Regional Roads

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:21): I rise today to speak about regional roads and, specifically, the past practices of the former Labor government regarding the reduction of speed limits, rather than spending money on maintaining them. As recently as 12 September last year, the Weatherill Labor government dropped the speed limit on another eight of the state's regional roads, citing road safety concerns. Pre-election, the Liberals vowed to reverse the decision on those eight roads if they won office.

I specifically rise today to point out the flawed arguments around such decisions and to emphasise the Liberals' intention to review all speed limits on all major country roads, understanding that crashes are caused by a wide range of factors other than speed, including inattention, fatigue, drug and alcohol use, whether you have animals in your way that you have to swerve to avoid and a range of other factors.

At this time, I am specifically advocating for 110 km/h speed limits to be reinstated promptly on at least the regional roads that have been upgraded significantly in the recent past since decisions were made in 2011 to lower speed limits. Quite clearly, there are a few roads good enough to travel at 110 km/h because we now have 36½-metre road trains travelling on those roads. Since that decision was made, there has been quite a bit of work done on a couple of roads in the electorate.

I speak specifically of the Copper Coast Highway and the Yorke Highway and also the Bute to Kulpara road as roads that are now of an obvious standard that would allow them to be returned to 110 km/h speed limits. Works on the Yorke Highway were completed just a couple of months ago and, after the current works that are near completion along the Paskeville to Kulpara section of the Copper Coast Highway, there is no reason why the Copper Coast Highway itself cannot be reinstated to 110 km/h as well.

I was pleased to welcome the announcement on 18 May that the works on the Yorke and Copper Coast highways that will enable 36½-metre road trains to use them have been completed, which will increase efficiencies and productivity all around. This now means that the Yorke and Copper Coast highways are restriction-free, heavy vehicle networks. It surely now follows that the speed limit on these roads can be reinstated to 110 km/h for cars because if they are good enough for these big trucks to use they are good enough for all vehicles.

Every time I am heading home from Port Wakefield and get to the Yorke Peninsula junction off Highway 1 and see the speed limit drop by 10 kilometres, it seems ludicrous. As I am on a road that is in good condition with adequate shoulders, particularly since major works occurred there after the decision was made back in 2011 to drop the speed limits, it seems all the more ridiculous.

Yes, the Liberals have committed to reviewing speed limits on rural roads and it is high time, as seven years have passed since the 2011 decision was made. The more than 350 kilometres of road targeted back then in 2011 included the 60-kilometre stretch from Port Wakefield to Wallaroo, the Kadina to Port Broughton road, the 78-kilometre stretch from Ardrossan to Yorketown and the 54-kilometre stretch from Ardrossan to Moonta. There were four of 45 sections of state rural roads, 723 kilometres in total, reduced from 110 km/h to the default rural limit of 100 km/h along with seven local government road sections.

Why were they reduced? To save lives. Between 2006 and 2010, there were reportedly 290 casualties from crashes on these roads, 22 people died and 121 sustained serious injuries. Six of those fatalities occurred on Yorke Peninsula. My research shows that, just since 2015, there have been 11 fatalities on Yorke Peninsula, up by five on the 2006 to 2010 numbers since the speed limit reductions. Whilst I do not have the number of serious crashes, my argument is that any available stats are difficult to analyse because stats do not show the speed at which vehicles were travelling at the time of the crash or what other mitigating factors caused injuries or fatalities.

As announced prior to the election, the Liberal Party is committed to using mining royalties to fix SA's neglected regional infrastructure under our Royalties for Regions policy, quarantining 30 per cent of mining royalty revenue for a dedicated regional roads and infrastructure fund. This is an exciting policy for us. As stated by the Civil Contractors Federation SA chief executive, Phil Sutherland, at the time of our announcement around the Royalties for Regions program, 'Our road network in SA is nearly 50 years out of date and it needs a lot of investment and attention.' He added that if we can get the regional road network up to speed, that will surely stimulate regional economies.