Schubert Electorate

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:59): It is fantastic news that this morning, Tuesday, the Regency to Pym section of the north-south corridor was open for traffic in both directions. This is a great day and one that has culminated after years of hard effort.

Soon upon coming to government—in fact, eight days after coming to government—I had my first meeting with the then federal Minister for Infrastructure, Mr Fletcher, who is back in that role, about funding this phenomenally important project. Having had that project funded, and a contract having been awarded to a group of companies, including McConnell Dowell, Mott MacDonald and Arup, we have seen this overpass built—a great achievement and a great project for South Australia.

Once again, the superstar from McConnell Dowell, Mario Russo of Oaklands Park crossing fame, has delivered a project early and under budget, and that is great news for the people in my community, the people of the Barossa. This overpass creates a nonstop corridor, from Port Road right up into the main street of Nuriootpa, for people coming up to the Barossa Valley. This means that you can get from town to the heart of the Barossa, the northern end of the Barossa even, in well under an hour.

That is great news to help improve the number of people who can easily access the Barossa. I would say to everybody that the Barossa is now even more accessible than it was. We know that after the northern connector was opened, saving some 10 to 15 minutes per journey, for people coming to the Barossa we are now going to see a saving of, on average, between five and eight minutes and eight minutes at the peak.

There is now even less excuse for people not to visit and see all the new attractions, the new cellar doors and the new facilities that have been built and are being built in the Barossa. To all of you out there, I encourage you to come and visit because #The Barossa just got closer again. What we now have is a nonstop gateway and nonstop corridor that will facilitate more and more people coming to what is Australia's premier wine region.

I would also like to talk about a fantastic festival coming up in a couple of weeks' time in the Barossa: the biennial Barossa Vintage Festival. Perhaps the most visible part of this festival to the community and to people who come and visit is the scarecrow competition. For those uninitiated, what happens is that every two years busy households and businesses across the Barossa, including my office, put together a scarecrow to put on display to be judged as part of the scarecrow competition.

Out of a district of 15,000 people, this year we have now had over 180 scarecrows registered for people to come and look at. Some of these scarecrows are not just a bit of straw stuffed into a couple of hessian sacks on the side of the road. They are quite elaborate scarecrows of all sorts of persuasions. I have seen ones in relation to Star Wars, and I have seen quite an elaborate barrel and scarecrow setup about a Barossa wine train down Menge Road. I would like to congratulate the people who put that together—Chris and Jayne Pfeiffer—and say that it is a fantastic opportunity for families to come not just for our fantastic food and wine but to explore some pretty cool structures.

In fact, on Sunday I took my girls—because they had been bugging me about it—to see what are a couple of big round bales of hay that are not actually part of the scarecrow structure but are very famous in the Barossa, that is, our Bluey hay bales. They actually look pretty authentic, and we had our photo taken in front of them. Even as we were there for the three or four minutes it took to take a photo, 15 different cars stopped to have a look and take photos of that structure. Again, that shows the intense and wonderful community spirit the Barossa has. I am not even sure what the prize is, but I do not think it matters. It is about showing off to the people who are coming to visit our region.

To those who are voting, though, I put in a shameless plug for scarecrow No. 122 called Schubert the Spin Bowler. To explain, it is a scarecrow that always gets put together by my staff, without my input, because they use it as a great opportunity to poke fun at whatever I have been doing over the preceding time. Having starred in five games in A5 cricket for Angaston—unfortunately we did not make the finals this year—Schubert the Spin Bowler, scarecrow No. 122, is on display in front of my office. Please vote for that scarecrow or, if not, vote for any scarecrow of the 180 and enjoy what is a fantastic tradition in the Barossa that has existed now for over 25 years.

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