Glenelg Safety Bollards

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Can the minister update the house on the installation of the safety bollards at Glenelg Primary School?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:52): It's interesting that there's a degree of flippancy I hear from members opposite in relation to this question. Can I—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: I think you just attract that.

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Can I update the house that actually information has been brought to my attention which needs to be explored further. The safety bollards that were put in place only in recent weeks down at Glenelg actually saw their first accident in the past 48 hours. In fact, I think there is a very strong suggestion that we managed to avoid further carnage because of what is, yes, an otherwise simple project. Yes, it may not be a huge amount of money but, yes, it is also delivering a massive benefit to the people in that community, especially when we consider that not three or four metres from where these bollards are installed is or was a playground for the Glenelg Primary School.

This is a very, very important project. Interestingly and serendipitously, last night I spoke to the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management—a group of traffic engineers who essentially help us to understand how we should be designing our roads and how we should be developing our road network to improve it, not only for productivity and congestion busting, but also from a road safety perspective.

I had the opportunity to visit one of the stalls of Roadside Services and Solutions and met Craig Woods, the director of the company who actually built the bollards that have been installed in the member for Morphett's electorate. He in fact went through with me how the design of these bollards absorbs the kinetic energy when a crash takes place and does a lot to help save not only the pedestrians and the people behind the bollards but also the people inside the vehicle.

The bollards are designed for the vehicle not to nosedive at the back of the vehicle coming over the top, in effect crushing the driver, but to push the front of the car up and push the passenger back into their seats and suffer far less serious accidents. There is a lot of science that has gone into this and work that has been done by a great company based here in South Australia.

This election commitment is one that the member for Morphett, then the candidate for Morphett, fought extremely hard for, in conjunction with the City of Holdfast Bay and Glenelg Primary School. After having had a couple of accidents happen on that very corner, the department has installed bollards along the north-eastern side of Diagonal Road in front of Glenelg Primary School.

Yes, it's only a 40-metre section and, yes, it only cost taxpayers $130,000, but this is a very clear example of the types of things that this government is undertaking to make our road network safer. Certainly, the minister for road safety outlined in the previous answer the fact that we are spending over $1 billion on regional roads to improve road safety, but there are small treatments, such as this, that are just as important.

Can I put on the record to the gentlemen that I met last night, Jim and Craig and the other guys there as part of the Roadside team, my thanks for the work that they do and the commitment that they have to improving road safety through something you would otherwise consider is pretty simple. It's just a bollard, but the science that has gone behind that work is extremely rigorous. It's one that will save lives and it seems like, in the last 48 hours, it has done its job to keep people on our roads and people walking next to our roads and people playing in playgrounds—our children playing in playgrounds at local primary schools—safe as well.