Question Time

Regional Rail

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (15:07): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport on regional rail. This one is for you, Mr President, for your last day.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: On 16 May 2025, the former Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Tom Koutsantonis, announced two additional rail corridors to support peri-urban growth, one south towards Aldinga and Sellicks Beach and one north towards Roseworthy and Concordia. I quote from the minister:

As the world around us changes, our transport system will play a crucial role in driving economic growth, achieving net zero emissions, and preserving the liveability of our state.

My question to the minister responsible for infrastructure and transport, therefore, is: when will the Malinauskas government finally announce a meaningful transport policy that adequately services our regions by expanding passenger rail to connect our regional cities and townships? When will you finally fund regional rail?

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Autism) (15:09): I thank the honourable member for his question. Regional public transport is very important to this government. As he has highlighted, new corridors have been secured. I think that a pretty important part of planning ahead is not to think in a few years' time, 'I wonder how we are going to build that infrastructure that is so needed for these new housing growth areas? We should maybe go and acquire all these homes that we allowed to be built where a corridor could have been secured if someone had just planned ahead.'

As a government, yes, we are planning ahead. We have made it very clear that we are extending those important rail and public transport corridors. That is something that the government have been proud to be able to achieve. We have also been pretty proud to be able to achieve bringing back our public transport into public hands. You might roll your eyes over there and feel like, 'Oh, I have heard this before,' but when you have good government in place, you want to make sure that you can continue to invest in public transport. We need to make sure that it is in public hands, and that is what we have done with our trams and trains.

The reason that is really important is that the honourable member is pretty keen on getting trains to Belair, extending the line. He is keen to use the ARTC line to be able to extend the train line. This becomes a little bit tricky. I do not know if the honourable member with his policy announcements over there has decided to talk with ARTC about if we are able to use their line to extend public transport. We know that this is very complicated and not an easy one and not an efficient one at that, because if you have an ARTC line that is owned by a freight company, guess who has priority on that line? It would be the freight company.

So in the morning, when you are waiting for your passenger train to be able to use a freight line, I am not sure exactly which section they get to use and how they get to use it. Are they waiting on the sideline whilst waiting for the freight line to go past? As a government over here, we are doing our homework and we are investing heavily. We have made sure that we have not just gone out there with some ideas about 'Let's go put a train here' or 'Let's go do something over there'. What we have done is we have brought the trams and trains back, as we promised.

What we have done is spend $19 million in Mount Barker so that we can have up to 590 extra services. That is a 42 per cent increase in services. We have seen $2 billion spent on public transport. We have seen patronage grow by 1.9 million journeys. We have seen significant change, because we are not just investing in one part of this story, we are investing in bringing it back. We are investing in the infrastructure, and we are investing in the services that are available. That is the combination, and we are very proud that we have been able to achieve that.