PORT RIVER BRIDGES

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (15:33): South Australia was startled to hear last week of serious and complicated problems with the still to be opened lifting bridges over the Port River at Port Adelaide. The two lifting bridges, one road and one rail, are almost completed albeit one year late. According to the city media last week, there are complex problems with the road bridge. Surprise, surprise! I have been advocating against these bridges being built, or being able to lift, for over five years. Their being lifting, moving bridges was always going to cause problems. I ask members to check similar bridges around the world, as I did at the time. Most are not as big as these lifting bridges, and certainly they are not large, single span bridges like those at Port Adelaide. Others have problems as well.

The bridges should have been built as standard, fixed bridges—and I know that many members opposite would agree with me: they would have been hundreds of millions of dollars cheaper and they would have been quicker to build. We would have had them operating at least 18 months ago and they would have been 100 per cent more reliable. That is not to mention the problem of road and rail timetables we will face when the bridges will be up. Because of the delays here now with these bridges not being finished, work is not continuing on the terminal, either. Work has stopped on the terminal building at the ABB site because without the bridges they cannot be accessed, so why should they hurry?

The bridges are holding up the whole works. Nothing will be ready for this year's harvest, which is very sad indeed because it was supposed to have been. This has all the hallmarks of the cursed lifting light towers at Adelaide Oval. Remember those, Madam Deputy Speaker? We all said it; we all saw it; and now we know what happened: big things that move, break, especially when they do not have to. The folly of our ways at Adelaide Oval cost us millions of dollars, as we had to replace the lifting towers with the current fixed ones, and it almost cost a life.

Will the bridges go the same way? I visited the site some weeks ago and was concerned then about the amount of secrecy that surrounded the whole project—I was not allowed near it, I was not allowed to talk to anybody. Obviously, there were problems then, but in deference to the minister—for whom I have some time—I said nothing about it. I just said that I had been there and left it at that. I would be delighted to say that I was wrong, but revelations this week made us all groan, 'Not again!'

This is a vital link for freight to our state's main port and a road link from Port Adelaide to the rest of South Australia, and to read about the complex problems of the bridge—the failure of the metal, the failure of the bearings, the design being too narrow for ships to navigate safely, as well as the inherent legal and design wrangles—is all very depressing, and could and should have been avoided.

I wonder what Mr Rod Hook, the government's guru for large projects, thinks about this, because I do not blame him—not at all. The decision to make these bridges lift was a political one by the Rann Labor government not a practical, commonsense one. Now, most of us, including members on the other side, could say, 'Well, we all told you so.' I presume all is not lost; we could at least weld them shut. Pity about all the wasted money, though. Another Rann damned failure. I will quote parts from an article on page 5 of The Advertiser of Wednesday 27 February:

Legal action between the project construction company and its engineering experts revealed the project has allegedly been hampered by:

FAILURE to include protective barriers...

UNSUITABLE steel quality...[and also]

INABILITY to line up accurate massive bearings...

It goes on to say:

The alleged reasons have been revealed in court action brought by NSW-based construction group Abigroup Contractors against the project's New York engineering experts Hardesty and Hanover.

Further:

Robert Fenwick-Elliot, for Hardesty and Hanover, told the court the Abigroup action was designed to delay resolution and payment of fees owed to the company until the project was completed.

Acting for Abigroup, [Mr] Steven Walsh QC [for whom I have a lot of time] said referral of the fee payment dispute to the engineering expert was a 'sham' and involved legal issues which could be settled only by a court.

This whole thing is very lamentable. I only hope that the big problems can be overcome very quickly, and we get the bridges open whether they lift or are welded shut—one way. Get them open so that we get the port operating, so that we can get on and deliver a harvest—hopefully we will have one.