Now for those of you that believe the government’s line that they were forced to do something then consider this:
The Taskforce that put together the sham report was made up of eight (8) people, or should we say Yes men, that comprised;
3 transport advisers;
2 NT police officers;
2 lawyers;
and 1 doctor
All these Yes men work for, drum roll, the NT Government. Which begs the question, how objective is the report? Probably none at all. The Government as we know made up their mind about what they were going to do long before they commissioned the report. I mean…really!
If the government was serious about these issues they would have employed independent consultants to do this report instead of a bunch of public service yes men! (As a comparison the O’Sullivan Report that was commissioned in 2003 and reported in July 2003, was concerned with the Police Force and its resources. In the very first couple of pages it lists the authors of the report, and they were INDEPENDENT. So again, why did the Martin Government have an independent study done on NT Police but a nameless report by public servants on Road Safety?)
It’s a joke.
The head of this band of merry yes men was one Chris Bigg, a transport adviser, and he conveniently retired in December, just before the introduction of these laws probably so no one could grill him on his white wash report.
We spoke with Sonia Peters, an assistant to Transport Minister Delia Lawrie, and she was plainly pushing the “company line”. When we asked her for the breakdown of the supposed 19 deaths on page 85 of the report into dirt and sealed she said that no dirt roads had an open limit in the NT (prior to the introduction of the speed limits). We told her that this did not seem right, and she responded by saying that it wouldn’t make sense to have no speed limits on dirt roads. Our response, which we believe is correct, was that open roads mean that you drive to the conditions of the road not necessarily at breakneck speed. You have the right of course to travel as fast as you want but this would not be feasible on dirt roads.
We finally received a phone call back from the Taskforce hotline and we asked the lady to confirm that prior to the introduction of speed limits on open roads in the NT that the NT did in fact have open speed limits on dirt roads. In response she said “of course we did”.
We then asked if we could get a breakdown of the 19 deaths into dirt and sealed, and also asked for the primary cause of death for each one of those deaths. The reason we asked for this was because she admitted to me that speed could not be the primary cause of death on open roads because there was no speed limit!
So, let’s get some perspective here. The NT Government makes up its mind to crank up revenue raising on Territorians, so it gets a bunch of public service yes men to compile a report with the conclusion that they are after.
The report is has no names on it, just the “Taskforce” who are completely anonymous, until now at least for one, and contains a bunch of anti-speed propaganda from interstate and overseas that has no relevance to the NT.
Why does their propaganda have no relevance? Because it does not take into account the vast distances travelled by Territorians who most likely travel much further ever year per capita than the rest of Australia.
They say the NT road toll is three times the national average - well NT drivers probably drive three times as far than the national average. But we wouldn't know this because nobody bothered to do research to find out;
The driving conditions are probably much harsher than anywhere else inthe country. We have long stretches of straight road, with not many stops in between because the NT is so sparsely populated and it's over 30 degrees Celsius most of the time. This all adds up to some serious fatigue. Again, nobody on the Taskforce investigated any of this.
It does not take into account the 900,000 odd tourists who travel to the NT each year and whom represent a not insignificant proportion of those killed in the years tallied in the report. Think about it. 900,000 people are more than three times the entire NT population. Name another state or Territory that has this many tourists, per capita, each year.
They introduce the new road rules over the holiday period, starting January 1 2007 while a lot of Territorians are down south and while the politicians are on holidays. It is also almost 2 years away from the next NT election by which time the government is hoping everyone will have forgotten about it.
Chris Bigg, the head of the Taskforce, or should that be Taskfarce, conveniently retires in December 2006 probably so as to avoid public scrutiny, but then again who would know who he is? It’s not like his name, nor those of the other seven yes men have put their names to the report. Why all the secrecy? Why no names credited to putting the “report” together?
Martin Government has a 19 to 4 majority in the NT….19, the same number as those whose death was attributed to speed on the open road when in fact it will be revealed the actual cause of death was something else. The Martin Government should lose one seat for every lie they told – 19.
It’s just outrageous.