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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-03 Daily Xml
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VICTOR HARBOR-ADELAIDE ROAD

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:45): I have two electorate issues I wish to raise today. Members of this place will be very familiar with the stories that in the public arena about the Victor Harbor-Adelaide road. Just recently we had yet another fatality down on the bottom end of that road, adjacent to the Waterport Road and Welch Road/Ring Route junction. I have had raised with me on numerous occasions the dangers involved in this junction. In the last 12 months I have had regular communication and discussions with people about the entrance from Waterport Road. You come around the corner and it is 100 km/h until you get onto the Adelaide-Victor Harbor road. There is no 80 kilometre zone.

I have asked for this matter to be attended to; it has still not been attended to. It is a major worry to me that people are entering an accident-prone area such as that intersection at 100 km/h. In the interests of the general travelling public, I make the point very strongly that an 80 km/h zone leading from Waterport Road heading west needs to be put in place urgently before the holiday season.

I also put on the record my ongoing concerns about that entire junction. We were successful last year in having that section of the road reduced to 80 km/h. I believe that has helped, but, obviously, it has not helped enough because we had yet another fatality, as I said. My view is that it needs to be realigned and that a rural roundabout needs to be put in there and the traffic slowed right down. It is the only way this junction will be fixed up. Tens of thousands of vehicles will go through that road every week with the oncoming holiday season. Obviously, a roundabout will not happen in time for that, but it is critical that the department and the government of the day get busy, work with the local authorities and put in place a different format on that road.

The second issue I want to raise relates to Kangaroo Island. I have obtained some information regarding the revenues that the Department for Environment and Heritage's national parks division is gathering on Kangaroo Island through its park operations. Let me make it quite clear that I have no objection whatsoever to the department running commercial entities—it employs considerable numbers of people and it is an economic boost to the island. Apart from all that, some other side benefits are spread across the island in the tourism sector.

However, the Kangaroo Island Council is in dire states in terms of finding funding to do road maintenance activities. Members would have recently heard that it is thinking about wanting to impose a visitor levy. Income from the department of environment on Kangaroo Island for the last 12 months was $2.74 million. Now, that is okay, but just bear in mind that the council has been holding out on waste collection fees for a number of years—and I stand corrected if it has been paid. The council is screaming out for revenue.

If the commercial entities that the department is running there cannot be rated, there is something seriously wrong. Of course, you cannot rate crown lands. These are commercial entities. I say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, some form of contribution from that $2.74 million should be going to the Kangaroo Island Council to its maintenance structures and to its road-making capacity on the island. It is certainly inequitable and not appropriate that that sort of money is raised and none of the benefit of that money (apart from wages) goes back into the community of Kangaroo Island.

The Kangaroo Island Council is desperate for money, and I intend to follow this through and make an issue of it. This has been an issue for a long time, but I have now obtained these figures. The income from Seal Bay alone last financial year was $1,417,730. That is before the fee increases took place properly, on 1 April—a convenient date, I would suggest. Because the fee to visit Seal Bay has nearly doubled for families and individuals, it will be an enormous amount next year. Purely and simply, if they want to earn that money that is one thing, but they need to contribute to the community in other ways than just providing employment. They need to pay a rate or have a form of levy on their income to provide for the infrastructure of the rest of Kangaroo Island, whose roads are travelled upon to get to those national parks, which are funded, subsidised and paid for by the local community.

Time expired.

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