Deal to force states to hand over secret crash data

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King appears to have brokered a deal forcing all states and territories to share crucial crash data in exchange for billions in road funding.

A deal to get all states and territories to hand over secret road trauma data appears to have been secured, raising hopes of reducing road fatalities and ending the “pork barrelling” of road funding.

A seven month campaign from national motoring clubs, motorcyclists, freight operators, doctors, insurers, road engineers and safety advocates to compel each state and territory to share their crash, road and enforcement data has secured the support of federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, who is believed to have convinced road ministers across Australia to hand over the secret data as part of a deal unlocking billions in federal roads funding.

Ms King is hastily brokering the next National Partnership Agreement on land transport infrastructure, which sets out how each state and territory delivers major road and rail projects worth $110 billion over a decade. The current agreement expires on June 30.

It is believed Ms King has negotiated a new provision in the NPA that creates a requirement for a nationally consistent data set.

“A clear picture, underpinned by data, about where best to target road safety funding will save lives and ensure we are investing in projects that will make the biggest difference,” Ms King said.

The campaign to collate already available data about every fatal crash, the safety of road networks and roadside drug and alcohol testing, is being motivated by a push to lower a longstanding trend of increasing fatal crash incidents.

New data released on Monday revealed fatal accidents were up more than 10 per cent in the year to May 31 than in the previous 12 months, with 1303 deaths on the nation’s roads.

AAA managing director Michael Bradley said data transparency was crucial to road safety reform.

“Establishing data transparency would constitute the most important road safety reform in Australia in decades … the only people who might be hurt are pork barrelling politicians who want to avoid public scrutiny,” he said.

Currently information is recorded by each state on every road fatality, while a program called iRAP is used across the nation to assess the safety of the road network.

The push from motoring groups is to collect this data and overlay it with the outcomes of police investigations. This information would then be used to apportion billions in road funding from the federal government, just as need is already used as a basis for awarding federal health and education funding.

The National Transport Research Organisation is positioning itself to take on this role, having built a road safety map analysing how dangerous a road is, where and what type of crashes are occurring.