ELAURANT, Mr Scott, Member, Engineers Australia

GRADY, Ms Sybilla, Senior Policy Advisor, Engineers Australia

HUGHES, Dr Brett, Member, Engineers Australia [by video link]

[09:46]

CHAIR: We have Senator McDonald on the line in Queensland. I now welcome representatives from Engineers Australia, including Mr Brett Hughes via videoconference. I will give you an opportunity to make an opening statement before Senator McDonald and I go to questions. I will give Senator McDonald the call first.

Ms Grady : Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this valuable work. As you know, Engineers Australia is the peak body for the engineering profession. We have over 1,000 individual members. We are constituted by a royal charter to advance the science and practice of engineering for the benefit of the community. This submission was developed by members of Engineers Australia's Transport Australia Society, TAS. TAS is an Engineers Australia technical society for transport professionals in Australia and is focused on key transport decisions and policy making affecting the wellbeing, productivity and sustainability of our cities and regions and to inform public debate and decision making. Our submission focuses primarily on safety and upon economic reform.

I have the good fortune of having with me two technical experts to answer all of your questions. Dr Scott Elaurant is the deputy chair of Transport Australia Society. Online is Dr Hughes, chair of the Transport Australia Society Working Group on Road Safety. Mr Elaurant is an engineering economist with 35 years experience as a chartered engineer. The first half of his career was spent working as a traffic engineer for Queensland Transport and Main Roads. He has spent the last 19 years as a consultant transport planner. Mr Elaurant was part of a team that reviewed road safety and speed management for the South Australian government in 2019 and 2020. Mr Elaurant will be speaking primarily on the economic reform components of our submission today. Dr Hughes is an engineer with 40 years experience in land transport policy and planning. He was the lead author of our Transport Australia discussion paper, which I have here if you would like me to leave a copy with you. I can also send that digitally, because you haven't seen it yet. Brett will be speaking today on matters pertaining to road safety. I do have a lot of other notes, but I'm conscious we only have half an hour.

CHAIR: Senator McDonald will speak for herself. I am keen to hear you. I am keen for Engineers Australia to get everything on the record. Don't worry about the time for questions; it is more important that you tell us, because I'm sitting here with that glazed look on my face and ready to learn everything I can. So fire away.

Ms Grady : Despite the significant changes due to COVID-19 and the associated restrictions, the key themes of our submission are still relevant. Australia was a world leader in road safety from the 1970s through to the 1990s. In 2004 Australia adopted the Safe System approach to road safety. That is meant to be like the Swedish Vision Zero philosophy, which achieved world-leading road safety outcomes in that country. Whilst the theory and intention of Safe System was sound, in practice Australia has not achieved the intended road safety outcomes over the subsequent decade.

As at 2016, Australia's per capita rate of road crash deaths has slipped back to be level with the OECD median and has plateaued since. The 2020 target for fatal road crash reduction was not achieved. In general, countries that have led in terms of improving road safety have failed to continue their downward trend. We're sure the committee has read our recommendations. However, I would like to elaborate on several points. Australian road funding is primarily allocated to road congestion relief, not road safety improvements, even though road crashes cost the Australian economy almost twice as much as road congestion. That's not even looking at the associated trauma and mental health that is associated with road fatalities and so on.

Road funding is focused on urban road capacity improvements and does not address the quality and condition of rural roads, where most of the fatal crashes occur. Road transport does not operate well economically in terms of funding investment, charging and pricing. It's a very fluid system where funding is not applied to achieve best value for investment, such as for maintenance. The charges for road use don't reflect the full costs of use, which depend on the type of road, the road use and the time of day.

CHAIR: May I just clarify something. You're saying the money, the taxes, collected from the road transport industry aren't enough to maintain the roads; is that what you're saying? I want to get clear what that point was.

Ms Grady : That's not adequately allocated.

CHAIR: Not adequately allocated.

Mr Elaurant : We're not saying we're not spending enough, but we question the distribution of the spend.

CHAIR: I'm quite happy. You've clarified that for me. We reckon we get charged way too much, and it doesn't come back. Please keep going.

Ms Grady : We note that roads are the only infrastructure that do not have independent economic oversight or an independent safety regulator, and we recommend that both be investigated to improve transparency and accountability. Road policy is backward looking and isn't taking account of the changes in demand, transport and logistics, new technologies, new business models or the social and physical environments, including climate change, and such changes are likely to significantly change freight and passenger supply and demand but currently seem to be ignored in transport policy and planning. Engineering standards for roads, particularly for safety, need to be urgently reviewed and modernised. Government road safety policy has changed little in practice over the last 80 years and continues to rely almost entirely on road engineering, driver education and enforcement. Low-cost options to improve rural road safety such as wire rope barriers have not been implemented systematically. Australia's approach to safe vehicles has shied away from regulation, meaning we permit vehicles with measurably inferior safety outcomes—two, three and four stars—to be used for work. This is questionable, given employers' duty of care to provide safe workplaces.

We haven't made road safety law as Vision Zero was, meaning implementation is often compromised when funding is scarce. Skills for all participants in road transport need to be substantially improved. As qualified professionals, engineers need to take a greater role in the approval of roads plans, designs and construction. Despite being workplaces under occupational safety law, roads have almost entirely been ignored as workplaces.

CHAIR: That is right.

Ms Grady : Regulators and businesses in general need to ensure the safety of employees and other road users in transport. This is particularly important for road workers and for generous passenger vehicle travel. All of this suggests road safety remains an aspirational goal rather than a part of business as usual. Thank you for the invitation to appear. Mr Elaurant and Dr Hughes will respond to any technical questions you might have.

Mr Elaurant : As Ms Grady said, we're not necessarily saying the budget for roads needs to be massively increased tomorrow. On OECD figures, of the countries that report, on the last figures I saw, Australia, we were the highest; but on maintenance, we were the lowest. When you then consider that, in the last decade, when we've had a lot of urban growth and pressure to do road projects—particularly in outer suburban, urban areas, and these projects soak up a lot of the budget—arguably, the budgets to actually maintain and improve the condition of rural roads, which is where three-quarters of fatalities occur, have if anything shrunk. We'd like to see that balance redressed.

Even when you compare us to other countries that are similar in terms of population density, like Canada, we think we just don't spend enough on maintenance. It's concerning that in both a politically and economically pressured environment, as long as all of the money is just in one bucket competing with each other, the projects in the areas with the most people-pressure in a democracy will always win. But, in safety terms, that's not always the best answer. We'd like to see a systemic program or a separate bucket of money, if you will, for safety improvements to make sure they are done systematically.

Sweden, for example, in about 1997—almost 25 years ago now—started putting up more safety barriers on all of their rural highways. They spent only a few hundred million per year, but in the scheme of the billions we spend on roads it wasn't a huge amount. By 2025 they'll have pretty much their entire rural highway system treated. They have median barriers. They're very successful. In these sections of road that are treated, they have dropped fatal crash rates by 75 per cent to 80 per cent. There is a large drop. It's measurably safer. It's far cheaper than four-laning. Realistically, given budgets, we'll never four-lane the whole Bruce Highway or the whole Eyre Highway in the lifetime of anyone in this room. If we're realistic about aiming to achieve lower rates, we have to systematically plan a program that's affordable within the current resources without assuming it will massively increase.

CHAIR: So you're saying to run the barriers where the double white line is?

Mr Elaurant : That is correct. It needs to widen the roads slightly, but it's much cheaper than four-laning. You could build 20 kilometres of that for four-laning one kilometre. When you look at how you four-lane the whole Pacific Highway or the whole Hume Highway, that's how the Swedes have got ahead of us. Now they are at the point where their fatal crash rate is about two-thirds of ours per capita, and they do a similar amount of driving. The average kilometres driven per car per year in Sweden is similar to here. It's quite a good comparator. It's not as high density as some of the other European countries. As we said, in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s we were, if not top, certainly in the top performers in road safety. We were one of the first countries to introduce random breath testing, roadside breath testing—

CHAIR: Seatbelts.

Mr Elaurant : Seatbelts, yes. We were in the top half a dozen during that whole period. But, as Ms Grady said, we're now down to being about midfield. We're not terrible. We're still better than the United States, but we're not where we were. We think we need to make systemic changes to the way we spend the money so that there is a definable bucket of money targeted at safety improvements.

CHAIR: Do you have the opportunity to sit with relevant ministers and have these discussions?

Mr Elaurant : I can't answer that.

CHAIR: Ms Grady, you came in with a baseball bat! I'm going to point you to Minister McCormack's office, because you're on fire. I love what you're saying. I think it's a fair question.

Ms Grady : I have had the opportunity the meet with Minister McCormack in the past. However, it was on a different matter. But we are doing a suite of policy documents that we're going to try and do some campaigns around and engage with ministers.

Mr Elaurant : Our paper was written in 2019 or the end of 2019. Because of COVID it's really been a mess.

CHAIR: I just raise that because I'm a stickler for believing that, if governments and bureaucrats actually meet with the people who know what they're talking about, we could get some good outcomes in this nation. We really can.

Dr Hughes : After we wrote the discussion paper on road safety—and the Institution of Engineers has had several discussion papers—we distributed that discussion paper to all of the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Council. We offered to meet with all of the ministers or their policy officers. A few of those responded positively to that, and we did. A few of those sent them off to other interested ministers, such as the police minister instead of the transport minister or the roads minister. We've actively engaged with ministers and have had some response, but we haven't been able to discuss it with all of the ministers or all of the jurisdictions.

CHAIR: I always give credit where credit is due, and I applaud the government now. I remember when I took some road safety initiatives to the ALP National Conference back in 2019. One was reintroducing the Office of Road Safety. The government has copied that. That's good. We will see what work that does, because we need to collect the data. I also applaud that this government has a dedicated assistant minister for road safety, tied up with freight transport. I think that is good, too. I now want to see the follow-up. Let us hope it's not just announcements and that we get in and do something. That's why I'm asking: have we sat down with the people who build the roads? Senator McDonald can comment. She is a girl from the bush. We know how bad these roads are. We also know how many thousands of kilometres of road there are. If we can spend the money better, it would be great to hear how we can do that. We still manage to kill 1,200 Australians a year and injure or maim another 30,000. Sorry. Keep going, Dr Hughes or Mr Elaurant.

Mr Elaurant : Brett, do you want to say something?

Dr Hughes : Yes, I will just comment on that. Over the last two years we have had your committee inquiring into road safety and a number of other matters in road transport, which is terribly important, we've had the Joint Select Committee on Road Safety, we've got a draft new national road safety strategy and we've got a draft heavy vehicle safety strategy. Most of those inquiries are asking the same people and getting the same answers, and we keep doing the same things. We've been doing the same things in road safety for the last 80 years. About 95 per cent of all road safety strategies around the world rely on driver education, driver enforcement and road engineering.

If we look at other FACTI domains, like offshore petroleum, mining, occupational safety and industrial safety, and we ask them how you would do road safety if you adopted your principles and practices, they'd say, 'We wouldn't do it anything like that.' We keep on doing the same things that we've been doing in the past instead of doing those things and doing them well. We can do the things that we've been doing in the past well and better, but we also need to adopt some other learnings from other domains, which is what the Institution of Engineers discussion papers have proposed to the ministers.

CHAIR: That says it all, doesn't it? Mr Elaurant, do you want to keep going? Please do. It's your opportunity.

Mr Elaurant : Some of the specific things we mention in the discussion paper are that, as Brett said, in principle, you've got safe roads, safe vehicles, safe drivers and safe speeds. The speed obviously and the drivers relate to enforcement. They're probably the two things we've done the most in the time of the National Road Safety Strategy in the last 10 years. If you are a cynic, realistically they are the two that you can do the most cheaply. In fact, in the study we did for South Australia last year, the rate of enforcement, expiation issuing, in South Australia, is comparable to that in Sweden. The world's best-practice people aren't fining people any more than we are already. Therefore, while we're not saying you should let people off if they're doing dangerous behaviours, it's hard to think there's a lot of room for improvement in more effort there, so we need to look at the way we do things. With things like speed cameras, they have a lot more point-to-point cameras, as you see in New South Wales. Instead of just having a guy with a radar gun at the bottom of a hill, you have two sites a measured distance apart and your time between them, and if your average speed is over you're booked. It's not just a question of which creates more revenue; they get better results. They change behaviour more. Everyone knows that if you beat the time you will be done. It's unavoidable. They actually get better acceptance from the public. You can't say, 'I was just drifting a bit over downhill,' when you're average speed is over for the entire link. It's undeniable. They're more effective at changing the attitudes of people. The way we do enforcement would benefit from change.

We mentioned already with safe roads that there are lower cost treatments we should roll out on longer lengths of rural road, which I think are very important. There are other things such as audible edge lines. You need an adequate road shoulder; road maintenance is still critical. If you have not maintained that road adequately, some of those things are not even possible. Given adequate road maintenance, that makes those low-cost safety treatments more feasible for long-distance rollout. Lastly, on the vehicles, as Ms Grady mentioned, we've trended to having a market based approach on that. Particularly, for example, for work vehicles—

CHAIR: I am just writing this down as we speak.

Mr Elaurant : once you accept that a vehicle is a workplace and a road is a workplace—and by law it is in almost all states—why do we permit employers to send someone out in a two- or three-star rated vehicle if a five-star rated one is available in the same price category? We have now reached the point where you can get five-star rated vehicles in virtually every category of the market. You don't have to buy a luxury vehicle. It's not particularly a price issue. To give credit where credit is due, there have been some examples. I believe BHP a little while ago had looked at a policy where they would only permit five-star vehicles on their mine sites. Suddenly every supplier of utes to the Australian market made sure they had a five-star vehicle. You can get some leadership and change in the market. It might sound a trivial point, but if you're in a five-star vehicle and someone in a four-star vehicle is in the same crash, the person in the four-star vehicle has about a six per cent higher chance of fatality. If it's a three-star vehicle, it's about 20 per cent. If it's a two-star vehicle it's about 60 per cent. If you ask, 'How do we get our fatal crash rate down another 50 per cent?' we need to insist on things like that if we're going to get there.

CHAIR: It's a no-brainer. The largest purchasers of vehicles in this nation are governments. We know where the second-hand fleet is going to come from in three or four years time, in seven years time, in 10 years time, when the kids who were five, six and seven now are coming out to get their licence in 10 or 12 years time. That's very interesting. Senator Macdonald, I will give you an opportunity first. I have a few questions.

Senator McDONALD: I won't take too long. Your presentation is very comprehensive, as you would expect engineers' presentations to be. Everything you said just makes so much sense to me, as somebody who comes from and represents those big road networks where there is still a lot of gravel, that are still single lane and still don't have a lot of safety features. I support what you're talking about. We had evidence from Western Australia a little while ago about tyre safety. Is that something you looked at specifically, or is it was something you could comment on?

CHAIR: Inflation rates, Senator McDonald?

Senator McDONALD: No, it was construction of tyres.

Mr Elaurant : The quality of the tyre, whether it is steel belted and so on?

Senator McDONALD: Yes, exactly. Is that something that we should be considering as a nation?

Mr Elaurant : In one sense, if you're serious about Vision Zero, we should consider every element of the system. I would never say no. In terms of highest priorities, I don't recall that coming up in our review. Generally speaking, the condition of the vehicle and tyres is a factor only in a minority of crashes. Inappropriate speed and the road condition would be two of the biggest ones. I suppose that, while we wouldn't like to ignore that one, we wouldn't say it's the highest focus.

Senator McDONALD: That is fair enough. I don't have any additional questions. I think that's been a terrific presentation. I'm very grateful for the time you've taken to come. As you say, the same people are presenting to different committees with the same recommendations. How do we move forward? I appreciate the time. Thank you.

CHAIR: In the time remaining, I want to focus on the heavy vehicle industry. One of my pets, as well as, I'd say, one of every long-distance driver in this nation, is heavy vehicle rest areas. I would say that WA is a little bit better. It still has a little way to go, but the government have stepped up to the mark and they're going to do some work there. The Queensland government is doing some work now to kick out all the caravanners and make it just heavy vehicles. Good on Queensland! Tassie is having an arm wrestle, but they've had a bit of a win and have consulted with the truck drivers. Congratulations. Is it Engineers Australia's role also, while you are designing roads and looking at road safety to look at the quality—I can't think of another word—of heavy vehicle rest areas on our major freight routes? Have you done some work around that?

Mr Elaurant : I will comment on that first. Brett might have some comments too. The short answer is, yes. There are standards for that. There's a recognised standard, depending on the designation of the route, as to how many rest areas you should have and how far apart they should be. I know, from some of the work I have done recently in South Australia with the government, that it's tricky. The projects aren't public or announced yet, but I know they are looking at that and intending to spend some money on it. Obviously, that comes back to my original point that it still depends on having an adequate budget to upgrade and maintain rural roads. For a lot of the smaller states, from a budget point of view, that can be a challenge.

CHAIR: I'm going to be a bit cheeky, unless I can be proved wrong. I was driving through my suburb in WA last week and I thought, 'Why are we resurfacing all of these roads? These are just suburban networks of roads that are all being rebitumenised.' I was thinking, 'Wouldn't you love to be able to spend that money on a quality rest area or two?' It's not that dear to build a rest area, surely.

Mr Elaurant : How would you put it? I made the point about buckets of money before. For all the money that's allocated to road budgets, most of it is tied to something. The actual amount of discretionary money that most engineers looking after a particular section of the state road network have is very small.

CHAIR: That's the alarming part. We know it's speed—

Mr Elaurant : And that's the problem. Our market spend is too small.

CHAIR: It's not in the psyche of the people who are handing out the money for you guys to design roads, by the sound of it?

Mr Elaurant : The real crunch is that, when you set the budget, you determine what can or can't be achieved in the scope. If you barely have enough money in the original allocation to resurface the existing rural road pavement, which is essential, there's not much room for anything else.

CHAIR: What I'm trying to allude to is this. Your clients who are building the road factor in that we have to make these rural roads safe and we have to widen them—and you're making some brilliant suggestions about barriers, wire ropes and so on. But are they also saying, 'And we want heavy vehicle rest areas as part of the job as well,' or do they just ignore it?

Mr Elaurant : In the ones I've done recently in South Australia, yes, in every single case they did specify it. That's the submission they go with to ask for the money. Whether that's approved and they get given that money, I don't know, but, in terms of the engineers asking for what they recommend, it has been in every single one. I have done six rural highways in South Australia and they have had rest areas in every single one.

CHAIR: That is fantastic. It also comes back to this: do you know who determines where those rest areas will be and what design they are? Or does someone just give you a piece of paper and say, 'You have to put it here and this is the money you've got'?

Mr Elaurant : Generally, that would be the engineers in the state road authority or the people defining the scope of the projects. It's often determined by what land they have available. There is sometimes a conflict where, if there's width in the road reserve, they might need it for a stockpiling site for maintenance works, so they're reluctant to make that a rest area. It depends on what available land there is.

CHAIR: I know you don't have the answer, and that's fine. I'd really love it if someone said, 'Sure, we talk to the truckies. We get out there and ask them where they want it, what slant they want on it and which way it faces when the sun comes up in the morning if they're in bed and the headlights are on their windscreen.' That's all I was trying to allude to. I have an eye on the clock. I do have a tight time schedule.

Dr Hughes : Can I just make a couple of comments on that that are similar?

CHAIR: Please.

Dr Hughes : You're absolutely right, engineers have the ability to design them when they're given the opportunity. Often they're not given the opportunity, because, as Scott said, the funding allocations don't allow them to do certain things. There are three levels, if you like. One is that the funding has to be made available to do things like rest areas. There has to be the commitment at the highest levels, because it's not always engineers who are making the decisions on where the funding is going to be allocated, and then the processes have to be put in place so that they're part of whatever is applied from the highest level down to the detail of the lowest level.

I've been driving around Australia for a couple of years, and I'll just say that the number of rest areas for heavy vehicles are completely inadequate. They should be, let's say, up one hour apart, and they certainly aren't. I'm driving a caravan and I can't tell you the conflict that I have trying to find a place to park a caravan, not knowing whether I can park in a car bay, because it might not be big enough and I might not be able to get out, or a truck bay, which might impinge on the heavy vehicle operator and which would be completely unfair. That's just a real-world example of not having good design and planning to achieve what you're saying should happen, because you're right.

CHAIR: Mr Brett Hughes, you've just won a heap of truckie friends. They'd all be squeezing the steering wheel at the moment, saying, 'Yeah!' You can imagine how they're all fired up. That is so true. I get that all the time. It irks me. The road transport industry is taxed very handsomely. I think about all of the projects around town. I think about how everyone loves to get photographed in a truck with a high-vis vest on. But they don't care, once the truck leaves, what is happening on the highways, not only in terms of the welfare of our truckies but also that of our other road users. Mr Hughes, you've gone up miles. You might even get invited by Big Rigs to do an interview the way you're going. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I have to say farewell, but I have a tight time schedule. I do appreciate your evidence. If you have a win and you, say, 'Crikey! Guess what? We've just been invited to have a hug-in with all of the ministers,' please let the committee know, because that would be a great outcome.

Ms Grady : Thank you so much. It was great meeting you.

Dr Hughes : Please contact us again if you've got any other questions.

CHAIR: Thank you kindly. This is an initiative of Sally Tipping from Tipping's Transport in Dubbo—and I think the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator might have chucked in a few bob. Sally is a major advocate for road safety and her truckies. She and her husband treat their drivers like family. Good on her for doing that. The least I can do is fly that. Travel safely.