An unforgettable tragedy behind my push for safer roads

Children facing life without parents ... the crash that still haunts Michael McCormack

IT is an idyllic scene … a gently curving country road leading to two rolling hills.

As you head south towards Wagga Wagga, NSW, on the Olympic Highway at a spot on the map called Brucedale, a forest of splendid gums on your left abuts ordered rows of olive trees while the paddocks opposite, in spring, burst into brilliant canola yellow as far as the eye can see. On the edge of the second hill, also on the left, is a dusty little track, Mary Gilmore Road, named in honour of a former local, renowned writer and greatgreat aunt of Prime Minister Scott Morrison. A little further on the right is a quaint stone building, the school she attended in the 1870s. If you did not know otherwise, this is a beautiful, serene part of regional Australia. It is less than a kilometre from where I grew up on our family farm. Sadly, it was also where in February 1984 a horrific collision occurred which at the time was one of the Riverina’s worst road tragedies, with four lives taken, all from the one family. Unbelievably, a week later, six people were killed in a shocking crash near Temora, not far away. Ten dead in a week. Eight adults. Two children. And 13 youngsters who would now live their lives having lost a parent or both their mother and father.

I remember the time all too well, as if it were only yesterday. A 19-year-old cadet reporter, I was finishing my shift at the Daily Advertiser when the newspaper’s chief of staff asked me to check out the crash on my way home and phone in with details. There were no mobile phones then.

What confronted me was awful. A head-on crash involving a car, with a single occupant, and a van, carrying a family of six from Victoria. All the deceased were in the van, a brand-new vehicle, being driven by a Vietnam veteran on his way to Queensland to see a war buddy. The parents, in their early 30s, and their four-year-old daughter, who had been thrown clear, died at the scene, and a seven-yearold girl succumbed to internal injuries three days later.

A 13-year-old girl, who was deaf, and a boy, 9, were orphaned. Too tragic for words. Every road death is the same. Heartbreaking. Terrible. Unnecessary. Someone’s parent … sister … brother … daughter … son. Someone who loved and was loved. Someone who left us too soon.

I have travelled that road so many times and each time I pass that spot I remember. I recall the devastation. The anguish. The frantic yet professional care of the first responders. The looks on the faces of the young ones left behind. I often wonder what became of them. I phoned the story through from home and it made the front page the next day. It was my job then to report the news, calmly, clinically and accurately. But it is hard not to let something such as that affect you.

Road safety is something about which I am passionate. My ministerial roles now give me the opportunity to do what I can to help reduce fatalities and trauma as we, as a government and a nation, work towards zero. This is why we are investing heavily in better roads as part of our $110bn infrastructure rollout. It includes large-scale highway upgrades to a Bridges Renewal Program ($676m over eight years) and Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program ($538m in 10 years).

Roads to Recovery, for

maintenance of local roads, is receiving a massive injection of $2.64bn from 2019-20 to 2023-24. Since this program began in 2001, councils across Australia — now 537 — have used the funding to repair and upgrade at least 60,000 sites.

There’s much more under way. In Tasmania this year $3.5m is targeting accident sites under the Black Spot Program, for measures from traffic signals and roundabouts to turning lanes, safety barriers and better lighting.

Up to $44m is available for Tasmania in three tranches of the Road Safety Program. Works can include treatments such as shoulder sealing and rumble strips, to support the safe return of vehicles from the shoulder into the travel lane; physical barriers to prevent run-off road crashes; and median treatments to prevent head-on collisions.

The national Office of Road Safety is working closely with states and councils.

Funding under the two phases of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program is up to $41m across Tasmania. Examples are a bridge or tunnel, street lighting, traffic signs, traffic control equipment or a facility off the road used by heavy vehicles. The program supports councils to deliver local road and community infrastructure, supporting jobs and helping communities bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vehicles are vastly safer now than in 1970, when the national toll peaked at 3798.

Road safety resources and actions are more prominent, and rightly so. Record federal funding, with state and local government contributions, saved lives last year and will continue to do so as we build better roads. Upgrades continue to major highways such as Bass and Midland, and other busy byways and streets in your neighbourhood. Works are saving lives and avoiding trauma. But we cannot legislate against stupidity.

As the Mercury reported recently after an alleged motorbike speeding offence, Acting Inspector Justin Lawson said: “Travelling at such speeds demonstrates completely reckless behaviour, placing both the rider and other road users at risk.”

Road safety is everyone’s issue — let’s make it even more so this year.