst: In 2021, we drove up to Lake Argyle from Kalgoorlie and back again through the Pilbara and Kimberley, and I have done countless trips in the Mid West and Pilbara. Therefore, it is safe to say that I am well travelled on our regional roads. I have really seen it all. I cannot say enough about the amount of overtaking and risks I have seen people take; it is incredible. Of course, there is speeding and road rage, whether it is because of a slow caravan, truck or another vehicle. The risks people take are incredible. Then there is fatigue, both during the day and at night. Perhaps I am lucky, but it was instilled in me from a very young age by my family that we swapped drivers every two hours. On all my family trips in the car, Mum and Dad swapped, even if they were not tired yet, which meant that everyone was refreshed. That has gone forward into my life with my husband, and it is the same with my brother and his wife. Then there is the number of people I have seen not wearing seatbelts—even in Perth. When I worked at Hungry Jacks in my first job, parents came through the drive-through with kids climbing around the back seat without a seatbelt on. I used to give them a toy and say, "Please go and put your seatbelt on for me." Unfortunately, driving out of Kalgoorlie, I have seen people drinking while driving. They drive out of town with a tinny in their hand. That is not drinking and then driving; it is drinking while driving. Huge road trains then come up to or bear down on them. I am not demonising the truck industry. My brother has worked in that industry for over 20 years and I fully understand the contribution it makes, but I have also seen some crazy behaviour. The amount of times I have seen trucks trying to overtake each other on Great Eastern Highway is terrifying. If you are trying to overtake a truck in poor weather, you are temporarily blinded by the spray. It can be simple things like headlights not being turned on. In fair weather, they are extremely helpful. In poor weather, they are vital. You cannot see a car coming when it is raining, particularly if the car is dark or grey in colour. A simple misjudgement on the road or the difference of a second can have devastating consequences.
I do not have a lot of time, but I want to talk about one consequence in particular. Unfortunately, there are many personal examples I could speak of, but one in particular sticks with me most. It did not happen on Great Eastern Highway going home back to Kal; it happened in Kalgoorlie. I take members to August 2021 on the Goldfields Highway intersection with Boorara Road and a crash that occurred when a 37-year-old woman, a geologist, a mum and my husband's colleague and friend, Dr Farzaneh Zandiyyeh, was turning out of the entry to the Super Pit. Her death not only rocked the geology and mining community, it shook the entire Kalgoorlie community. She left behind her twin boys, Faraz and Iliya, who were just aged 12 years at the time. They were cared for by their grandmother who did not speak English, did not drive and could not work. School and daily life became hard, but the community and the school rallied to support them. I acknowledge the support of my friend and previous member of this house Hon Kyle McGinn and his office; they played a vital role in supporting that family during that time. This story is not a statistic. It is about a real life that was lost and children, families and communities.
When a crash happens in WA, whether it is on Great Eastern Highway, the Goldfields Highway or a small country road, police, paramedics, State Emergency Service volunteers, firefighters and local hospital staff are often first on the scene. They face situations most of us never see, and they carry those experiences with them long after the rest of us move on. We know that this work takes a toll. Research shows much higher rates of mental health challenges and post-traumatic stress disorder among emergency workers than in the general community. Services like Road Trauma Support WA are important. The truth is that the memories do not just disappear. To our first responders and frontline health workers, thank you. Thank you for showing up time and again when people are at their most vulnerable. We do not take that for granted.
The motion calls for a whole-of-community approach. As the parliamentary secretary has outlined, that is what we are doing. This requires community and coordinated effort between government, local government, police, health, industry and communities all working together. The road safety round table brought together the people who build the roads, police the roads, treat trauma, insure risk, ride, drive and deliver freight. We have been doing lots. I am very short of time, so I might leave my remarks there.
Question put and passed.
