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KERRY O’BRIEN: We should know those results by this time Wednesday night of next week. Tracy Bowden with that report. Driving in the Northern Territory will never be the same after Clare Martin's Labor Government announced today that speed limits will be imposed on Territory highways for the first time. A sad day for some, but not for many others. Right now it's open slather on open roads. The Chief Minister says driving habits in the Territory are appalling, even in town areas where speed limits do prevail. Repeat offending is rife. One motorist, for instance, copped 47 speeding fines over three years but like all offenders, he kept his licence because the Territory still doesn't have a demerit point system. The Territory traffic laws will now be brought into line with the rest of the country, although as a gesture to long distance drivers the new speed limit on major highways will be 130km/h. Murray McLaughlin reports from Darwin.
DWYN DELANEY: I was born in Darwin and I've been driving in the Territory for 36 odd years and I've always had performance cars. I'm one of those fellows that like good machinery.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Darwin businessman Gwyn Delaney knows the Stuart Highway intimately enough to drive the 320 kilometres between Darwin and Katherine in under two hours. It's quite legal because there's no speed limit on most Northern Territory highways outside built up areas.
DWYN DELANEY: Gone down the road hundreds of times, maybe 160, 180. Sometimes might knock it over 200. Well, with a good car and the right time of day I think it's pretty safe.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But Gwyn Delaney will have the freedom to drive flat out on Northern Territory highways for only the next couple of months. From January 1, the legal top speed will be capped for the first time. This morning Chief Minister Clare Martin announced sweeping changes to the Territory's traffic laws.
CLARE MARTIN: The open speed limit for the Territory will end. On our major highways the maximum speed will be 130km/h. And on our other open roads the default will be 110.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Health and safety advocates, especially beyond the Northern Territory, have long been campaigning for the Territory to impose speed limits on its open roads.
ASSOC PROF LUKE CONNELLY: The fatality rate in the Northern Territory is more than three times the national average. Single vehicle rollover crashes are quite an important cause of death in the Territory which is quite different especially in the top end of the Territory. Alcohol, lack of seatbelt use and so on.
ADVERTISEMENT: The Territory has the worst driver statistics in Australia. One person is killed and nine seriously injured on Territory roads every week.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: An advertising campaign over the past week has softened up the Northern Territory public for today's announcement. It followed a Government report recommending extensive change to the Territory's traffic laws.
ADVERTISEMENT: It's just not worth it.
CLARE MARTIN: We do actually have an appalling record on the road. We as Territorians drink and drive, that we travel too far without rest, we travel, drive too fast, we run red lights and we don't wear seatbelts.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Half the fatal crashes in the Northern Territory are alcohol related. One in every 42 drivers tests over the alcohol limit, eight times the rate in Victoria. More than a quarter of drink drive offenders are repeat offenders and if they blow between 0.05 and 0.08 there's no automatic disqualification, unlike every other jurisdiction in the country. And there's no demerit points regime. All that's about to change.
CLARE MARTIN: Currently our fines are actually the lowest in the country. We're moving those to being on average around the country. We will be getting tougher on drink drivers and there'll be no more non suspension after your first offence after 0.05. There will be suspensions coming into play after that. We'll be introducing red light cameras. The technology has got better. They will work in the tropics.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: But of the suite of changes, the Government's been most under attack in recent weeks on highway speed limits. Sniffing electoral advantage, the Country Liberal Party Opposition has promised to remove the limits whenever it wins government again. The Territory's one CLP Senator, Nigel Scullion, is banking on a backlash, too.
NIGEL SCULLION: Territorians across the board are going to be extremely disappointed with this. It's another way to raise taxes. So this southern-centric policy and the southern-centric mentality that seem to continue to occupy the space of the Labor Government is going to be a fundamental failure and it's going to take forever to get to places.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: The speed limit comes just at a time when Senator Scullion has been trying to revive the Cannonball Run, the fateful race down the Stuart Highway in 1994 sponsored by the then CLP Government. It was an international salute to the Territory's open road policy. A high speed crash killed a two man Japanese team and two race officials. The current Territory Government has already scotched Nigel Scullion's hopes of running the event in 2008, and he sees today's speed limit announcement as a final defeat.
NIGEL SCULLION: A great deal of Territorians have committed time, energy and funding to ensure that we can go down the line of actually having an iconic event in the Northern Territory, and I guess this is just some other way of ensuring that the Country Liberal Party who started this run, this wonderful sporting event, is going to be kyboshed.
CLARE MARTIN: The first and only cannonball run was a tragedy and I don't believe we should ever have it again.
MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Beyond the introduction of a demerit point system, beyond the doubling of fines, beyond the whole gamut of changes announced today, Gwyn Delaney rues most the imposition of speed limits on open roads. He sees in terms of an attack on that much fabled Territory lifestyle.
DWYN DELANEY: Just being a Territory lad that's part of our life, that's why I love the place. A lot of people come here for that reason – we have this, I suppose, freedom, we're not suffocated by regulation and that's how we like it.
NB: This transcript has been edited for accuracy.
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