Traffic Management Centre

Ms HABIB (Elder) (14:35): My question is to the Minister—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is called to order.

Ms HABIB: —for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Could the minister update the house on the important work of the Traffic Management Centre?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:35): Thank you, member for Elder. I thank her very much for the question and for her interest in the great work of the Traffic Management Centre. I had the good fortune of being able to visit the Traffic Management Centre last week and to see the good work that they are doing, especially getting to sit down with the team and understand what processes they go through and how a new state government can help them in their very, very important work.

I did have a chance to sit down with Mark, who is one of the senior guys at the facility, and a guy called James, who is a developer, who essentially helped develop the AddInsight app, an app that I have been an avid user of for a long period of time. It has saved me many hours of getting around car crashes on Port Wakefield Road. I am looking forward to helping them improve the functionality of the app to help bring it on more services. I was really excited to hear about their plans around increasing their ability to access bluetooth sensing information from vehicles so that they can make even more accurate the data that they provide as part of that app.

There is a whole lot more exciting work and more announcements to come in relation to that app and its increased functionality and how it can really deliver for South Australians and also how it can deliver for other capital cities around Australia and around the world. Some of the work that is currently being negotiated and undertaken by them around the country is absolutely phenomenal.

What excited me was that here was an example inside government of where innovation could occur, where someone with an idea and a structure and understanding of the process (this being Mark) and a guy who could take technology and software development (James) got together to spark something that will become a product for government. There is more work to be done on this in increased functionality—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —and I look forward to that happening. More important than that was a discussion about the operations of the Traffic Management Centre and how they can be made easier and better, especially in relation to the changes that we announced last week in relation to road traffic amendment act regulations around how we are giving increased ability to the Traffic Management Centre to be able to ensure that roadworks happen at the most appropriate time and most appropriate place on our network and being able to convey that information to road users.

There was quite a bit of discussion about how the upcoming major infrastructure road projects in the pipeline will change the nature and operation of their work. Essentially, every time we build an overpass or tunnel or anything of that nature, the number of cameras and the amount of information that the Traffic Management Centre has access to increases at quite a large rate.

But probably the most exciting discussions that we had were how the Traffic Management Centre's work can really inform a new South Australian Public Transport Authority and the work that they do to regulate the current bus system on our roads and what more can be done to help to unlock our public transport system to deliver for South Australians.

It really is an exciting and innovative space and what we see here is a chance meeting and chance interaction that has led to some serious innovation within government. This is the kind of thing we need to see a whole lot more of. This is the kind of thing that we need to pervade all areas of government and that, as a government, we find ways to say yes to innovative and smart ideas so that we can help change the culture and nature of the state to one that is willing to look at new ideas, bring them into fruition to help to deliver for South Australians and then export that right around the world.

So I would like to thank Mark and his team down there for the great work that they are doing. I look forward to working with them over the next year to two years as we develop the South Australian Public Transport Authority and help to reduce the road traffic burden and the regulation burden for South Australian road users.