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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-22 Daily Xml
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BAROSSA VALLEY, PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (16:17): As the shadow minister for ageing, I acknowledge that yesterday was National Alzheimer's Day. I pay tribute to all those involved in caring for sufferers, the doctors who administer care and the medical scientists, who, hopefully, will soon discover a cure for this terrible disease which affects so many Australians. I commend the work that they do: it is care with love.

I have spoken ad nauseam in this place about the need for a passenger rail service to be reinstated to the Barossa, but today I want to focus on how the lack of public transport on offer in the region, coupled with the lack of government services available, makes the region doubly disadvantaged.

The Barossa region does not have Service SA, a Medicare outlet or a Centrelink office. Before I go on, I know that Medicare and Centrelink are the responsibility of the federal government. However, the transport available to people to commute to Gawler to access those services is the responsibility of the state government. The transport services offered in the Barossa are the highest priced in the state, and that is something that the Rann government could do something about, but continually chooses not to.

Over the past few months, I have been contacted by several constituents who have experienced difficulties due to the lack of services available and the lack of affordable, regular public transport to Gawler, where those services are located. One constituent needed to utilise the services of an employment agency, and found that there were none in the Barossa. Having a family, only one car and a partner in employment made it extremely difficult for the constituent to arrange a time to be able to travel to Gawler for that purpose.

I have been lobbying for a long time to have the passenger rail service reinstated between Gawler and the Barossa. Given that the Rann government has categorically ruled that out, it must at least subsidise the current bus services available to make them more affordable to everyone and increase the frequency of services offered.

Currently, to catch the bus from Angaston to Gawler costs $12.10 for a full fare and $6.05 for a concession fare. The Dial-a-Ride service is $10 for a full fare and $5 for concession, compared to $2.50 a ride in Mount Barker, as no state government transport is provided to the Barossa service to subsidise the cost. The state Rann Labor government completely ignores the Barossa.

The situation will only get worse if 140,000 more residents are introduced to the Gawler, Concordia and Barossa areas, as proposed in the Rann government's draft plan for Greater Adelaide. With more people and the same amount of services on offer, obviously this influx of people is going to add to existing problems.

It is high time the Rann Labor government acknowledged the problems that the Barossa community experiences as a result of a lack of an affordable, regular transport system, and did something about it. Surely, just run a single rail car between Angaston and Gawler, if the Angaston line is up to it. It is not too much to ask. At least they should trial it. We have heard the argument that the service would not pay, would not make a profit. Well, what public transport service in South Australia does make a profit? They are all heavily subsidised.

So, the government decision is that it will not subsidise this country service as it does all the metro services. It is discrimination, which is not fair, the same as ignoring the provision of a new hospital. Again, two different standards here. At the very least the government should extend its metro ticket system into the Barossa and provide a bus to coincide with the Gawler to Adelaide train timetable, so that people who catch the bus to Gawler get on the train; and they should do all of that on a metro ticket. That is fair, that is reasonable.

I also cannot understand why the wine train is not able to run. The Minister for Tourism is with us. I pay tribute to Mr John Geber, who has purchased the wine train, the Bluebirds that we all know and love. He has purchased them and has shedded them, and he is paying huge costs. He wants to run on the line, but we are unable to get him on the line. He owns it; he bought it outright now. He has a wonderful destination in the Chateau Tanunda up there—most of you have been there—and still we have this impasse where, rather than help the man get his train on the rail, we put every impost in his way so that he cannot.

The government should be dinkum about it. It frustrates me so much. Here we have the Barossa, one of the proudest and most pleasing areas of our state, which is delivering for the state, and they just cannot seem to deliver anything for them. I say again: I hope that the minister hears this plea. I have been on the subject for a long time, and we just do not seem to get anywhere. Surely, for a person who buys the train, why can't he operate it?

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