South-East Region Roads

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:09): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Florey and the opposition front bench will come to order. Members to my left and right, question time has concluded, and the member for Mount Gambier, who is an Independent member of this house, is wishing to make a contribution. He will be heard.

Mr BELL: I rise to talk about the state of our roads, particularly the roads in the South-East. I have put a motion forward this week which we did not get around to, but it was quite interesting that the motion before, which did take up a fair bit of time, was talking about injuries and deaths on our roads. Our roads in the South-East are the worst in my living memory, and yet we seem to be spending more and more on road infrastructure and maintenance and repair.

What we see at the moment is a contract that has gone out to Fulton Hogan, who have their base in Naracoorte, which is one hour away from Mount Gambier, the state's second largest city. The response times and quality of the repair leaves a lot to be desired.

Previously, our road maintenance was done by the Highways Department or the Department for Infrastructure and Transport. What I am calling for is a return to locals looking after local roads. Re-establishing a Highways Department in Mount Gambier for the South-East would add a number of benefits, not only the skills and the training, but it would avoid ridiculous situations. I will give an example. A few months ago, our office was contacted by the RAA, who were saying that they have put a van pretty close to a dangerous pothole because numerous calls were coming in to the RAA of people damaging their rims and tyres.

So I decided to get in my car, drive out towards Millicent on the Millicent Road and have a look at the pothole for myself. Sure enough, RAA vans were parked there, and two cars were on the side of the road with damaged tyres and rims. Fifty metres up the road, there was a District Council of Grant roadworks. I rang the CEO and said, 'Listen, we've got a very dangerous situation here. Can a few of the guys just put a couple of shovel loads of gravel in the hole until it gets repaired?'

Full credit to the CEO—he is a very diligent CEO and a good friend of mine—he said, 'Troy, we can't touch a state government road. As soon as we do, we are liable.' So you have the crazy situation of an immediate repair not being carried out through threat of litigation or fault down the track. Of course, that is no comfort to the people to whom I have spoken who have had their cars damaged, so we need to get back to having a local solution for our state government roads.

Not only that, when I was growing up my dad was in the E&WS. He worked his way up pretty much all the way through. We had ETSA. The number of apprentices that these departments churned out year in, year out, who now own their own businesses in the South-East or elsewhere was high. It was a fantastic breeding ground for high-quality skilled tradesmen for our state and the benefit of all people in our state.

Of course, I have written to previous Minister Wingard and current Minister Koutsantonis and explained my reasoning and the issues that I have with the state of our roads and asked whether or not the budget is large enough to cope with the required maintenance. I quote the Minister Koutsantonis:

They took the cheapest possible price they could and roads have deteriorated. The private contractor is constantly asking for changes to the contract…The people of the South East know the road maintenance outsourcing has been a failure.

I wholeheartedly agree with Minister Koutsantonis, and I am calling on the state government to rectify this urgent issue. Renegotiate this contract in the interim period whilst looking for a long-term sustainable future, and that would be the re-establishment of a highways department in the South-East.