Page: 22011
Mr ANDREW FRASER (Coffs Harbour) [5.42 p.m.]: On behalf of the people of Dorrigo I wish to refer to the cancellation of the Roads and Traffic Authority [RTA] inspection service in that town. The RTA has stopped sending inspectors to the Dorrigo plateau area. People who live in Dorrigo and Ebor, on the plateau, and who own heavy vehicles are now required to travel to Coffs Harbour, Kempsey, Nambucca, or some other area, to have their heavy vehicles inspected. While this may not sound much of an impost to the average person in Sydney, it is a major impost for the people of Dorrigo. For example, the bus company in Dorrigo owns six buses. The cancellation of the inspection service means that those buses have to travel down to Coffs Harbour, a journey of about an hour, on six separate occasions.
Previously, heavy vehicle owners in Dorrigo had reached an arrangement with the RTA under which they had similar registration inspection times for most of their vehicles and they could get inspections done on a quarterly basis. Although quarterly inspections were not totally acceptable, they were preferable, given that Dorrigo is about an hour's drive from Coffs Harbour by car, and a little more by heavy vehicle, down a section of road that is extremely dangerous. In fact, the journey from Thora to Dorrigo is about 15 kilometres of probably the windiest road one has ever encountered. I place on record my congratulations to Peter Collins, the regional manager of the RTA, on the hot soil that the RTA recently put on the mountain, which improved the surface out of sight.
However, Keogh's bus company said to me that one section of road from Thora to Bellingen is so narrow that if school buses and trucks have to pass vehicles on the road, which is used extensively by heavy vehicles, one of the vehicles has to get over onto the gravel verge. It is extremely dangerous, and I have written to the RTA asking it to fix that section of road. The action the RTA has taken in cancelling this visiting inspection service to Dorrigo means that all those heavy vehicles now have to travel down that mountain at a time when school buses will be utilising the road. In my view it is extremely dangerous. It is a very windy section of road down the mountain and, as I said, the section of road between Thora and Bellingen is extremely narrow in places. The RTA is simply creating an opportunity for a major accident to occur.
For the RTA to send two inspectors to Dorrigo, on either one or two days once a quarter, would involve minuscule expense. The income the RTA would receive from the registration renewals for these heavy vehicles would far exceed any cost to it. I have written to the Minister to ask why the RTA would, without just reason, withdraw a service that has been operating so successfully in this isolated town for a number of years. By withdrawing the inspections of the heavy vehicles in Dorrigo, the RTA is increasing the risk of motor vehicle accidents and decreasing public safety on this section of road. There has not been a death on the Dorrigo Road for a number of years, and that is because people treat it with caution. To require the owners of heavy vehicles that transport potatoes, dairy, beef cattle and so on to drive their vehicles long distances to have them inspected is totally unacceptable to the community that uses that road.
I also raise the cost incurred to businesses. For example, the bus company will lose one day's operation for every bus that has to travel down for inspection. In other words, it will mean an additional six days costs for the operator. There are many subcontract carriers in the area—for example those that carry cattle, potatoes, and milk. It costs those companies who send their vehicles down for inspection a day, whereas the RTA sends only two inspectors to the area once a quarter. I appeal to the Minister and the Government to reinstate this vital service for the people of Dorrigo, who are paying their taxes and registration fees. I urge them to reassess the economic sense and social detriment of a simple decision that has been made in Sydney by a bureaucrat, under the Minister's direction, without any real consideration being given to people's safety or the economics of this decision.