Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Thursday 20 October 2022

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (16:59): I rise today in support of the bill to amend the Rail Safety National Law. Earlier this year, I hosted the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport for a community meeting to provide members of my electorate the opportunity to discuss their concerns with public transport, our roads and other infrastructure and transport issues.

The most common concerns raised, other than the privatisation of our trains and trams, which we are going to reverse, were congestion and increased traffic on suburban roads. We know that the best way to reduce congestion—if you cared you would not have done it—and get cars off the road is to get more South Australians using public transport.

That is why we removed the free travel peak time travel exemptions for Seniors Card holders so that, instead of only being able to access free travel during off peak, seniors can now access public transport for free at any time. By getting more people on public transport, we get more cars off the road and less pollution in the air.

While that is much easier said than done, good government should be doing everything it can to increase the uptake of public transport. Bills like this do exactly that. South Australians deserve to know that whether they are going to school, sport, shopping, visiting friends and family or anything in between, they can do it safely and accessibly on public transport. South Australians also want to know that the workers operating our public transport systems are doing so safely and are provided with adequate conditions and protections while they are at work.

This bill seeks to amend the Rail Safety National Law by making it an offence for a rail safety worker to knowingly provide false or misleading documentation to be used for an assessment of their own competency. Railway workers must be provided every opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge they need to perform their job. With this bill, patrons can trust workers to get them where they need to go and are able to do so safely, for everyone involved.

At present, section 117 of the National Rail Safety Law requires a transport operator to ensure that rail safety workers have the competence to carry out rail safety work in respect of the railway operations for which the operator must be accredited. This bill provides a new offence provision with a maximum penalty of $10,000 if a worker is found guilty of providing false or misleading documentation in assessment of their competency.

Building trust in our public transport system goes a long way to increasing community participation. South Australians want to know that the train they hop on is clean, is being operated safely and is part of a safe and secure network and a network that is operated and run by the state government. They also want to know that their local station is accessible and has the facilities they need. I am really proud that our government is working towards making all our public transport systems as accessible as possible.

I was so excited to recently stand alongside my good friend and colleague the member for Badcoe to share that work has begun at the Woodlands Park railway station. This important upgrade will provide a new shelter at the station, while still keeping the roof; so we get to keep some of the nice building that is there. We are keeping the good bits but getting rid of the bad bits and making it a bit trickier for people to do some of the less desirable things that sometimes happen at a train station when people really need to go. We are going to reduce some of that privacy to make it a little bit harder for those types of activities to occur on that platform.

We will get that new shelter and we are also going to improve the surfacing of that station. There will be new bitumen across the station, as well as the little yellow grids near the edge to provide safety and a different texture so that people are aware they are approaching the edge. They have also done some work there to get all the conduit in for future electrical works that will need to be undertaken once that shelter has had the work done on it and parts of it are removed. We will also have some better lighting there and I believe also some additional seating.

Upgrades such as these are so important to ensure that we encourage more people, in particular women and children and young students, people who do not always necessarily feel safe using public transport. It is important to ensure that they, whether they are coming home from work or school or school sport or anything else, can feel safe as they arrive at their local station.

It is why the Malinauskas Labor government has also committed $1.6 million to upgrade the Clarence Park railway station. The community has asked for this upgrade for a long time. It is something that, again, the member for Badcoe and I have been working hard on, and it is really important. We would like to acknowledge that a member of our community recently passed away close to that station in an awful accident. We pay our respects to her family and people who were close to her.

This bill also amends the Rail Safety National Law to provide the National Rail Safety Regulator with a new power that exempts all rail transport operations from section 114 of the national law in the event of an emergency. Section 114 requires the preparation and implementation of health and fitness programs for rail safety workers. Obviously, it was quite difficult for a number of workers, over the last couple of years, to be able to access those programs and that sort of training that is normally required, during COVID with various restrictions in place.

These amendments in the bill will allow for exemptions from such programs to be more easily provided in the case of an emergency, such as COVID-19, which makes the standard requirements which apply under normal circumstances difficult to comply with. This will allow the National Rail Safety Regulator to grant the exemption which removes the need for the relevant minister in each jurisdiction to provide a separate exemption in each state and territory when these emergency situations arise. Combined, these amendments are sensible measures which have been agreed between all jurisdictions to support the safety of our rail workers and users.

I would like to thank everyone who works at our Department for Infrastructure and Transport, the people who ensure that we get to work, school and all the fun things on public transport, safely. I would like to thank the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, the National Transport Commission, the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator, the Australasian Railway Association, members of the rail industry, and my colleagues in other jurisdictions across the country for their contributions to this important legislation. I commend the bill to the house.