I am really glad to be able to speak on this legislation because it is an issue that I have been talking about in my community quite a lot lately and I consider really important for families in my patch. Over the last couple of years I have had many conversations with folks when I am out and about in the community, and one of the biggest issues I hear relates to the roads and how they need to be improved. By ‘improved’ I am talking about traffic lights, better pedestrian safety measures, lights for pedestrians and green arrow lights to turn. That is a real bugbear of mine, when I go through lights and there is no green arrow. You can be stuck at the traffic lights because you are not sure about whether to take the risk in turning into oncoming traffic, particularly if you live in certain parts of the west where there are a lot of trucks. Let us face it, there are certain parts of the western suburbs where there are a hell of a lot of trucks. We are talking about improvements in relation to this sort of thing. Improvements are important because we want to see fewer accidents happen on our roads.

An example of these conversations I have been having in Truganina last year was parents and families who live around a really fantastic local school, Truganina P–9 College, and they raised pedestrian safety with me as a major issue near a very, very, very busy road called Leakes Road. It is a road I cannot talk about here in this place without saying that Leakes Road used to be a single-lane carriageway that was extremely congested. A lot of growth was happening, and you had in the new burbs what I would call a country bumpkin road that certainly was not fit for my growing community in Truganina. Leakes Road was expanded in a very major way. It formed part of the $1.8 billion western roads project in the last parliamentary term. It was an incredible thing that the Labor government did to widen that road for current but also projected future growth in the local area. I was just driving down it the other day, and I said to a staff member in the car who did not live in Truganina, ‘You wouldn’t believe that this used to be single-lane, based on how many cars are on the road.’ She was like, ‘How did people get to and from work and school?’ I said it was really difficult, and people were very patient over a number of years in which it was widened. It was a lot of work and it cost a lot of money, but I cannot imagine what Truganina and places like Tarneit – this is a road that goes through the guts of these suburbs – would look like if it had remained that single carriageway. Thank God we did that.

Trug P–9 runs just off that major road, and thanks to the great advocacy of the local school, the school council president, the principal and the parents who live in and around that local area we were actually able to set up and trial some red-light cameras at this location. I know people get a bit funny about red-light cameras. It is not a very popular announcement when I make it about us putting more in our local community, I do know that. But what we do know is that red-light cameras work. They make people slow down, especially if they know that they are there. We were able to trial red-light cameras at the location, which was really good, and I know lots of parents are very pleased about this.

Another area where I have to say recently we have had some movement in this space is Fitzgerald Road in Sunshine West. If you are a westie and you know this particular road, you will know the exact location that I am talking about. It is the section of Fitzgerald Road that connects folks in Sunshine West to the Western Ring Road. It is an incredibly busy intersection and piece of road infrastructure. There are a lot of cars and a hell of a lot of trucks and heavy vehicles moving in and around that area, usually at high speed. There is a particular intersection along the road that connects to a major local street, and it is a major local street because it heads down to a great set of shops at The Avenue – it is actually called The Avenue. For people who live in this part of Sunshine West this intersection is their only avenue to travel to and from work in Laverton North, to access the Woolies up the road, to fill up at the Shell or indeed to get out onto the ring road to head towards the city. It is very, very busy.

Having been down there a couple of weeks ago to do some filming for the great announcement that we made there, it is incredibly difficult to cross as someone who was just trying to cross there on one of the side roads. So I was very pleased that we were able to lower the speed limit on this particular section of the road from 80 k’s to 60 k’s. It is certainly not a silver bullet to fix everything. I know a lot of locals actually wanted traffic lights there, but we have to be conscious about ensuring that traffic flow is still possible. Like I said, it is a major thoroughfare for people travelling to the city and in the opposite direction from the city and wherever they need to go. But we lowered that speed limit in that particular section from 80 to 60, which I think was a really good thing. Sometimes lowering speed limits, up on social media it causes a lot of friction within the community, but what I do know is those locals living in and around The Avenue absolutely love the speed limit being lowered. They had been asking for it for a long time, and I think it is actually a really good win for the local community, a good thing to do.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention our government’s $976 million investment into road maintenance that has been funded in this year’s budget. We heard a lot about that at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee over the last two weeks, and this is going to go directly into rebuilding and repairing and resurfacing roads right across Victoria, including in our regions, where this is all the more important. I think that even if you are a metropolitan member of Parliament – I think you are referred to in this house as a townie or an out-of-towner, depending on where you live in Victoria – just because you are a townie like me does not mean we do not go on holidays. We go for weekend drives and take our kids and our families into the beautiful countryside that is regional and rural Victoria. We love using those roads, and yes, some of them have needed significant work and upgrades. I know that this $976 million investment is going to go towards fixing those roads that I may not use every day – there are others that use them every day – but when I do use them I want to make sure they are safe. So this has been an incredible announcement.

Gosh, it turns out I love talking about roads and road safety. In under 2 minutes, in the last moments I have in making a contribution on this bill, it does make changes relating to the enforcement of road safety offences. An example of that is that the bill amends part 5 of the Road Safety Act 1986 to allow for additional professionals to be prescribed as approved health professionals when it comes to obtaining blood samples from drug and alcohol tests that are being undertaken, making sure everyone is being safe on the roads. I think that is a really good thing. I do see, and I have seen them across the western suburbs lately, a lot of drug and alcohol testing units and sometimes that big bus with all the flashing lights. I think it is a really good thing, and we do not just see it on a Friday night and a Saturday night. Sometimes quite often on a Thursday night they are there in particular places after Parliament. I think it is a really good message to people that they should not be drinking and driving or taking drugs and driving. It is about making sure that folks and families like all of ours are safe on the roads.

Changes in this bill that are locking down enforcement to ensure our roads are safe are really important. I do want to thank the minister for bringing this bill before the house. It is a tremendous amount of work that the minister has done over the many years that she has been the minister, and I think that her expertise and her knowledge about the Victorian road system and road network has been of tremendous value to this government in being able to fix and repair our roads but also looking for things in our local communities that make travelling along local roads – as I said, those little bloodlines of our community – a whole lot safer. I commend the bill to the house.