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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-17 Daily Xml
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OUTBACK ROADS

Ms BREUER (Giles) (15:48): Last week I had the great pleasure of travelling up north—which is not unusual for me. Once I head up the highway the world changes, so I went some considerable distance—probably about 5,000 or 6,000 kilometres, I am not sure—to the north-eastern side of the state, not my side of the state.

I was accompanied by an Aboriginal couple, and we were looking at a number of heritage issues, but I also used it as an opportunity to travel around and look at some of the issues in that part of the state which are relevant to issues in my electorate in my part of the state.

It is always a pleasure to visit anywhere in the Outback. I was thinking as I drove around that we have such beautiful country out there; it is remote but it is so beautiful, and I feel very privileged to be able to travel there as often as I do.

Today I want to discuss some of the issues that are important to people in the Outback and the remote parts of our state. There are three big issues: employment and the way of life out there are really all about tourism, mining, pastoralism and farming. That is what the big issues are about with employment. As a result of this, important day-to-day issues are roads, jobs and rain. These I had a good opportunity to look at.

The state of the roads is a really important issue for people who live in remote parts of Australia. We have a lot of tourists who go out there and who come back and whinge about the state of the roads, but they are not living with them day to day, as people out there are. I was quite surprised; I truly believe that in the eastern part of the state some of the roads are in far better condition than those in my part of the state, which concerns me somewhat, and I will be speaking to the minister about this. We do get a lot of tourism in that area, and we have the big Santos there, so there is a need to have good roads, but I was impressed with the standard of those roads and I felt quite concerned that we do not have as good roads in my part of the state.

It has an impact on tourists as they travel through there; it has to be good for the mining and pastoralism industries, which need to have good roads. I was interested to see that what we tend to do on my side of the state is patch up a lot rather than resheeting. We are talking about horrendous amounts of money here; this is a long term thing. I am not saying we can solve it next week, because I am realistic and I know that is not possible. It costs an incredible amount of money to keep our roads in a reasonable state.

I have asked on a number of occasions whether we can look at resheeting a lot of our roads, as seems to have been done on the eastern side of the state, so perhaps we are next on the list. In lots of areas in my part of the state the roads are so deep because they have been graded so many times that they do need resheeting and looking at.

One particular road I went on—I forget where it was, as I went on so many roads—was actually in sandhill country. I have driven through the Simpson Desert, and this sandhill was not quite as concentrated as in the Simpson Desert, but I noticed that some very good roads have been built through those sandhills, so there is a method and it can be done, and I am hoping we can look at that seriously for the Giles electorate also.

One of the big issues is deaths on roads. It is absolutely essential that these roads are safe. If people are using them not just to travel around sightseeing but also to travel from place to place for emergencies and so on, we have to make sure our roads are safe, so that is why I believe it is such an important issue for us.

One thing I found on the eastern side of the state is that there are a lot more toilets. One of the big bugbears in my life when I am travelling is that it is five hours between toilet stops. I found that they were better serviced on that side of the state, and I have had a discussion already with the tourism minister about this. When you travel like I do, you understand my concern as a woman about the lack of toilets in Outback areas. There is a long wait between stops.

One issue is also that there are no McDonald's out there or anything like that. People do not realise; I do not think tourists understand the distance between places. You have to make sure you have adequate food, fuel and water when you are travelling, so it is important to talk to people about these issues. Jobs are essential for our communities. I was pleased to see that a lot of training goes on for locals in the mining industry, particularly for indigenous workers in some areas. I would like to see a lot more rangers out there working and giving information to tourists being trained in those areas.

Time expired.

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