ROAD SAFETY COUNCIL AMENDMENT BILL 1998 Second Reading Speech

Northern Territory Second Reading Speeches

ROAD SAFETY COUNCIL AMENDMENT BILL 1998

(This an uncorrected proof of the daily report. It is made available under the condition that it is recognised as such.)

Bill presented and read a first time.

Mr COULTER (Leader of Government Business): Mr Deputy Speaker, I move that the bill now be read a second time.

This bill amends the Road Safety Council Act to remove the 12 member requirement so that the minister is able to appoint whichever number of people are appropriate to the council. Because the membership requirements are being changed, there is also a need to make amendments to the quorum requirement, and this is an opportunity to remove gender-specific language.

At the moment, the Road Safety Council Act specifies that the council will have 12 members. This has been appropriate up to date, with each regional road safety committee and the principal government agencies being represented. The Road Safety Council until now has operated as a broad-based forum to provide the minister with advice on road safety matters. It has worked reasonably well to date, but the time for a re- focus on the way the council versus the regional road safety committees operate has come. There are 2 basic reasons for this. Firstly, the establishment in recent times of additional regional road safety committees, along with the desire in other localities to create more means that regional committees cannot be represented in the Road Safety Council.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the second and most important reason is that the structure and operation of the council and regional committees needs to localise road safety issues to the greatest extent possible and to allow the Central Road Safety Council to concentrate on Territory-wide strategic issues. The challenge is now to create a structure which continues the valuable work of council, simultaneously increasing community, industry and local government involvement, all while containing costs. And, Mr Deputy Speaker, council itself recognised that this is a time to change.

This necessarily means a smaller Road Safety Council, comprised of the relevant government agencies and community representative. Initially, council will be comprised of an independent chairperson, one representing the Top End of the Northern Territory and one from the Centre, a Local Government Association of the Northern Territory representative, and a senior officer from each of the following agencies: Transport and Works, Education, Police and the Territory Insurance Office. The other necessary step is to better equip the regional road safety committees to be pro-active in their particular road safety issues. This will be done by diverting resources from holding central council meetings to workshops involving regional committees.

The current plan is to annually hold a southern Territory workshop, a Top End workshop and Territory wide workshop. Each regional committee will attend 2 workshops for the year. This new approach has the full support of the existing Road Safety Council, and I thank the Chairman, Mr Bob Rose for his work on restructuring the council.

This is a long winded way of saying that the Road Safety Council Act needs to be changed so that the council is not fixed at 12 members. This bill leaves it up to the minister to appoint a number of members considered appropriate and I commend the bill to honourable members.

Debate adjourned.

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