School Road Safety

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (15:31): I note that the government put out a budget-related press release referring to changes in speed limits for pedestrian-activated crossings on main roads. I am very pleased they have started to make some progress on this action, which I have been calling for in my electorate for some time. In fact, I wrote to Minister Koutsantonis on 9 November last year and received a reply six months later, only after raising in the parliament, on two occasions, that I had not received a reply, and also raising it at a briefing I had from the department about some work on an intersection in my electorate.

In my letter to the minister I warned about the dangers of pedestrian crossings around schools and no warning, and the speed at which cars were passing those pedestrian crossings on main roads such as Unley Road and Goodwood Road. In the letter I requested that there be more physical warning, whether it be rumble strips or a raised section of the road or, with technology such as GPS ability in many modern cars, cars purchased in the last five or six years, whether there could automatically be a system that enables warning of a school crossing or a school zone coming through the audio system of the car.

The minister wrote back, and apologised for how late the letter was responded to, but then spoke about 200 sites that were going through an audit to determine what could be done to make them safer. We saw that the outcome of that was just a change in speed on those main roads, with no other warning device or cameras. I would much rather see people warned effectively.

There is no point in just having that rolled out over a five-year period at selected sites, so what is the criteria? Is the criteria after a death, is the criteria after a serious injury? What is the criteria? We know how this government operates: it responds to an action. This would work much more effectively if we had all school sites at the lower speed limit on these main roads as they are in the Eastern States, and I have raised this in this place before.

This is only a half-baked solution. It is a start, but the work will not start for 12 months—the government's press release said 2025—and then it will not be finished for five years. That is only a handful of sites. They have only listed five of those sites in their press release, and others are to be announced, but nowhere near enough to cover all the pedestrian crossings that are on main roads through the suburbs and in country South Australia.

I will also spend my time here in the chamber to raise my concern on behalf of Unley High School. The school went through a process, at the invitation of the department, and spent $20,000 of their own money developing plans with the department for conversion of an old building that needed updating, to provide six new classrooms so they could move from 1,700 students to 1,800 students in time to match the growth of student enrolments. Up until about a month ago, they were led to believe by the department that that funding was coming through, and it was just a matter of it being approved by the government.

We learnt not that long ago that the government, despite forcing the school to spend that money, that $20,000, have decided they have priorities elsewhere rather than Unley High School. Their only solution now for Unley is for it to move into a capacity management plan, which means there is a risk now for next year that somebody who is living across the road from Unley High School will be told that their child cannot go to Unley High School. It is another school within the inner south, within the inner eastern suburbs, that is managed through a capacity management program.