Regional Roads

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (17:37): I want to talk about the state of our country roads. I do not reckon there would be a country member in here who would not back me up in saying they are the worst they have ever seen. They are certainly the worst I have ever seen. I imagine this will be a key plank of an election platform going forward.

There is something deeply wrong with the contracts and how the government has tendered for the state of our country roads. I have never seen it so bad in our region. We have had some rain of late and the potholes appear overnight. We are not talking about just little cracks—they call them crocodile cracks—we are talking deep, gouging potholes that destroy people's cars.

The number of calls that I have had in the last three weeks—in all my time as a politician I have not had this number of calls come into our office. People bring photos of the potholes with sharp edges on them, damaged rims that are costing people $160 to $180 to get the blown tyre fixed, and if they cannot bang out the rim they are up for a new rim on their car as well. These are just ordinary people going about their business, trying to get to work, trying to take the kids to sporting practice and the impact that our roads is having on them is something that I have never seen.

The other day, I went out to the saleyards for a mental health day and driving out there I pulled over, took photos and sent them into Fulton Hogan straightaway. I had never seen that stretch of road so broken up with so many potholes that will do serious damage to our residents' cars. The old saying goes: it is amazing that our cars need to be roadworthy, but our roads certainly are not car worthy. It is not the first time I have spoken about this; I have spoken about it for a number of years.

One solution that I have put forward is re-establishing the highways departments, to get locals looking after local roads. Not only does it employ people in our country areas to rebuild population, they also stay. There are schools and they obviously get involved in sporting clubs. It is a way of helping repopulate country areas. But more than that, it is country people looking after country roads, taking that extra bit of care to make sure that the job is done properly, so that when potholes do appear the fix is immediate, because they are the ones walking the streets, and people know there is greater accountability.

An owner of one of our tyre stores that I visited said it is not unusual to have five tyre replacements a week due to potholes. The sad part is that, when you take photos, send them to Fulton Hogan, and look for any compensation at all, the response is always no, they are not liable for any damage to cars or their rims, and basically tough luck. We have to be able to do better. I see South Road being built at billions and billions of dollars, and it is a project that I totally understand. Our country residents deserve the same level of investment as those in the city. I am calling on the government to relook at these contracts.

I have spoken about the Fulton Hogan contract, and, quite simply, the allocated funding is nowhere near adequate to maintain our roads. There must be something about the quality of material going in. If it is breaking up this quickly, why can we not be building our roads to a higher standard, so they can actually last more than 12 months? The road to Millicent had not even been completed, and there were potholes in that brand-new road. It is just unheard of.

As I will stress again, we need lasting solutions. Residents should be able to travel safely to work without worrying about a $500 bill, worry about learner drivers and probation drivers or inexperienced drivers who do not see the potholes or, worse than that, start swerving away from them into oncoming traffic.