Mr EDE - 1994-12-01
Mr Speaker, both overseas and in Australia, the Chief Minister promoted the Cannonball Run as one of the 'greatest car races of all time'. The run required competitors to travel at an average speed in excess of 200 km/h on public roads open to tourists and ordinary Territorians. Does the Chief Minister concede that he has a duty of care to road users and that, by encouraging these speeds on the open road, he committed a dereliction of duty?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, as the Leader of the Opposition well knows, one of the few remaining great freedoms in the Northern Territory compared with the rest of Australia is the fact that we do not have maximum speed limits outside towns.
Mr Ede: There is a requirement to be safe.
Page 367
Mr PERRON: As he probably knows as a man who lives in the bush, attaining speeds of 200 km/h is not uncommon at all for people who travel on Territory roads.
Mr Ede: No. Over 200 km/h is getting fairly fast...
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr PERRON: I can assure him that there are individuals in the Territory who have travelled at average speeds much higher than the Cannonball Run cars did on the Stuart Highway. An example is commuting between Alice Springs and Darwin and vice versa.
I acknowledge that the Territory government has a duty of care. We believe that we exercised that during the course of preparations for the Cannonball Run. I do not accept the inferences in his question today, nor his earlier inferences, that anything we did in the preparations for the Cannonball Run was other than responsible actions to take into account considerations of safety, including the safety of the travelling public.
Page 368
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, as the Leader of the Opposition well knows, one of the few remaining great freedoms in the Northern Territory compared with the rest of Australia is the fact that we do not have maximum speed limits outside towns.
Mr Ede: There is a requirement to be safe.
Page 367
Mr PERRON: As he probably knows as a man who lives in the bush, attaining speeds of 200 km/h is not uncommon at all for people who travel on Territory roads.
Mr Ede: No. Over 200 km/h is getting fairly fast...
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr PERRON: I can assure him that there are individuals in the Territory who have travelled at average speeds much higher than the Cannonball Run cars did on the Stuart Highway. An example is commuting between Alice Springs and Darwin and vice versa.
I acknowledge that the Territory government has a duty of care. We believe that we exercised that during the course of preparations for the Cannonball Run. I do not accept the inferences in his question today, nor his earlier inferences, that anything we did in the preparations for the Cannonball Run was other than responsible actions to take into account considerations of safety, including the safety of the travelling public.
Page 368
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016