Grievance Debate

Main South Road

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:19): Members in this place may recall that two or three weeks ago I raised, on the floor of this house, the matter of Main South Road and its condition. Since that time, I have met with a couple of people and had some discussions with them and I have been lobbied pretty heavily by the Main South Road action group and the Aldinga Bay Business and Tourism Association. Unbeknownst to me, they have been out and got a petition together in relation to the upgrade of Main South Road from Seaford through to Aldinga and then down to Sellicks Beach. They went out on six occasions, and I have in front of me a petition with 3,322 signatures on it—not to be discounted lightly.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: You can get up in a minute, minister, and have a crack. It is a very, very big issue. Indeed, only a week or so ago we had a meeting of the Sellicks Area Residents Association, and it came up during the course of the meeting there. It was pushed pretty hard by people down there. The petition they have put forward calls for the state government of South Australia to upgrade Main South Road alongside Aldinga Bay; however, following numerous accidents and the recent death of a young father and critical injuries to another person, together with the knowledge the road is a known blackspot, policed often, the road needs to be made into a four-lane carriageway.

It is not going to go away. It is a very, very hot issue down that neck of the woods. The government has seen fit to neglect it and not to do anything about it, and at the moment it is the major issue for that community. In due course, I will present this to the Minister for Transport and have some discussions with him and bring it well and truly to the fore for some attention. I have no doubt whatsoever that the member for Mawson may suddenly get very interested in it—and, quite frankly, he would damn well want to because he has not done anything about it in the past. He has had that section of road down there in his electorate since 2006, as the current member for Kaurna has had it adjacent to his electorate since he came into this place three years ago. It would be nice if they both took part, quite frankly, but we will work on that.

As I said, this issue is not going to go away. The people want it to get on and they want something to happen. They are very active in the media, and they will be out there pushing the case for the upgrade of this road. From a personal point of view, I use the road often because of my travels, and I will be using it again on Friday morning when I have to go down to the Yankalilla district. It is ongoing. As I said before, there is a copious amount of traffic that uses that road.

It is not a good road, and the government is doing $11 million worth of upgrades. The Main South Road action group is quite determined that what is going to take place there is not the answer, with the roundabout and other bits and pieces that are going on with that. That project did go through the Public Works Committee and is scheduled to start being put into place in October this year, I believe, after winter and into early spring. They are of the view that putting in the roundabout will only add to the accident statistics, and they have given me some good reasons why the roundabout, with trucks coming through from the Southern Fleurieu and from the Sellicks Beach quarry, etc., just will not work.

I will take that up, through the minister, with Department of Transport officers, and through the Public Works Committee, to see whether we can get some more answers. The community down there wants to see some action on the project and they want to know what is going to happen. As I said, they are not going to go away, so I look forward to hearing some sort of announcement from the government; otherwise, I think their lives are going to be made extremely miserable.