FORMER prime minister Bob Hawke may have lost his claim for the most ambitious target ever set by a senior Australian politician.
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At a campaign launch in 1987, Australia’s most popular prime minister opened himself to ridicule when he departed from the prepared script to announce to journalists: “We set ourselves this first goal: by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty.”
It was a beautiful thought but, of course, an impossible goal, and it may have only been Mr Hawke’s incredible personal popularity that saw him survive the bungle.
Now, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Roads Minister Melinda Pavey have waded into similar waters with the launch on Tuesday of the state government’s new Road Safety Plan 2021.
Along with a short-term target of reducing the state’s road toll by 30 per cent by 2021, the plan also nominates 2056 as the year we want to see a zero road toll in NSW.
In their defence, the premier and minister can point to the use of the word “aspirational” in the plan as indicating it might be more a dream than a policy, but what a beautiful dream it would be.
For its part, the state government is committing big money to improving the quality of the state’s roads and is introducing tough new rules to make drivers who do the wrong thing pay a higher price for their mistake.
The ignominy of having an interlock device installed on the car of every motorist convicted of a mid-range PCA [or higher] should serve as an extra deterrent and using the state’s speed camera network to catch people on their mobile phone will also be effective.
But, history shows, no deterrent works in all cases.
In the end, bad driving behaviours come down to individual choices and there will always be drivers who take the wrong option.
The three chief killers on our roads remain drivers who are fatigued, drivers who are affected by alcohol or drugs, and, above all, drivers who are speeding.
Road safety boffins and the police can do only so much to combat such idiotic, high-risk behaviour.
But a big-money splash such as that announced by the state government will at least get people talking, and thinking, and that must be a step in the right direction.
Zero might be an impossible dream, but it has to be the target. Because zero is the only target that admits that every life lost on our roads is one life too many.