Labor seek to make Newcastle the testing ground for new driverless technology in NSW.
Swansea MP Yasmin Catley gave parliament a notice that she would introduce a private members bill which would give the Transport Minister the power to identify trial sites for this technology.
A private members bill, which is modelled off a similar act passed in South Australia, will spend 10-million dollars over three years in hopes to attract the technology
This comes after the opposition Luke Foley used his budget reply speech last year to help campaign for the idea.
Yasmin Catley says we should take advantage of this opportunity.
"Those plans actually have the technology inbuilt into them that will enable autonomous vehicles to operate on the roads here in the Hunter.
"So we want to take advantage of the 90 billion dollar industry that is the autonomous vehicle industry which we will see in the next 10 to 20 years and we want NSW to be part of that and we want the Hunter to be at the heart of that".
She also states a trial will help the residents in the Hunter understand more about driverless cars.
"That is something a trial will do. It will give people a flavour of what autonomous vehicles will look like on our roads, how they will interact with the rest of our infrastructure in our city.
"So that is actually why it is so important to have a trial to give people the confidence around autonomous vehicles. There are challenges as well of course with these emerging technologies and we need to learn about those."
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| Swansea MP Yasmin Catley, Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp, Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes & Shadow Minister for Roads Jodi Mckay |
