29 Oct KAP QUESTIONS VALIDITY OF UNMANNED MOBILE SPEED CAMERA DEVICES

Member for Hill Shane Knuth and KAP State Leader and Member for Traeger Robbie Katter have today hit out at the State Government over the validity of unmanned mobile speed cameras across the state.

The issue has exploded this week, after residents from Malanda flooded Knuth’s office with complaints about one of the devices stationed on the Malanda/Atherton Road, outside OZcare, during the month of September.

Mr Knuth said residents have started receiving multiple notices, some more than 3 weeks after the alleged infringements occurred.

“In the space of a week I have had over 250 individual complaints with more than 400 fines, some with multiple fines,” Mr Knuth said.

“One person who contacted my office today just received 10 fines, totalling over $10,000. This is absolutely absurd and smells purely of revenue raising.”

Mr Knuth said when he questioned the validity of the fines recently, TMR issued a swift statement stating the device was functioning correctly, however the Member for Hill said that was not good enough.

“I want to see cold, hard evidence that the device was certified and tested for calibration at the time it was installed, every day it was at the location and immediately after removal,” he said.

Mr Knuth said the length of time the device was stationed there, the pure volume of fines and the number of repeat fines raised some serious questions about the validity of the infringement notices.

“I have asked for the Minister to provide what specific speed related crashes have occurred in this 60 km/h zone in the past five years to justify placement of a speed camera device, who deployed the camera, what qualifications they had for deployment and evidence showing placement was valid and in accordance with Queensland Government policy and guidelines,” he said.

Member for Traeger and State Leader for the KAP said the issue was not an isolated one.

“This is a huge issue right across the state and is an incompetent and completely pointless roll-out of these cameras in remote areas, where people can least afford it,” Mr Katter said.

“These are not people who drive Porsches on outback roads. These are hard-working people driving sometimes up to 100km to a medical appointment, or just trying to get their kids to school.

“These have been rolled out right throughout regional Queensland and the majority don’t relate to speeding deaths at all. Instead, how about fixing our bloody dangerous roads.

“TMR are quite happy to rip out hundreds of thousands of dollars from small communities but leave us with unsafe roads that kill and maim, while pocketing the cash and spending it on a new tunnel in Brisbane.

“It’s obscene and typical of a government who have no idea of what regional Queenslanders are going through daily.”