Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — The  matter  I wish to raise  is for the Minister  for Roads. The  action I  seek is  that the  minister conclude the review into truck exclusion lanes and  make  public  its conclusions to provide the public with an appreciation of how the lanes are working and whether they are to be extended.

The  former government identified and rolled out two  truck exclusion lanes, one on  the Princes  Highway between Laverton and Avalon and a second on the Eastern Freeway. It foreshadowed further  rollouts,  including the Monash-West Gate, the M1; EastLink; and eventually, upon works completion, the Western Ring  Road, the M80.  The  Premier,  who was then the Leader of the Opposition, criticised these car-only lanes in a trucking industry magazine on 4 March 2010, saying that  the ‘choice of roads’ to be included was a ‘recipe for disaster’.

Connect East, the concession holder  for  EastLink,  is  on the public record as supporting the  extension of car-only lanes  to EastLink. With the completion of works on the Ml, there is no reason why truck exclusion lanes cannot be extended to  that  road.  The Labor opposition’s road safety policy, Below 200  by  2020, released in June 2011, calls on the Baillieu government to continue the:

  … rollout of truck exclusion lanes on freeways and highways with three lanes  or more …

With Victoria’s road  toll  now standing at 12  per cent above last year’s  in a year-to-date context,  now  is  the time  for  the  government to  continue  the promised  car-only-lane safety initiatives. An analysis of  the  Victorian  road fatalities map, which is available on  the Victoria Police website, reveals that there have been no fatalities on the two sections of highway currently set aside as truck exclusion lanes since they were declared.

Also,  Transport Accident Commission  statistics  indicate that  78  per cent of truck  casualty incidents in Victoria since 1987 have  involved a collision with another vehicle — that is, trucks involved in the collision  — and 37 per cent were in speed zones  greater than 90 kilometres per hour. The Minister for Roads must explain  to the Victorian public why the government to date has refused  to continue Australia’s first truck  exclusion rollout, which was started by Labor, which clearly yielded a safety dividend and which is certainly demonstrating its worth in European countries.

I  note that  at the  annual Australian  Roads Summit  on  8 March  the minister indicated that he had extended in  January of this year the length of road space that road trains could use  on  the  Victorian  arterial  road  network  from 60 kilometres to 360 kilometres. This sixfold increase brings with it an obligation to invest in the necessary infrastructure and to balance the safety needs of all other road users.

The previous Labor government sought to balance the needs of the community,  the safety  of  road  users  and  the  efficiency  of  freight operators. I urge the government to ensure that it is balancing  the safety  needs of  all road  users before providing access to our road network for bigger and heavier trucks.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.