Freight Transportation

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (14:41): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Trade and Investment regarding freight.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY: The official Liberal Party website provides information to the public who want to know more about the Liberal government team. The member for Heysen, Josh Teague, is reported to be the honorary consul for Sweden, and a great consul I'm sure he is. The website also states:

Josh is a strong supporter of the Marshall Liberal Team's GlobeLink plan. GlobeLink will provide businesses with the competitive advantage they need to get premium local products to international markets, while removing freight trains from the Adelaide Hills and reducing tracks on the South Eastern Freeway.

My question to the minister is: what exactly is 'the Marshall Liberal Team's GlobeLink plan' that the member for Heysen strongly supports? How many of the 100 trucks that were lined up on the South Eastern Freeway on Monday would have been off the road if GlobeLink had gone ahead?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:43): I thank the honourable member for his ongoing interest in freight movements in South Australia. Of course, members in this chamber would be well aware that one of the policies the Marshall Liberal government took to the election was to invest—I think it was a commitment of up to $20 million—in the business case for a project called GlobeLink.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The members opposite don't like it. They actually should have read the fine print where it said 'it is a business case'—which we did: we invested some money and we had a business case done for GlobeLink. As members would know, in the last couple of months it was released. My good friend and cabinet colleague the Hon. Stephan Knoll, the Minister for Planning, Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, released the final report to say that, at this point in time, it's not economically viable to do so.

I would also highlight the second part of the member's question about the 100 trucks that were queued up. That was after, I think, an unfortunate jacknife with a truckload of chickens, which was very unfortunate for the travelling public and, of course, for all the chickens involved in the accident. I saw the Freight Council and a number of other bodies then start talking about bypasses of heavy freight through the Hills, because this will be an issue as the freight movements—if members opposite listen in silence—we know are going to continue to grow.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Clearly, the members opposite are not interested in listening to some information. All they want to do is continually interject and disrupt. While all of the time that they were in government—16 long, dark, hard years of Labor—every year the Freight Council would put out their projected increases in freight movements. We know the freight task is going to continue to grow. We have put a proposal. We said we would look at a business case. We have done that. Clearly, we have seen that, again, the public say that this is an issue for the South Eastern Freeway.

One accident and basically we had a blockage of 100 trucks queued up, a whole bunch of commuters. The community then have come out and said, 'What are the other options?' The government will continue to look at other options because the freight task will continue to grow. We know that it will continue to grow, and we will continue, as a government, to look at options to make that road flow more freely and to try to deal with the increased freight task. But it is clear that after 16 years Labor did nothing—not a single thing.