Freight Productivity

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Can the minister inform the house on how the Marshall government is lowering costs by increasing freight productivity?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:24): Can I thank the good member for Narungga for his question, a man who is extremely keen to work together with his regional constituents, as well as this government, to deliver better freight productivity for the many broadacre farmers on Yorke Peninsula. We have an ambition on this side of the house to grow our economy by 3 per cent. It is something that we ministers are constantly lectured on by the Premier and something that has been drilled into us, that we must deliver.

In order to do that, we need to help our large industries, our large exporters, to improve the way that they do business. We know that one of our largest exports is grains out of South Australia; in fact, it is our largest export. We need to do what we can on this side of the house to improve the cost of doing business—

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Mawson is on the board.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —for those farmers so that we can get their product out of the port and overseas as cheaply as possible to increase those returns back to growers. The best way to do that is to improve freight productivity.

There are two things you need to deliver better freight productivity on our roads. The first of those is the political will to push for less red tape, but also an opening up of our road network to higher freight productivity vehicles. The second thing you need, and this has been the missing element for the last couple of decades, is the money to deliver the improvements. That is something that this government is delivering on in spades—in spades.

We can make some simple improvements that make things a whole lot easier for farmers right across South Australia by making some simple changes. I must commend the federal government for their help with the heavy vehicle productivity program and with something in the member for Hammond's electorate, and that is the Cypress Terrace level crossing upgrade to make sure that we can get rigid trucks, road trains, 35-metre B-triples, 32-metre and 36½-metre road trains, as well as PBS Level 2As and 3As across that intersection.

At the moment, what you have to do is stop and get a permit every time you want to cross a rail crossing. Essentially, you have to phone up and ask whether it's okay to drive across. By putting $2½ million on the table, in conjunction with the federal government, we are going to make it so that all those vehicles that I just mentioned don't have to stop and make a phone call: they can do what the rest of us get to do and that is cross the train line. That is a fantastic outcome that is going to help improve freight productivity in that part of the world.

We are also tackling some specific upgrades that are going to help not only our broadacre industry but also our livestock industry. We have put money on the table to help Thomas Foods and provide some enabling infrastructure, road infrastructure, to make sure that we can get high-productivity vehicles to their front door so that we can help with their expansion and their ambition to grow 2,000 jobs out of Murray Bridge and to rebuild a plant that has been ravaged by fire, and in turn help one of our largest export industries in South Australia.

We have put on the table $6 million to fix Kroemer's Crossing in my electorate of Tanunda to again help the wine industry move grapes around the electorate just that much more efficiently. We have put money on the table to upgrade some intersections down in Naracoorte, in the member for Narungga's electorate, to again help the livestock industry down there to be able to use higher productivity vehicles, helping livestock carters get their stock to the Dublin saleyards more efficiently, to drive costs down and to essentially pass those costs back on to the producers on the land.

This is a government that is willing to tackle freight productivity head-on, not just by reducing red tape but by putting the money on the table necessary to help our farmers grow our biggest export markets that are going to deliver prosperity and jobs for the people of South Australia and get the Premier off our back by delivering the 3 per cent growth that he requires.