Parliamentary Committees

Public Works Committee: Intersection Upgrades

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:01): I move:

That the 59^th report of the committee, entitled Portrush Road and Magill Road Intersection Upgrade, and Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road and Briens Road Intersection Upgrade, be noted.

The Portrush Road and Magill Road intersection is located approximately four kilometres from the Adelaide central business district, and the intersection at Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road and Briens Road is located approximately nine kilometres from the CBD. Both are very significant intersections with heavy carriage of vital traffic.

The Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure advises that both intersections are currently operating at capacity during peak periods, with signal phasing and traffic lanes fully utilised, creating congestion and causing safety risks, which are well known to members in this place. The Portrush Road and Magill Road intersection is part of the National Land Transport Network and forms part of the outer ring route, which is an identified major traffic route and freight route in the state. Both Portrush and Magill Roads are also identified as high frequency public transport corridors.

Right turn movement with Grand Junction Road to Hampstead Road is identified as a key freight movement, and the existing single right lane causes problems due to the slow acceleration of heavy vehicles. DPTI has advised of the need for additional capacity on all approaches to the intersection, and the need to provide additional capacity for the movement by duplicating the existing right turn lane.

The proposed upgrades to both intersections are expected to improve travel times and also improve safety outcomes for all road users. It is anticipated that the upgrades will also improve network reliability and support economic activity. The budget for the Portrush Road, Magill Road intersection upgrade and Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road, Briens Road intersection upgrade is $98 million and $19 million respectively. Funding contributions have been made equally by the state and the commonwealth.

Construction for both road intersection upgrades is expected to be completed by late 2021. The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to the project, and received assurances that the appropriate consultation in relation to this these projects had been undertaken, and the committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and meets the criteria for the examination of projects sets out in the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Based on the evidence considered, and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee recommends to parliament the scope of the proposed public works.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (11:04): I rise to speak on the motion moved by the honourable member for Kavel. It is fair to say that the opposition is supportive of the Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road and Briens Road intersection upgrade. However, the Portrush Road and Magill Road intersection seems to have been maladministrated. It seems to be, in my opinion, an ill-conceived, ill thought-out, expensive and intrusive piece of infrastructure.

In taking evidence during the Public Works Committee, we heard evidence from constituents of the Premier who live in and around that intersection, who informed me that the department had behaved in a manner that I thought was intimidating and, quite frankly, not in the best traditions of the way we conduct compulsory acquisitions. I do say, with some sympathy to the minister, compulsory acquisitions are difficult. I have addressed very, very angry crowds about compulsory acquisition and government upgrades of major intersections. It is difficult. I accept that. I hear the Attorney-General mumbling under her breath in her usual unhelpful way.

The maladministration that I believe has occurred here by someone, I think, very close to this project has been that the government has used its resources, I believe, to treat local constituents in that area appallingly. Yet the question we have to ask ourselves as a parliament is: is this the best use of $90 million worth of taxpayers' money?

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Ninety-eight.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is $98 million worth of taxpayers' money. I was taking out the DPTI fees for your consideration. I am just talking about what we are actually spending on the road, not what we fund to keep your department's FTEs funded.

The important thing here is the question: was this project head of DPTI's priority list? Was this an intersection upgrade that DPTI were pushing hard for, or was it simply a matter that there was a change of MP running for the seat of Sturt, from a very high-profile, well-known, established, long-serving and, dare I say, popular Liberal MP in Chris Pyne, close friend of the Government Whip—I understand they are very close, very tight—being replaced with a Liberal Party staffer who no-one had ever heard of other than in the Premier's office?

Could it be that the government was expending taxpayers' money simply to get a Liberal hack elected to the commonwealth parliament? Maybe. We will not know until we are in office and we will do an audit of this to find out whether or not this intersection was pushed up the list by a government decision or whether it really was something on the priority list that DPTI had in place. We will find that out at the change of government. We will not know that now because the minister will not, of course, let us know. But we do know that this is a very proud announcement by the minister. He has been championing this intersection, as has the Premier. The Premier and the minister are big supporters of upgrading this intersection.

Interestingly, when you look at the maps of the intersection that is being upgraded, you notice that the government have chosen an alignment that is interesting, to say the least. The alignment they have chosen is not to disturb an SA Power Networks asset, a service station and a car park. However, the government were quite happy to choose an alignment that compulsorily acquired private freehold residential property, people's homes, rather than potentially not acquiring anyone's home. It is an interesting choice the minister has made. I do not know what considerations were taken about why this was done. A bit of the evidence we received from the department was—

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, Minister for Transport!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Some of the evidence we received from DPTI was the prohibitive cost of moving the SA Power Networks substation.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my right! I removed the member for Hammond yesterday. Do not make me do it again today.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Minister for Transport, you will have your time to shine. The member for West Torrens has the call.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It seems that the minister is agitated about something, something else focusing his mind. I do not know whether it is because I have mentioned the word 'maladministration' many times. Perhaps he is focused on other matters.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Just get on with it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: For the defence, the Attorney-General pipes up, sir.

The SPEAKER: Yes, the Deputy Premier has a point of order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order: I think the member has had fun. Let's just get on with it.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I would like that to occur. I would ask you to cease provoking, if you can, please.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you very much for your protection, sir. It was a strange alignment, where you heard members of the government ridiculing the opposition for perhaps even suggesting that, rather than compulsorily acquiring people's homes and closing businesses, we consider whether or not there is scope to have that substation removed. Was there capacity in the system? We could not get that answer from the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure—whether or not that substation was essential—but I am sure the minister inquired as to whether or not the substation was essential or whether there was capacity in the system to have it removed altogether, and why leaving a car parking place for a chemist's shop is more important than taking people's homes.

I am sure the government think they know what they are doing. I am sure that the Premier and the minister think that this is popular in the eastern suburbs, but we shall see—we shall see. The opposition's view is that this money has been poorly allocated to a project that perhaps was not necessary. Even more concerningly, the alignment of the proposed works is overly disruptive and intrudes on a very beautiful part of Adelaide.

Perhaps a different alignment could have given us a very different outcome, but we have a very junior and inexperienced minister in place and I think perhaps he rushed this decision. Perhaps he did not read everything he was meant to read; perhaps he did not do his due diligence. Perhaps he did not ask the appropriate questions of the agency. Curiosity is always a very important instinct to have as a minister. Perhaps this minister lacks those key fundamentals when he is inquiring of the agency about how this alignment should occur. I also wonder whether or not the minister has taken the time to go and speak to any of the constituents who have had their homes compulsorily acquired, whether he has actually spoken to constituents of the Premier who have had caveats placed on their titles by the department.

I have also received correspondence that the Premier himself has refused to meet with some constituents who are affected by this intersection, which I also find concerning. I know the Premier is busy, especially during a pandemic, but politicians are never too busy to serve their constituents or to meet with local communities. I would have thought that perhaps the Premier could meet with this local community and speak with them about their concerns about this and that more could be done to try to save some of those jobs that are being acquired through the alignment of this road.

I think this is a poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly designed intersection that will create more angst than good in the eastern suburbs, and I think the blame for that lies squarely with the minister.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the minister, during the member for West Torrens' last contribution I believe I heard the minister say, sotto voce, 'bloody oath'. I am going to make a ruling that that is not unparliamentary, but if I hear it in malice I might change my ruling. Minister for Transport.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (11:14): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As always, we defer to your superior judgement. There was a lot of assertion and innuendo in the member for West Torrens' speech, and it is interesting that, when asked point-blank about whether or not Labor support this project, they are unable to give you an answer. What they prefer to do is try to sniff the political winds on an issue as opposed to getting on and supporting what is a stimulus-delivering, traffic-improving project.

The evidence for why this intersection has been picked as part of the government's record $12.9 billion infrastructure program is that we need to deliver the best traffic outcome and traffic improvement to the greatest number of people that is possible. On coming into government, having made an election commitment, we put together a Keep Metro Traffic Moving report, a report looking at a whole series of ways that we can help to improve traffic across Adelaide.

One measure used to identify where the most congestion occurs is the percentage of travel time delay, which is a relationship between the average time during peak and the minimum time. If you drive across a road at midnight and nobody else is around, that is the baseline measure. The average of the peak time taken and the delay between those two is where we know that we have the greatest amount of congestion. The number one road on that list is Portrush Road.

The number one road, at 26.5 per cent average increased time delay from minimum to peak average, is Portrush Road—the most congested road in South Australia. So heaven forbid that we would pick that as a road, and a key intersection on that road, to fix the intersection. Also on that list of the top dozen most congested roads in South Australia is Magill Road, coming in with a 15 per cent delay. So the opportunity to fix an intersection that deals with two of the top dozen most congested roads in Adelaide would seem to me to be a pretty reasonable choice.

Apart from that fact, as the member for West Torrens well knows—because it is in the Public Works Committee report that was tabled—it shows that for the $98 million of taxpayer spend on this project there are $600 million to $900 million worth of benefits over the next 20 years that will be delivered, $600 million to $900 million worth of benefits because of this investment—again a BCR that is phenomenal in how much improvement it is going to make to our traffic network.

If you go to any business in South Australia and say, 'I can give you $6 back for every dollar you invest,' they would say, 'Where do I sign up?' The question about the alignment of this road is not one the department took lightly at all. In terms of creating an alignment, you want to pick one side of the road or the other side of the road to have to acquire because you do not want to have to acquire both, two lots of land acquisition but also two lots worth of service relocation. Looking at this intersection, the choice was extremely clear.

Whilst members opposite might be flippant about how much cost and time it would take to move a significant substation, experts within the department are not and, as a minister who listens to those experts, I am not. Had we wanted to see tens of millions of dollars worth of extra cost, and potentially years worth of delays, then we could have chosen another alignment, but to do so would have put taxpayers at risk and energy users at risk.

We would have had to find somewhere else within the vicinity that was an appropriate location to put a new substation, built the substation and transferred everything across to be able to shut down the existing substation. That is not an easy task, especially when dealing with SAPN and having to fit that within their own schedule. So of course it became much easier to take the other side of the road. Yes, that meant the difficult decision to move a childcare centre, which I note shut down in February well ahead of the middle of the year time frame that was put on the table.

Again, we think the $600 million to $900 million worth of benefits at stake here for South Australians is a good use of taxpayers' money. The 50,000 to 55,000 motorists a day who go down Portrush Road will know the difference that this intersection upgrade will make. As a government, whether it is this intersection or whether it is other intersections around Adelaide that we are upgrading—the Hampstead Road, Briens Road and Grand Junction Road intersection; the Fullarton Road and Cross Road intersection; two grade separations; as well as five other intersections around Adelaide—we are spending money to fix up our road network.

We know that this is what works, we know that this is what delivers benefits to South Australians and we know that we need to continue to invest to create jobs but also to build the infrastructure that this state needs. The $12.9 billion on the table over the next four years shows that we are serious. There are always short-run issues in delivering infrastructure projects when land acquisition is involved, and we certainly do appreciate that it is difficult.

What we have instituted since coming to government is—instead of running a completely sequential project delivery framework whereby you do all the design, then the land acquisition, then the early works and then get into major construction—that we have sought to deliver these projects more quickly by running a number of these processes in parallel. This has meant that we have been able to give more information to locals about the way that they will potentially be affected much earlier in the process.

As soon as this information was announced, the first amount of information went out to a potentially affected residence. Then, in October last year, we were able to go out with further information, well before the designs were completely finalised, so that we could give local residents more time than they have had previously to be able to make decisions about what is best for them and their families. Essentially, we have given a 12 to 15-month heads up that something is coming down the pipeline, we have then given nine months to be able to work through what is otherwise a difficult process and we have used every tool that we have within the confines of the Land Acquisition Act to be able to provide help and support to residents.

I do know and I do appreciate that there are some people who do simply do not want to see this upgraded, but what we do and the decisions we make as a government are based on what is best for all of South Australia. It is what we can do to help improve the lives of more people, rather than necessarily give in to sectional interest. I also resent the imputation in the member for West Torrens' remarks, suggesting that somehow all the infrastructure investment, and the difficulty and pain that is gone through, should be confined to one side of the city or the other and that it necessarily should only be people in the western suburbs who have to bear the brunt of land acquisition and disruption.

We have a grid network. We need to provide traffic improvement across that network, and that is precisely what this government has chosen to do. According to road congestion statistics, this is the number one priority in terms of helping to fix congestion on our road network. It is a project of our conception and our funding, and it will be of our delivery. It is one that I know all South Australians can be proud of, knowing that we did what is otherwise tough and difficult so that we can deliver a better network for South Australians and so that they can spend more time at home, rather than sitting at a set of traffic lights being frustrated.

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:23): The Public Works Committee considered this project extremely carefully. At no time in those hearings were improper motives ever attributed to the minister or any other member, and the matters that are now being ventilated by the member for West Torrens ought rightly to have been put before the committee. It speaks volumes about the reason why those matters are now being ventilated here: that is, the member for West Torrens comes as the prince of acquisition in his time in government to criticise, opportunistically, the minister for a project that has a very, very substantial basis.

The minister outlined the BCR for the project and he outlined the congestion and the traffic impact, not only on those motorists seeking to pass through this intersection but also on commercial vehicles at this intersection—both these intersections. These are vital parts of our city's transport network. Acquisition of private land is very difficult. It involves a number of important considerations. Substantial protections are available at law, and those people whose properties are being acquired ought, and rightly should, take advantage of all the protections that exist at law. However, that process is being conducted according to law and carefully, to ensure that proper value is paid for those properties.

Mr Speaker, allow me to reflect briefly again on the number of vehicle movements at these intersections. DPTI has advised that an annual average daily traffic movement of approximately 60,200 vehicles passes through Portrush Road and Magill Road. Then, of course, there are 58,400 vehicles passing through the Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road and Briens Road intersection. It is hard to contemplate further intersections in Adelaide that have such substantial pressure on them at the moment.

What, of course, comes to mind as well is that the former government had many years to resolve this issue. Instead, they come now, late in the piece, without properly ventilating these matters in the Public Works Committee, and they ask that we somehow question, at the final moment, matters that have not been raised earlier. I think that is the height of mischief-making—

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: He has done worse.

Mr CREGAN: —he has done worse—and is not informed by a proper focus on ensuring that public money is spent to resolve substantial transport issues. It is dangerous ground in this place, it is very dangerous ground, to turn to matters of maladministration without having a proper basis to do so. If there is a proper basis to make suggestions of that type, they should be put in a different forum, as the member well knows.

It is clear to me, as Chair of the committee, that these matters are raised not to ensure that there is a laser-like focus on the matters that section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act asks us to focus on, but instead to ask us to direct our focus on matters of pure politics. These are not matters of merit and not matters that we should rightly be focused on when considering the discharge of our obligations within the committee and equally when considering how a substantial amount of public money is to be spent.

None of that is to say that anybody in the government does not have substantial sympathy and appreciation for the extraordinary stressors and anxiety faced by those people whose land will be acquired. There is no doubt that that is a difficult process, but we are all each also committed to ensuring that those people receive all the rights and benefits that are accorded to them under statute.

Motion carried.