CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Ms LAWRENCE (Hasluck) (10:27): Between 2001 and 2025, there were 2,305 fatalities on our rail networks. Of those, 1,781 were suicides. This absolutely validates the direct and indirect investment in our mental health, which is in excess of $14 billion nationally.

It is so vital. It also highlights another matter. Part of Rail Safety Week is highlighting the importance of everyone understanding the impact that fatalities on our rail network have on the victims.

The number of suicides is obviously extraordinary, as is the number of accidents on rail crossings from trespassing and from unfortunate incidents where people haven't been able to see the lighting—which is being fixed, as I understand, with new measures, particularly in Western Australia, for lighting on carriages. These 2,305 fatalities need to be highlighted and focused on, and I'm grateful for the opportunity this week for the rail safety foundation to have had time in the parliament to highlight to members of parliament not only the importance of rail in Australia but also the importance of improving safety.

In May this year we had an accident at the Meadow Street crossing in Guildford, in my electorate of Hasluck, where a truck collided with a train. The damage it caused was extraordinary. Incredibly, there were no fatalities.

There were six injuries, though, including two toddlers. The driver had a trainee with him in the train. You see the damage when you look at the photograph.

It's just remarkable that there were not more serious injuries of a physical kind. But we know that there will now be mental injuries. My father was a train driver.

He spoke to me, when I was a young girl, of his experience of what, in his case, was also a suicide and of the impact and the toll it took on him. You see it happening. It takes 14 football fields to stop a train.

The emotional toll that it takes on the drivers, the passengers and the people who have to then clean the train and clean the tracks as well as on the families of the victims can't be overstated. This is a trauma that we can actually work to fix collectively. I thank the TrackSAFE Foundation, I thank the RTBU for the work that they do to support the drivers and I thank bodies like the PTA and the Perth transport bodies that provide the wraparound support to passengers as well.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Payne ): In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.