Darlington Interchange Industrial Accident

Mr PISONI (Unley) (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. Why has there been no contact from the minister's office or his department with the widow of Andrew Myama after his death a week ago on the site of the Darlington interchange project?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (14:50): As the member for Unley alludes to in his question, there has been a tragic incident on the Darlington South Road upgrade project, with a worker unfortunately killed on the night of 13 June last week. As media reports have made clear, SafeWork SA has been undertaking an investigation into that incident.

In the meantime, certainly we have been doing what we can as a government, and also the contractor involved, York Civil, a South Australian company, has been engaged with the worker's family to make offers of assistance. We have sought and received the assistance of the office of the victims' rights commissioner to liaise directly with the family to make good that offer that we have made clear will be put by the government to assist the family in the appropriate funeral, repatriation and travel costs and my advice is that those discussions are still continuing.

I am also aware that the contractor that I mentioned earlier has also made an offer of financial assistance, and I also believe that there is a monetary amount which is able to be paid to the family separate to either the government's or the contractor's amounts from ReturnToWorkSA, so there has been contact with the family.

We formed a judgement that it would be appropriate for the government office or the government agency which is best placed to deal with these matters, and that is the Commissioner for Victims' Rights and his office, to be dealing with the family, given that they have the incredibly important yet unfortunate duty to be dealing with individuals and families who unfortunately from time to time have to bear these tragic instances.