Grievance Debate

Victor Harbor Road Intersection

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (15:22): I have the privilege of rising today to draw attention to an item in last night's federal budget coverage. Although it is not in my electorate, it is an important item for my electorate because it links the electorate to the City of Adelaide. It is the duplication of the Victor Harbor Road between Old Noarlunga and McLaren Vale. This is an important piece of work that needs to be done for many reasons.

I have travelled on that piece of road all my life. My earliest memory—it had been upgraded when I was very young, so that would be at least 45 years ago—is that they had decided that it was not big enough, and they used the sealed verges as an extra lane. They put in overtaking lanes using the sealed verges, and that was 45 years ago. The traffic volume on that section of the road is now up to nearly 25,000 movements a day. In this state, there are not many roads that are unduplicated that actually have that volume.

This is such an important piece of infrastructure that gives a better gateway into the region, not just for my electorate but for the whole of the Fleurieu. I had the privilege yesterday of going down there with the Minister for Transport from the South Australian parliament and the candidate for Mayo, Georgina Downer, to do some media on the announcement and to talk about how desperately it is needed for that region.

We met on the corner of Seaview Road, which is right at the top of the hill where a lot of quarry trucks come out. It was actually quite scary just standing there on the side of the road as those trucks went around that corner. They look for a gap, often a gap that would not be a big enough opportunity for me, in my car, to seize, but if they do not seize that opportunity when they can, or when they think they can, they would be sitting there all day.

It is such an important part of this work that these issues are also going to be addressed in the widening and duplication of the road, intersections where there are large traffic movements, where we see quarry trucks, in particular, coming out. It will significantly improve safety. Unfortunately, only recently there was a fatality on this piece of road, involving a truck and a car. We need to try to do what we can to improve the safety of this road.

There will be many in my electorate who will have wished for more, but this is certainly the most important and most stressed part of the Victor Harbor Road at this time. As I said, it has about 25,000 traffic movements a day. When you move further south between McLaren Vale and Willunga, it drops down quite dramatically to around 15,000 movements a day, so there is not quite the same stress on that piece of road. Again, when you go on from Willunga through to Mount Compass it drops down to about 6,000 to 8,000 movements a day, and further on it continues to decline as you get towards Victor. So the pressure certainly has been on that piece of the road.

Yes, there are tragic accidents elsewhere, and there have been for many years, and we still require extra work to be done. We still need to see extra spending on this road going forward, perhaps more overtaking lanes or a wider strip through the centre to separate the two directions of traffic. It is an important piece of infrastructure, and it is very important to the businesses that operate on the Fleurieu, to farming and tourism. It is the lifeline of the region of Finniss.

I very much commend the efforts of the minister in lobbying for this and also thank Georgina Downer for her advocacy. I am thrilled that this has been able to be delivered for our region, and I continue to see great improvement in the working relationship between the Marshall government and the Morrison government to achieve great outcomes.