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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4426 ..

Question put:

That the motion (Ms McRae's) be agreed to.

The Assembly voted -

AYES, 6	 	NOES, 7

Mr Berry	Mrs Carnell
Mr Corbell	Mr Cornwell
Ms McRae	Mr Hird
Ms Reilly	Mr Humphries
Mr Whitecross	Mr Kaine
Mr Wood		Mrs Littlewood
		Mr Stefaniak

Debate resumed from 24 September 1997, on motion by Ms Tucker:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (12.17): Mr Speaker, Ms Tucker has proposed that we adopt, I think quite arbitrarily, a 50 kilometres an hour speed limit in our suburban streets. The Government opposes the change at this time, and I will explain in detail the basis for our objection to doing it at this time. Before I deal with that, however, I want to take up a couple of points that have come from Ms Tucker's tabling speech in connection with this Bill. One of the things that Ms Tucker said was that 20 years ago a 35 miles an hour limit was arbitrarily rounded up to 60 kilometres an hour. That was not arbitrary at all, Mr Speaker. It was logically rounded to 60. If you convert 35 miles an hour to kilometres an hour, it is in fact 56. It would have been arbitrary to round it down to 50, which is what Ms Tucker is proposing; but it was perfectly logical with the rules of rounding to round it to the nearest multiple of 10, which was 60. It might have been better if they had rounded it to 55, but apparently that was not under consideration at the time. The fact is that 20 years ago 35 miles an hour was rounded to 60 kilometres an hour, and it has been that way ever since.

Ms Tucker also said that studies in various cities had been conducted and she said that having 50 kilometres an hour would reduce - no question about it - accidents by 15 per cent, injuries by 20 per cent and fatalities by 25 per cent. I am not too sure that studies in other cities have determined that that would occur at all. There is a statistical probability that it might occur. In any case, such studies done in other cities cannot necessarily be translated to Canberra because you have to take into account a number of factors. There are things like the condition of the streets, the surface and the camber.

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