Australia’s peak motoring body encourages Federal Transport Minister Catherine King to reconsider her rejection of an all-party parliamentary committee’s call to let Australians see secret safety ratings of the roads they use every day.

State and territory governments hold this safety data but do not report it. The AAA said publishing the data would shed light on how road conditions affect the nation’s worsening road toll, which is climbing at around 8% annually, rather than halving as per the Government’s commitments.

International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) protocols have been used in every Australian state and territory to develop more than 450,000km-worth of road safety assessments. States and territories continue to keep these safety ratings secret, despite having committed five years ago to transparently report them.

AAA polling shows Australian voters are deeply concerned about the safety of Australian roads and deeply cynical that governments and politicians tend to allocate funds to road projects based on political, rather than community, benefits.

This is why the AAA, its clubs, and 17 other bodies are campaigning for data transparency and evidence-based road funding.

In March 2022, the all-party Select Committee on Road Safety agreed with this position. It published a unanimous report calling the Federal Government to make all road safety funding contingent upon: “… the provision of data on road safety outcomes. Where practicable, this should include provision of data on the star rating of the relevant road.”

In a response tabled this week, Minister King declined to act on this recommendation, saying road safety ratings were the responsibility of states and territories.

AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley said the Federal Government’s response to the parliamentary committee’s unanimous findings was a missed opportunity to improve road safety and accountability for road funding.

“Despite billions of dollars spent every year, more people are dying on our roads,” Mr Bradley said.

“The data needed to understand Australian transport safety exists, it’s just not being reported.

“Committee members were right to unanimously recommend that the Commonwealth forces states to report road safety data that can help develop better policies and assure taxpayers that their money is being spent where it’s needed.”

Minister King’s rejection of the committee’s recommendations comes as all Australian governments negotiate their next five-year National Partnership Agreement on Land Transport Infrastructure Projects. To take effect from July 2024, this agreement will outline how the Commonwealth’s $10 billion in annual road funding to states is to be used.

Federal Member for Wannon Dan Tehan last week released the AusRAP ratings of roads across his regional Victorian electorate, which he obtained from the Victorian Government via a Freedom of Information application.  The ratings show hundreds of kilometres of roads in western Victoria have received AusRAP safety ratings of just one or two stars (marked black & red in the below map).