It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Transport Legislation Amendment (Vehicle Sharing Scheme Safety and Standards) Bill 2025. In the last few years we really have seen quite a revolution in this space of e-scooters. This new mode of transport is now in our daily lives and many find it a great way to get around their neighbourhoods in an efficient, convenient and really an environmentally friendly way as well. It has transformed the way that we are moving around our cities and our towns. In that short amount of years we have seen more people taking up and buying their own private e-scooters, and we have tourists who visit and use the share schemes that are out there.
I see it across the Bellarine. We do not have a shared scheme in the Bellarine, but we certainly have many who use their own private e-scooters. I see it often with them going to their workplaces, or it may be students. I hope they are over 16. I am sure they are, because those are the rules and the law. They often use them, and I see them. It is a concern, though, some of the behaviour that I have seen locally from people who use e-scooters. They are certainly very vulnerable on our roads. We have a group called bSafe, which is a community group that meets with local police. E-scooters and the behaviour of e-scooter drivers have been raised at those meetings. Local police are certainly keeping an eye out for those doing the wrong thing. A majority do do the right thing, but I really want to emphasise that it is a really important issue for my community, and we want to make sure everyone is safe on our roads. We want to make sure that everyone gets home safely. As more and more scooters come onto our roads, we need to make sure that there are plenty of people who are aware of the law and the rules around them but also aware of the behaviours of others to make sure everyone is safe on our roads.
As I have said, there are some challenges with this innovation of e-scooters. We need to make sure that e-scooter users and the shared schemes are being responsible and are taking responsibility for safety and considering others around them, especially pedestrians. Interestingly, through the last inquiry undertaken by the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, which I am on, we had a look at the impact of road safety behaviours on vulnerable road users and we did hear from a couple of e-scooter users. Unfortunately we did not get to hear from some of those larger shared-scheme companies that would have given a real good voice, a really important voice to that inquiry. We did not hear from those, but we did hear from pedestrians and other road users about e-scooters now being on our roads.
It is unrelated really to the COVID pandemic, but these shared schemes were introduced just after the pandemic. What we learned through the inquiry was our behaviour has changed on our roads. All road users have changed in their behaviour. E-scooters were introduced and there was a new form of transport, and adjusting to that change in a very quick, short amount of time was a challenge for a lot of councils. It was a challenge for government and a challenge for users to understand what exactly the rules were. Councils told us that an education piece was certainly needed. We then as a government announced that the trial would conclude in October 2024, and we would permanently allow that sharing scheme and private e-scooters to operate across Victoria.
One of the e-scooter users who did present to the inquiry was Patrick. I just want to quote what Patrick said a little bit about how he felt on the road using an e-scooter. He was concerned about his safety. He said he began to use an electric scooter on Victorian roads in early 2020 and since then he has travelled more than 3200 kilometres according to his e-scooter odometer. He cannot compare pre-COVID and post-COVID, but he said that he experienced multiple life-threatening collisions caused by motorists which deserved to be investigated by the committee. On top of these serious incidents, he had been subject to countless instances of unsafe driver behaviour and road rage. On three separate occasions, motorists had failed to give way to him at roundabouts while he was riding an electric scooter. These incidents represented a life-threatening risk to cyclists, scooter riders and motorcyclists.
What I want to indicate today in this contribution is that through that inquiry we did hear about these instances. We ended up with some recommendations for government to consider when we tabled the final report, and one of the recommendations was for the Department of Transport and Planning to develop an education campaign to reach all road users, including school children, about road rules relating to e-scooters. I have not had a chance to talk to this in this place as yet, but the government has responded to that inquiry, and they supported this recommendation in full. I will just quote the response that was sent from the government in response to that recommendation:
The Victorian Government acknowledges that the rapid rise in e-scooter usage has outpaced public awareness of relevant regulations, contributing to crashes or near misses. Educating all road users, including schoolchildren, can help foster a clear understanding of e-scooter rules and promote a culture of safety and responsibility as the transport landscape evolves.
As part of legalising e-scooter use and ending the trial in October 2024, DTP … developed and delivered a two-stage e-scooter safety campaign, the first of its kind in Victoria. The first stage was a functional campaign informing the community about legislative changes including the new and changed penalties. The second stage was a behavioural campaign which targeted high-risk and illegal e-scooter behaviours, highlighting the dangers of these behaviours and providing a rationale for the e-scooter laws. This stage of the campaign also included information targeting parents …
What I want to highlight is the changes that we have seen, the recommendations the inquiry has been able to present and how government are acting on those and how we are doing that work. That is what this bill is also about. While this bill does focus on those share-scheme operators, I just want to touch a little bit on what the bill will do for them particularly.
Operators of the schemes do have a role to play. They need to ensure that the road rules are followed and that they do not adversely impact the amenity of the local area. We want to make sure that this bill is delivering on safety and compliance, so under the framework, operators of e-scooter sharing schemes are going to be required to comply with safety standards and obtain an approval from the Secretary of the Department of Transport and Planning, in addition to the existing requirement of having an agreement with a local council. Existing and new operators are required to apply, and that preapproval process is about supporting local councils in selecting the right scheme operators. It gives everyone that confidence that everyone is going to be doing the right thing. The sharing schemes, though, are to address those issues. Operators are required to implement technologies and systems and other safety measures and to set a standard that will be mandatory.
We know e-scooters are going to be part of the landscape and the transport system for many more years, and regulation of these e-scooters is very important. While e-scooters, as I have commented, are privately owned as well, they are becoming a common way to get around, and these schemes and the operators need to ensure that they are part of the solution, as they have a critical role in ensuring that the road rules are being followed and that their devices, those e-scooters, are not adversely impacting the amenity of the local area. By providing evidence that they can meet the safety standards and that they are fit and proper to be engaged in a scheme, operators are going to support local councils in selecting the right share scheme operators. With this bill, together with the operators, we are going to ensure that this mode of transport continues to be a safe path.
