Random breath testing is down 10 fold on its record days, while the road toll is the second highest, “Seven Days” with IAN MEIKLE wonders if we can draw any relationship. Likewise, the company the chief minister is keeping these days.

THAT’S the sound of the stable door banging in the summer breeze. The drunken horse is long gone.

Despite December being deemed the party month for targeting drunk and drugged drivers, the cops aren’t breath testing like they used to. 

The road toll is in record-deaths territory. Young, innocent people are dead, victims of drug-driving idiots, and our government is deaf to the petitions and public grieving of broken parents. 

But, come on, for the Treasurer, it’s not all bad. Traffic infringement revenue more than doubled last year to almost $61 million, thanks in large part to the bloody mindedness of the 40km/h speed limit on Northbourne Avenue and other parts of Civic. It’s so successful, it’s taking them more than a year in some cases to get around to processing the fines. What a disgrace. 

Then there’s the extra $33.9 million in revenue from speed cameras last year. 

But to piss on their parade, here are some sobering RBT numbers: there were fewer than 14,000 random breath tests conducted in 2021/22. By contrast, almost 98,000 tests were conducted in 2018/19 and a record 144,256 in 2013/14. The numbers come via the NRMA, which is calling for a significant increase in RBT to save lives. There’s that stable door banging again. 

The police are coming off a low base when they told us this past week that this year’s drink driving charges already exceed the 2021 total. Last year police charged 794 people with drink driving. As of November 30, 796 people had been charged. You’d have to wonder what the number might have been had they been breath testing like before. 

“The number of RBT have plummeted 10-fold since 2013/14 while the percentage of positive returns has increased five-fold over the same period – this trend has to be reversed, especially as the ACT records its second-highest road toll,” says NRMA spokesperson Peter Khoury

He says the cops have shifted away from the traditional conga-line RBT to a more “targeted” approach, whatever that is. The NRMA believes a shift back to the “anytime anywhere” method with a significant increase in the number of random tests conducted is critical to reduce drink driving.

They’d like to see the police adopt the best-practice model of 1.1 tests per licence holder. Based on 2021 figures this would require almost 360,000 tests a year. Makes 14,000 look pretty pathetic. 

YOU’D like to hope the “publisher” of the loss-making “Canberra Weekly” would be better at journalism than accounting. He’s not.

The paper rose phoenix-like in August from one collapsed entity (owing more than $2 million, including $1,237,435 to its printer and $678,980 to the ATO, which is really you and me) to a new one, beyond the reach of its creditors (which includes you and me), under the very same ownership of accountant Nick Samaras. We have no update on whether, as the director, he’s being investigated by ASIC or the ATO, but complaints have been made. 

Anyway, the paper appears so journalistically challenged that it had Nick pictured large as life in its most recent edition sitting alongside Chief Minister Andrew Barr, the subject of the bean counter’s adoring and unquestioning three-page “Meet the Chief” exclusive suck up. One wonders, once the pressure was off “the chief”, if they swapped war stories about managing debt and insolvency.

Of paragons, lost millions and shifting assets 

OH, who doesn’t know what BRB stands for? Well, on first blush I didn’t and I fancy I wasn’t alone as those stupid rubber-duck signs telling locals the grass was too wet to mow went from the obtuse “BRB when ground dries” to plain English “Be right back when the ground dries”. LOL. Full marks to the adult in City Services who insisted it be changed.

AND still they come. A couple of weeks ago, in mocking the publicly funded Canberra Writers Centre’s name change to Marion, I asked readers for some single-name suggestions for the ACT government. 

This week, the appropriately named Chris Wordsworth suggested “Dorothy” as a one-word descriptor for the government, “searching for a way out of the land of Green smoke and mirrors run by the great and powerful Oz.” 

Meanwhile, my irrepressible Phillip snout, who clearly doesn’t have enough to do, has come up with these gems: “Buckleys” for the emergency department of Canberra Hospital; “Pinocchio” for the accounting department overseeing the costing for stage two of the tram and, for the Treasury department charged with returning the ACT Labor/Greens Budget to surplus, “Neverland”.

He finishes with a flourish from the Old Jokes Home: I got myself a termite as a pet. I named him Clint.

Clint Eatswood.

 Ian Meikle is the editor of “CityNews” and can be heard with Rod Henshaw on the “CityNews Sunday Roast” news and interview program, 2CC, 9am-noon. There are more of his columns on citynews.com.au