Mr  PALLAS (Tarneit)  — It  gives me   — It  gives me  great pleasure to rise to  support this bill.

The opposition’s  view  is  that  measures designed to address the safety of our roads, to  reduce our road toll and to reduce  the insidious  impact of  serious trauma and loss of life on our roads are commendable and should be applauded. We will  not be opposing the  bill,  and there are  many  aspects of the bill  that commend themselves to this house. It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of them.

The bill has a  number  of  features that demonstrate a continuing commitment to road safety that  is bipartisan, long ranging and in many ways has set the state of  Victoria  apart  from  many other jurisdictions. We  are  one  of  the  best performing jurisdictions in the world when it comes to the issue of road safety. We have come so far largely because we have built this sense of consensus around the need to address community attitudes, the state  of our roads and the quality of our  vehicles. It  is called  the safe system, where a  commitment to  better drivers, better roads and better infrastructure is key to the entire package.

This bill, which creates a new combined  offence of  drink and drug driving also seeks  to  expand  when an alcohol interlock condition can be applied and allows for  new technology to be  used. Furthermore it allows for immediate impoundment of a vehicle when a blood alcohol reading of .10 or more is detected. Finally it introduces measures for newly licensed motorcycle riders.

The alcohol interlock device has had  a profound  effect on safety on our roads. It has also been  a critical measure by which Victorians have come to appreciate that  their responsibilities  to  other  road users  go  beyond their  immediate command of the vehicle to their state of health and their capacity when they get behind  the wheel. Alcohol consumption is a critical  part of  that. One  of the things that is important in the increasing and genuine belief of Victorians that much more needs to be done in terms of road safety is this acknowledgement  that alcohol usage has a profound impact on road trauma and road deaths.

In fact the broad rule of thumb is that about a third of road deaths  are due to speed, about a third due to fatigue and about a third due to drugs and alcohol.

The measures in this legislation go towards enforcement of the  drug and alcohol provisions  and introducing stronger penalties. We are putting in place measures that will  not only improve  people’s  understanding and  appreciation  of their responsibilities when  in  command of vehicles  but  that will also  continue to educate  people about their  responsibilities to other road  users in a  broader sense.

Currently only drivers over .15, repeat offenders and those  under the age of 26 who  record blood  alcohol levels  of .07  or above are required to have alcohol interlock devices fitted  to  their vehicles in  order  to regain their  drivers licences after serving their disqualification periods.

In February 2013 the government  announced that it would toughen the laws so any driver caught over the legal limit would be required to have an interlock device fitted except in exceptional circumstances.

The government  has  said it  expects  that interlock  devices  could eventually become standard in all  new vehicles. With the way the technology is evolving in this area,  it is increasingly accepted  that interlock devices  are  becoming a feature of Victorian road safety. They are a significant and massively important tool in the fight against road trauma. In saying that in the long term interlock devices  may be  fitted to  every vehicle,  a couple of observations need  to be made. Most notably, the calibration issues will need to be  addressed. The costs associated with constant calibration  will be a  barrier to standardised fitting for  the  broader  community. When and if that technical problem is overcome, it will open up this technology to broad application in the community.

In the broader sense the effect  of  the bill is to create a new  combined drink and drug driving offence. Presently these are two separate offences. The offence will  be  made  out when a  driver  is  tested and shown  to  have  exceeded the prescribed  concentration  of  alcohol  and  the  prescribed  concentration of a prescribed  illicit   drug.   The  testing   currently  applies   to   cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy. It will be interesting to see where  these measures move into  the future.  The capacity  to test  for a  broader range of affecting drugs will ultimately be necessary, but with it will come a cost. There must also be a greater  willingness  to engage the  community  about the impact  of drugs, both illicit and prescription, upon a person’s capacity to drive. The penalty for the combined offence will be a mandatory 12-month licence cancellation and a fine of up  to  $4500  for  a first  offence, with  a more  serious penalty  for  repeat offenders.

I want to concentrate on the emphasis that  governments of both persuasions have put  on road  safety  and the valuable  contribution  parliamentary road  safety committees have made over  the years  towards the  task that  we as a Parliament have seen as being critically important. For  example,  we  know  that  we  have progressively been reducing the  road toll. Perhaps increasingly we need to look at the  impact  of  road  trauma  as  opposed  to  exclusively  looking  at road fatalities. During the time  of the previous government  VicRoads kept a running analysis of the Road Safety Committee’s recommendations.

Between May 2000 and the end of the Brumby government in 2010 there were 10 road safety inquiries.

VicRoads  kept a running total  of how many those inquiries’ recommendations had been monitored, managed and implemented. It was around 80 per cent, and  that is a demonstration of a pretty diligent and serious engagement by Parliament around the concerns  that the parliamentary committees  were bringing forward. It  is a commendation both of  the  Parliament for its  bipartisan  approach and also  of VicRoads  and  the  bureaucracy  more  generally  for  their  commitment  to  an integrated approach to managing road safety.

The  legislation  continues  that effort and, as I said, any measures  aimed  at reducing the road toll, reducing road  trauma and addressing road  safety should be supported by this Parliament in a collective sense.

Speaker after speaker in this place has  talked  about the insidious impact that road trauma has on  the lives of so many  people. How much more  complicated the problem is when we look at the insidious effect that drugs, particularly the new scourge of ice, are having on our community. When those problems are  compounded with the  difficulties  of people whose  judgement is impaired  while  driving a vehicle that can cause  considerable harm to  others,  that demands action  from government, and I am pleased to see the government  has taken the action it  has taken. The bill commends itself, and I commend the government for its actions.