Bus Services

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:13): My question is to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. Why did the minister's office assure me only two months ago that there were no planned changes to bus services in my electorate? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: In an email dated Tuesday 31 March the minister's office wrote to me stating, and I quote, 'There are no planned changes at this time,' only to announce cuts to bus services in my electorate just two months later.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (15:13): I am trying to just piece together the time line here. If I accept what the member says is accurate in relation to that, we were running through a tender process, and we are still right in the midst of that tender process.

Certainly no decisions have been made in relation to services in the member's area. Can I say that one bit of great news for the people of Gawler is that they have been running for some time a very analog, on-demand bus service, one where you have to sort of call up an hour in advance, book in, to be able to get around. That's part of Gawler, and then there was a fixed-route service, off the top of my head, that satisfied the other part of it.

The great news is that, because of the new technology we will be trialling, we will actually be able to upgrade that service to the app-based system that we have been trialling in both Mount Barker and the Barossa Valley. It means that people who have been using that existing essentially quasi dial-a-ride kind of service are now able to, through the use of technology, get access to a better on-demand bus service.

I know that's going to be a massive improvement for the people of Gawler and it builds off the fact that we are spending $620 million of taxpayers' money to electrify the Gawler line. The Gawler people have for so long been cynical about whether or not that line was ever going to be electrified. I'm certain that the member for Light would have been standing nodding at every press conference every time Jay Weatherill announced it or Mike Rann announced it. I'm not sure if he was at the press conferences where the project was scrapped, but there are workers out there now undertaking the work to electrify the Gawler line. A $175 million contract has been let to buy 12 new electric—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —three-car sets. We are delivering better public transport services for the people of Gawler. Once that line is electrified and those new electric trains run down them, the people of Gawler can finally realise what they have long been promised and that is a faster, smoother and better service to Adelaide, one that provides some 15 per cent increase in capacity and one that will deliver them the better service that they were promised by the former government for a decade.