Page 3407 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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unfairly punish young Canberra drivers. They go much further than they need to and they are not likely to have a significant impact on road safety in the ACT.
We have already seen a number of members of the government backbench such as Mr Steel, Ms Cheyne and Mr Pettersson publicly stand up against these changes, and I hope today that they and other members of the Assembly will support this motion.
The proposed curfew for provisional drivers would significantly disadvantage young Canberrans and would unfairly penalise the many young Canberrans who do the right thing. In particular, these changes would have a significant impact on young people’s ability to maintain employment across a number of sectors, including hospitality, the trades and shiftwork.
For many young workers in the ACT, finishing a shift in the kitchen at midnight or working a night shift means that commuting in the early hours of the morning is inevitable. Getting your P-plates provides access to these job opportunities that may have previously been unobtainable because buses certainly do not run that early, and other options like walking and riding are unviable or unsafe. In particular, young Canberra women rely on their freedom to drive at any time of the night as a safe means of travelling around our city.
While the government has raised the idea of exemptions for employment, any exemption process is likely to be complicated, bureaucratic and costly and will dissuade young people from seeking employment in these industries in the first place. The simple fact is that these changes will hurt young Canberrans. We all recognise that we are transitioning to a 24-hour economy, and those opposite recognise this as well as they finally extend the bus timetables later into the evening. But to exclude the youngest people in our city from employment opportunities by virtue of their age is not fair and is not justified.
Importantly, however, this is not just age discrimination and this measure would also have significant impacts beyond youth unemployment as a number of P-platers are not just in this younger demographic. We have heard from numerous parents who are also P-platers who are concerned about the need to rush their children to emergency departments at 3 am or who participate in demanding shiftwork late at night or simply do not want their freedom taken away by the government.
As I have stated, one death on our roads is one too many and road safety should be a key priority for government. However, reform should be about equipping drivers with the skills and knowledge they need when they are learning to drive rather than punishing the well-behaved majority once they are already on our roads. To that end, the Canberra Liberals support some of the government’s proposed changes such as increasing supervised hours for learner drives.
Minister Rattenbury seems to suggest in his discussion paper released earlier this year that P1 drivers need more time to gain experience on the road before they are capable of driving between the hours of midnight and 5 am. If the length of time spent on learner plates is to be extended, is not this already being achieved? This can also be achieved by incorporating mandatory hours of supervised night driving into the
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