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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Bills

Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 26 February 2015.)

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (15:35): I rise today to speak on the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill and do so referring to the minister's second reading. Having spoken to a number of key stakeholders about this bill, we support this bill and concur with the minister and the statement he made that there are just a few minor amendments to improve this law and its operation. We know the operation of rail safety in South Australia is very important, whether it be in the regions or the city.

I have worked very closely with the members for Chaffey and Flinders in working with companies like Genesee & Wyoming to make sure that the rail lines in the country regions are maintained and serviced and that they support and supply the regions up there. I know the member for Chaffey is very interested in the Loxton and Pinnaroo railway lines and there were some concerns that they would be closing over time. We think it is very important to do everything we can to maintain our rail network in the regions because it has a very big impact, of course, on farming and mining, and it does a great job as far as road safety is concerned in getting truck movements off the road and keeping a good balance between rail and road.

We know the importance of rail to our regions and we know how important the railways are in helping supply produce to market for farmers. As we mentioned also, the mining community does a marvellous job up there and we know we need to keep expanding that and growing our economy in South Australia, and the railways have a very important role to play in that.

It is important throughout the regions and I mentioned a couple of our rural members are very keen on that but, in the press quite a bit of late, has been a lot of talk about the railways in the city. When we talk about rail safety, it was disturbing to note that the new head of the department came out just the other week and mentioned that there had been over 130 near misses on the railway network in recent times and it left him sleepless at night thinking about this prospect. It really is incredibly disconcerting to have that sort of figure and number on our railway line.

In particular, we look at the Gawler electrification that has not happened, and we look at the Seaford line that has had a lot of money spent on it. Over half a billion dollars has been spent on rail electrification in this Adelaide city revitalisation project. Half a billion dollars is a very big spend, and you would hope that that goes towards making our railways safer for commuters and also operators. It is something we have to keep working towards.

I know the minister is very keen on doing that, and he also said to me just the other day that it has him losing sleep at night as well when you hear those numbers of 138 near misses on our railway network. We talk about the half a billion dollar spend on railways and we know it is an expensive operation—there is not just money lying around to do these sorts of projects—so when we do them it really is important to do them right.

One of the privileges I have had being in this role of shadow minister for transport is I have got to meet some great people in great areas of transport—road and rail, and beyond. The rail people are very fascinating and very passionate about our railways and they like to talk about it ad nauseam, which is very informative and of great benefit to me. I have got to listen to and speak with quite a number of people who have a big passion for this industry.

I hark back to the spend of half a billion dollars on the revitalisation/electrification of our rail network. Some of the shortcomings that have come through with this system do not sit well with me. We mentioned that the money was put on the table to kick off this project and to electrify the Gawler and the Seaford lines and beyond. As the project kept evolving, some of the reports that have been tabled in the media more recently—and I refer to 'A brief independent overview of Adelaide electrification June 2012', which the government had commissioned—showed a lack of planning that allowed for scope creep and budget creep on this project.

It got to a stage where the government could not complete what it had promised from the outset and that was the electrification of both the Gawler and Seaford lines. They elected to go with the Seaford line which is beneficial to me and the members in the south, and I will talk more about that in a moment, but they did choose to cut the electrification of the Gawler line. That is intriguing, given that the report states that there were more savings to be had on the Gawler line than on the Seaford line. In fact the report that the government commissioned said that there was double the benefit in electrifying the Gawler line over the Seaford line, so it is interesting that that did not happen.

Regarding this project and the money that needs to be spent and the works that need to be done, I mentioned talking to people in the railway industry and some of the insight they have given me, and I raise these points. We had planned to have the railcars serviced at Dry Creek and now we are not electrified to Dry Creek. Millions of dollars were spent on the new electric trains—the new 4000 series EMUs—which have come to Adelaide at a slower than anticipated pace but they are starting to make their way here.

To get them serviced, they have to be towed to Dry Creek. These trains were not designed to be towed, so it is not ideal but that is how we have had to get around the system because of, again, arguably the mismanagement of this project in not electrifying at least out to Dry Creek. It is very disappointing that that happened.

This project was downscaled in May 2012. When Premier Jay Weatherill and Jack Snelling both came forward and said that they would downgrade this project and they would not electrify to Gawler, a lot of people at Gawler were obviously very disappointed. That was when this report, 'A brief independent overview of Adelaide electrification', was commissioned.

The report was damning. It makes a number of points, but I will just touch on a couple again. One was that the government needs to go about making a master plan for the project to stop scope creep in future. It said that the lack of a master plan was really at the forefront of what was causing a problem and they recommended that the government and Treasury also sign off on that master plan. To date, I have not been able to unearth a couple of important documents, and I am still yet to find that master plan.

I put it to the minister and I put in some FOIs to see if that master plan did actually exist because it would be incredibly disappointing if the master plan did not exist. The report that the government commissioned strongly recommended that a master plan be put in place to prevent more overspend and any scope creep, so it will be intriguing to see if we get anything back from my FOI request on that report or if the government can report back to us and let us know.

They were a couple of the issues, as I said, with this project. When they analysed this report on these projects, they looked at other cities and other jurisdictions that had done similar projects and they modelled the scale on those. For example, there was a project in Perth and projects in Auckland and Otira in New Zealand that were outside the scope of the South Australian projects. Alarmingly, the projects interstate had a far lower rate of spend. The South Australian projects are far more expensive than the projects being done interstate and overseas, which is a little bit alarming as well, as this report points out.

In fact, from the figures that this report uses, the cost of the South Australian project was far greater than the original Halcrow report that was done to cost the electrification. The report was quite fair and reasonable when stacked up against some of the other costings from interstate and overseas, but in terms of the actual cost blowouts, when all was said and done, the projected costings of the South Australian project at the time of this report show that we did pay a heck of a lot more for our rail revitalisation program than was paid overseas and interstate for similar projects. That is a real concern when you look at rail in South Australia.

I have touched on country rail, but we are looking at city rail now and the way things have panned out there, and it really is a concern. As has been reported in the press recently, the Gawler people and the people of the north of Adelaide have reason to be extremely disappointed that they do not have the electrification because, if the government had followed through with its plan and what it had put forward and potentially had stuck to scope and to pricing there, realistically both lines could have been electrified by 2012.

We hear this government talk about blaming the federal government. In fact, it was the federal Labor government that took the money back because arguably they saw what was outlined in this report, that the people running the project perhaps had not spent the money as wisely as they should have. The federal government was probably concerned that the money they had put in to fund their side of this project was being wasted, I presume, because they withdrew their money in 2012, and that is the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government.

Again, I hark back to this project and, ideally if what was delivered was what was promised in 2008, all would have been said and done by the end of 2012 and the project should have been completed. However, as this report points out, some overspends and some other concerns were the reason that the government had to pull the pin on the Gawler line and the money had to be given back to the federal government. As I said, in 2012 it was given back to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. They took that money back and that was the state of affairs. I do not like it when I hear this government trying to blame other people. If they had got this project right, if they had done this project as outlined and as committed to in 2008, if there was not the scope creep on their project, the people of Gawler and the people of the north would have their electrified line right now.

What I talk about and what people in the rail industry talk to me about is a more concerning point, and that is that we ordered enough electric trains to service the Gawler line and the Seaford line. Now that the Gawler line is not electrified, we probably have an oversupply and an overabundance of electric trains. In the future if the project is done that will be fantastic and they can service those lines, but in the meantime we have an oversupply. It was an effort to move the older trains off the line and now there are fears that some of those older trains may have to stay in service a whole lot longer.

The other thing that has been brought to my attention is the need for a loop to move the trains around in the central station to actually get the trains towed from the Adelaide Railway Station out to Dry Creek, and I talked about that earlier. I am told it involves four or five different moves. For what could take 10 minutes to get the trains out of the Adelaide station and off to Dry Creek it can take up to an hour, so there are extra costs involved in that as well with drivers having to move, manipulate and work longer shifts to tow these trains out to Dry Creek so they can be serviced there because that is where the servicing facility was put.

The other thing, as raised by the Auditor-General in his report last year, is the almost $50 million worth of wastage—I think it is $46.6 million worth of wastage—that has been identified and written off by the Auditor-General in this project—things that were paid for, things that money was spent on, to electrify the line to Gawler, because it was pulled back in 2012 when the government could not get the project happening. The report that I outlined before showed the details, but they could not manage to get this happening, so they started and now $50 million, or near enough to, has been written off by the Auditor-General.

That sort of thing is really frustrating to South Australians and unfortunate for the people on the Gawler line. They know that their project has been promised and has been on again, off again a number of times since 2012 and it is still somewhere in the distance. I really feel for them when they get on their diesel train to head home to the northern suburbs and they drive past these poles just stationary on the side, generally graffitied and tagged up. They see these poles and they must think, 'Why didn't we get our electrified train line?' Again, the report outlines a number of the reasons, and it is incredibly disappointing. There are more technical issues as well. I mentioned towing the trains and how that can be potentially damaging to electric trains. They are not designed to be towed; it is not the way a train is put together.

Another thing I have received some information on which I find quite concerning and will be following up is that the report also talks about there being only a single SVC. I will not get into too much technical detail, but an SVC is what powers electric trains. It was initially recommended that two SVCs be put into the system—one close to the city and one a little bit further south—so that if there is an issue with one, for example, the one in the south, then the one in the city could still power electric trains and get them down south.

With the dilemma of the cutbacks the government had to make because of their uncontrolled spending on this project, again outlined in this report, what has happened is that they have cut back to using only one SVC, these power points along the line. I will read the report because it is interesting:

Many SVC failures can be dealt with by the replacement of small components held on site. The key component that could cause prolonged outages (and thus loss of train services) would be a failure within the SVC transformer. This is not a standard device and if a spare were not procured a wait of anything up to 9 months for the construction of a new unit may be required.

It is a real concern that a spare SVC transformer has not been procured, as far as I am aware. I am really keen to find out from the minister exactly what is happening with this. Nine months of shutting down electric trains (which is potentially on the cards, according to this report) if this breaks down would be catastrophic at one extreme and disappointing at the other for the people of the south, and we would be in all sorts of trouble. As I said, if diesel trains are decommissioned, as is the plan, there would be a lack of trains running on the line and that would not be good for our public transport users. The report goes on to say:

As a minimum, the panel recommends that a spare SVC transformer be procured and held in warm storage at Lonsdale…It may be possible to use the transformer as part of further SVCs in the future should further lines be electrified.

They are the little things that, when you are running a project like this, I think are really important. People in the train industry talk a lot about these sorts of projects. It is disappointing, as a lot of money was put on the table, a lot of money was put forward, to be spent on this project. It is important that we do spend money on these projects and that we do improve our public transport system to try to get more people onto public transport.

I suppose it is a little like when you do projects at home: you always want to build the nice big pergola out the back and projects that, when people come around, you say, 'Hey, have a look at this. Isn't this fantastic?' However, you have to make sure you do the fundamentals as well. If you need to re-lay a gas pipe that pumps gas to your house, which it is almost as expensive as a pergola at the back of your house, I would suggest, but does not look quite as good, nobody wants to say, 'Come around and have a look at my new gas pipe.' That seems to be the outcome of this project.

I fear that the government wants to do all the fancy things—get new trains on the track and say, 'Look at these new trains, aren't they fantastic?' But have they put in the gas pipe? Have they done those things that will make sure that it all runs and works, the background work? It is not pretty, it is not sexy, but it has to be done to make something work efficiently.

That is a concern I see in this report: it talks about the issues that have not been addressed. It talks about the issues that potentially have been overlooked, and they are not the pretty issues, they are not the things that people see. People can still see electric trains on the track and think that it is all going wonderfully well, but when you dig a little bit deeper and you speak to people in the know and people who are in and around the train industry you find out that a lot of these little things have not been done.

The Premier in this chamber made mention of concrete resleepering throughout the whole network when he talked about the rail revitalisation program. He was quite adamant about replacing the splinters or the toothpicks I think he called them, or something along those lines, and putting down concrete sleepers and about how much better that is for the train line. It rubs me up the wrong way a little bit when he says that because near my electorate office, in the northern end of my electorate, is the Oaklands crossing—and I will talk about that in a few moments because it would not be a train conversation without mentioning it—and right on the bend, where the new electric train runs along the Seaford line, there are still 180 or at least 200 metres of wooden sleepers.

The Premier talks about getting rid of the splinters, but he has not been out to have a look at the rail line to realise that there are still some of those splinters or wooden toothpicks still out there acting as sleepers and that the project has not been completed. That is what the people of South Australia need to know, that is why they were so interested in this report—to realise that, whilst the government launches the railway line and has all the fanfare and hoopla of having new electric trains, they have not really done all the groundwork to make sure that all things work well and constantly and for a long, long time.

We have talked about the GHD report that was done on the tramline, and it was interesting to ask some questions of the minister today and get his answers, and we talked about remediation. The report the government had done—and I was lucky enough to get my hands on this as well because it was stacked away and the public were not made aware of this one—indicates that there were over 1,000 faults in the laying of conduit cable for the tramline upgrade when it ran from Victoria Square around to the Morphett Street Bridge, and 1,000 faults are a lot of faults.

I am no engineer, nor am I an expert, but with that number of faults in a project that was completed by the 2010 election (which is a coincidence), it appears that when you look at some of these things the project has been rushed—and it was rushed for a reason. Some might say the project was rushed to be completed by the 2010 election, again so you could have all the hoopla and all the fancy stuff and you could go to an election saying, 'Here are the trams, aren't they fantastic?'

Looking through the report the government commissioned, and they would have seen it and looked back at it—and some of my plumber mates have had a flick through this—I point out, and someone made mention to me, that there are pictures of the conduit that is laid in the ground. I learnt very quickly a bit about conduits, and again I am no expert, but the conduit is laid in the ground and it has to dovetail end on end in a specific manner so that there are no rough edges and it flows very nicely.

Some of the pictures in this report are quite shocking and quite damning, outlining how the conduit was laid. It makes the edges very jagged and very harsh on any cable that is pulled through this conduit. So, you pull through an electrical cable that is running through the conduit and there is a jagged edge on the side of the conduit (because it has not been laid properly) and it rips the sheath off the cable; hence, the cable needs to be replaced more quickly than was originally designed.

Some of these other pictures show the laying of bedding sand. When you lay a conduit—as was explained to me by some experts in the area—you lay down bedding sand, and sand makes perfect sense. You lay down bedding sand and put the conduit in the pit with the bedding sand, and then you pull the pipe through. The bedding sand allows the conduit plastic to move around a little bit as needed but does not allow for harsh rocks to push through.

In some significant sections of this project, they did not lay any bedding sand. There are photos in the report, and they did not lay any bedding sand. As a result, it has allowed rocks to push through the conduit. You can see in some of the photos, where they have sent down something like an arthroscopic camera to have a look down the pipe, where the rocks have pushed through. Again, if you pull an electrical cable through that sheath, the sharp rocks slice the cable and render the cable useless more quickly than had it otherwise worn out.

If you look at some of the pits, I am sure these are projects that will be repaired—and I hope they are. The standard reports that are laid down for the pits where the conduits and the cables run are quite concerning regarding the standard to which they are done. The conduit sits under the ground and no-one sees it. People see the tram go by, but they do not know that down under the ground these problems are occurring, and it is alarming.

As I said, there are over 1,000 faults, and the report suggests that to remedy these, to actually fix them and get what the government paid for and what they scoped for, the road or the railway, the line, needs to be dug up, the conduits need to be dug up, and they need to be re-laid because the standard is not acceptable. I talked about my plumber mate; he said to me, 'If I produced work like that on any job I was doing, I would be out of a job and out of work, and I would be sacked.'

They are the sorts of things we see with rail in this city, and they worry me. As I said, as shadow transport minister, the more people I get to speak to the more alarming it is. It would be remiss of me to not talk about the rail project that is at the centre of my electorate and my concerns because this has been going on for a long time—and I have mentioned it in this house many times before—that is, Oaklands crossing. I grew up in Oaklands Park and I have been through that crossing many times since I got my licence when I was 16 and I am now 44. I probably did not need to say that but I have.

Members interjecting:

Mr WINGARD: Yes. The government has done some plans and some specs and I will talk about them in a second. I have had my licence for a very long time and I said to someone the other day, 'If I had put a dollar in a jar every time I have been through that intersection and $5 every time I have stopped there, I would be able to make a very significant contribution to fixing the overpass and getting the project done.'

When I talk about the overpass, it was one of the rail projects that first introduced me to what goes on with rail. I was going to say that I have had people talk to me about this daily, but it is at least two or three times a day anywhere in and around my electorate—and it spreads further than the electorate of Mitchell, it goes into neighbouring electorates. Obviously there is a boundary between two of our electorates but anyone in the South will talk about this.

One of the things that we have watched over the journey is, again, promises made by past Labor governments which were very much unfulfilled. There was a promise of a $12.6 million upgrade to the precinct but that was pulled out of the previous budget as well, I think back in 2008. Instead, a couple of million dollars was spent on a study. I still find it quite fascinating that $2 million was spent on a study into the traffic congestion in that area, and all we managed to see were some pretty pictures of an overpass.

We did not get the flyover that the government normally provides. Normally there is quite an expensive fancy computer-generated flyover but this one just had some pictures. They floated around for a long time. In fact, it was back when minister Pat Conlon was the transport minister, I think in about 2011 or maybe a little after that, there were some very fancy pictures floating around of a rail overpass.

Arguably that is why the wooden sleepers were not pulled up on that bend. They were hoping or thinking or wondering about building an overpass but it never eventuated. One of the minister's staff at the time was reported in The Advertiser as saying that, after spending $2 million on the study and the diagrams, it was going to cost beyond $100 million. That was five or six years ago now, so it was a fair while ago, and the figures were as rubbery as 'beyond $100 million'.

I am intrigued to see what is going to happen with that. I am concerned now that the cost of the overpass has pushed out beyond $150 million. These are some of the other factors that we look at as far as rail is concerned in South Australia. The Oaklands crossing is a real bugbear in my electorate and around the South. I raised an issue in the media on the weekend concerning the report that came to me about the people of Gawler not having their rail line electrified. It was mentioned by the member for Kaurna in a bit of social media banter. He was very quick to jump on board and suggest that I was criticising the Seaford line and not looking after people in my electorate.

As I said, I am very happy to support good infrastructure projects that support public transport in this state. As the report outlined, my concerns were the money that was spent and the money that was potentially wasted on this project when a lot of key indicators in this report suggest both of these projects could have been done for what was spent on just the Seaford line.

I get back to the member for Kaurna because, as I said, he was very quick to get onto social media and criticise me for knocking a project for the South, and it could not be further from the truth. In fact, it was one of the worst cheap shots. I would liken it to an old football analogy of someone who tries to clip you behind the ears when you are not looking. If the member for Kaurna was serious about looking after the South he would be concerned for the whole South. In fact, if he was serious about helping South Australia, he would be thinking about the greater good of South Australia. I really fear that he might just be a little too insular and not be thinking of others apart from himself because, if he was serious about the full Seaford line, he would have supported the overpass—

Mr Picton: Do you support the Seaford line?

Mr WINGARD: I absolutely support the Seaford line.

Mr Picton: That is different from what you said on Sunday.

Mr WINGARD: That is not what I said. The member for Kaurna is so misled and so incorrect, in fact, it was absolutely incorrect. He had no idea what I said and his tweets on social media were 100 per cent wrong and, not for the first time, the member for Kaurna was100 per cent wrong—

Members interjecting:

Mr WINGARD: —and I am sure it will not be the last. The people down south really have to understand—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Mitchell is entitled to be heard in silence. Member for Mitchell.

Mr WINGARD: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. The member for Kaurna, if he was serious about the south and the whole region, would have supported the Oaklands overpass and known how important it is. Because he has a fancy bridge and he has—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind all members that it is unparliamentary to interject and unparliamentary to respond to interjections. I remind you all of standing order, I think, 141, that a member is entitled to be heard in silence. I do not wish to remind you all again. I will have to bring the book out and start calling people to order. Member for Mitchell.

Mr WINGARD: Deputy Speaker, maybe the member for Kaurna is supporting the overpass at Oaklands, and I am sure he is going to come and campaign hard with me to try to get a solution for that area, because he is very happy to have solutions in his area. He is very happy to take infrastructure projects that benefit his electorate, but he is not as supportive of the rest of the south. I will give other examples: the Southern Expressway did not get an on/off ramp in my part of the electorate but services his part of the electorate very well. He is very keen to spruik that but he does not want to support other parts of the south, so I find that a little disconcerting. This is another project, again, that he spruiks on about, the Seaford rail line—

Mr PICTON: Point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have a point of order, member for Kaurna?

Mr PICTON: Deputy Speaker, I completely reject the assertion that I do not support the south.

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PICTON: I also raise the point of order that the member for Mitchell has not referred at all to the content of the bill in his speech and I would ask if you could draw him back to the content of the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It would be good—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! It would be good, member for Mitchell, if you perhaps centred on the topic—

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!—at hand and did not refer to the member for Kaurna and what he has said every five seconds. Member for Mitchell.

Mr WINGARD: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I was just trying to raise a point that—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No; speech, not member for Kaurna.

Mr WINGARD: That is right. I said, thank you, Deputy Speaker. I was just trying to raise a point about rail safety and the fact that it is an overarching view of rail safety and all of those facets. The Minister for Transport will tell you that we have had many a discussion about how having such an open-ended system does mean that rail safety is paramount on the Gawler line, the Seaford line and all the lines around Adelaide, they are all important, and grade crossings are one of the keys to rail safety. That is what I was getting at there with the Oaklands crossing and I was looking for some support from the member for Kaurna, so hopefully he will do that.

The point I was making as well, as we talk about the Oaklands crossing and grade separation, is how important it is to find a solution. It has been going over for over 30 years, as I said, from when I first got my licence, so quite a long time ago. There has been promise after promise after promise. I probably feel a bit like the people of the north do with the Gawler electrification, who have had promise after promise after promise and it has since been taken away. It is very disheartening and discouraging for them.

The other thing I wanted to say is, as we look at all of these projects, and I have talked about rail in the regions and making sure we do everything we can to support our regional friends and make sure we get produce and goods moving as quickly and efficiently as possible to maintain a productive and vibrant South Australia in the regions. Public transport, on rail, is also extremely important and I hope, with some of these projects we have looked at, that in the future, when we do look at these projects, we can make sure they are efficient as possible.

Reports like the one I referred to earlier, the brief independent overview of Adelaide electrification, point out some of these issues, and it is not needed even to be scoped or to be done because it would be great if these projects were running as efficiently and effectively as possible. With that, I support the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill and commend it to the house.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (16:09): I rise to speak to the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2015. I note that, essentially, the amendments in the bill are there to tidy up the act, which is the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act 2012. They are not controversial and we on this side of the house will be supporting these amendments.

However, as the shadow minister has rightly contributed, there is much to say about rail in this state. The act that this bill seeks to amend came into force in 2012, but the national law actually commenced operation on 20 January 2013. The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator was established as a body corporate under the national law and its scope now covers New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Legislation has been enacted in all those jurisdictions.

Western Australia hopes to be on board by May 2015. It is interesting in that it is like some legislation we have had here on nationalising trucks, truck legislation and freight: Western Australia stands out on its own, but that is another story.

In regard to the act we are amending, I note that the inaugural chief executive officer, Mr Rob Andrews, who resigned and went to his home country of England, was replaced by Susan McCarrey. She was formerly the deputy director-general, policy planning and investment in the Department of Transport in Western Australia. As I indicated earlier, since this national law has commenced, there has been a need for some minor amendments. Most of it is just about changing words to reflect other states' legislation and a bit of tightening up of the legislation. A phrase is to be removed from section 12 of the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act to ensure consistency in drafting style. This amendment has no substantive effect, relates only to the South Australian provisions and does not amend the national law itself.

I note that heavily throughout the bill the word 'cancel' is substituted for 'revoke' to ensure consistent terminology. Also, removing the requirement that before requiring a person to appear in person to provide evidence or documents, the regulator must first take all reasonable steps to obtain information of which the person has knowledge in the form of a written statement or by production of documents I think is certainly a sensible amendment.

Another power that the regulator will have if this goes through and becomes an act is the express power to suspend the accreditation of a rail transport operator for not paying its annual fee. In regard to the amending provision, the regulator will have discretion to suspend the accreditation until payment of the late annual fee and to withdraw a suspension if an instalment plan for payment of the fee is made or for some other reasonable cause.

There is also an express requirement in this bill for rail infrastructure managers of registered private sidings to provide an annual activity statement to the regulator, and I think that is only right and proper. There will be a note inserted at the foot of section 128(1) of the national law to point out that, in some participating jurisdictions, provision is made that a positive breath sample from a person will be taken to indicate the concentration of alcohol in the person's blood for the purposes of the national law. Again, this is will just tidy up the language and make sure it is worded correctly for the application of this bill if it does become an act.

I am glad someone else has typographical errors. The words 'rail infrastructure' will be substituted for 'structure' to fix a typographical error in section 145 of the national law: 'A rail safety officer has the power to enter or open rail infrastructure to examine the structure'. This will make it consistent with the drafting of the rest of the paragraph in that section. The full term 'rail infrastructure' will be used there. There is also the new power under this legislation to enable a rail safety officer to direct a person to produce documents. As it stands currently, rail safety officers are able to require production of documents only when they are on rail premises.

In regard to fees in relation to provisions of the national law, there will be a power for the regulator to waive or refund the whole or part of the fee to a person who applies for an exemption from provisions of the national law. This power will provide consistency with the other powers of the regulator to waive fees for accreditation and registration. Certainly, from our side's consultation with stakeholders, it has support from industry associations. I also note that it has the support of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union.

That is essentially the meat of the bill, but I too want to make some comments about rail and the history of rail in South Australia and Australia. We have had too many gauges to make us all happy. Every state, I think, wanted to do its own thing, whether it be broad, standard or narrow gauge, and there were some different gauges for cane operations in Queensland as well. It has created a lot of issues along the way, and it creates inefficiencies. We saw during the war years that trains had to change over when shifting troops and goods.

I note that, in 1995, the Melbourne to Adelaide standardisation project, on which I was a contractor, was a project to bring the broad gauge line back to standard gauge between Adelaide and Melbourne in order to get those efficiencies in sync. The interesting thing is that before that happened there was the installation of concrete sleepers, and I have spoken about this in this place before. Essentially, what happened is that before the big team moved in to transfer the gauge, we were engaged for several weeks unclipping the line every other clip while the trains were still running.

As you take every other clip and then you come back to have another go there are fewer and fewer clips holding the rail in place, so the trains were kept running and slowly their average speeds were wound back. We left all the clips on the corners because that is obviously where the derailments would happen.

It worked out that over Easter 1995 we did the job. We had an unclipping crew in front, and then we had a unit where people came through and a machine lifted up the rails about waist height. It turned around the pad the rail sits on, which entailed a bit of manual work in using some tools to shift the rubber that the rail sat on, and then as we went forward the rail was laid down. It was nearly as bad as shearing sheep working on that machine because there was too much bending involved. I was glad I was on the unclipping machine up the front most of the time.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Yes, I was fortunate. I did have my turn if someone on the other job had to go and have lunch, but I soon realised that perhaps I needed to be somewhere else. It was interesting. It was good to see normal track crews working with people who were hired for just those few weeks, such as myself, as contractors to get the job done, and that was completed in that year.

I also want to reflect on the efficiencies of Mallee rail, and I am sure that the member for Chaffey will speak about this as well. During my first year after being elected to this place, they celebrated the centenary of the rail out through to Pinnaroo, in 2006. Genesee & Wyoming got on board and took a train out to Pinnaroo and then ran it back and stopped it at every stop back towards Tailem Bend. It was a fantastic event, with communities all along the line celebrating the contribution of rail to the Mallee community and what it had done over that time.

Sadly, the use of that rail has diminished over time, as it has everywhere. I can remember, even at Coomandook on the Melbourne line, all your fertiliser would come down on the rail—that was in the bag days. Thankfully, I can only just remember, as a child, seeing the large grain stacks of the bags and I didn't have to do much—

Mr Treloar: You must be old.

Mr PEDERICK: I must be old, the member for Flinders says. I have a very faint memory, I can assure you: it goes a long way back. I am just glad I did not have to lump the wheat bags at the stacks, because they were certainly real men who did that job. Stock came and went on the rail, fertiliser came on the rail and, certainly, grain went on the rail.

Sadly, these days, a lot of the time, rail freight cannot compete with road freight, which is a real pity because it puts extra stress on our road network and puts heavy freight on our roads when I think rail could be used more often. We have the freight task force and members from this side of the house work with members on the other side, including the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Transport, in regard to freight lines throughout the state. The state of the Mallee line certainly has not been kept up for what is needed for modern rail service.

The position is that, potentially, about 170,000 tonnes of grain could come up that line each year but it is under heat control,. If it gets to a certain temperature—I think it has to operate under 30°—it has to operate at night and, certainly, it can only operate at about 25 or 30 km/h, and that is inefficient. It is a real pity, because I can see the demise of rail in the Mallee after it has served us for over a century. I hope it does not happen. I also note that the Mindarie sand mine used to send all their material for export on the rail but that does not happen anymore either because of the competitiveness of the road freight network.

What I will say is that, if more freight comes off rail wherever it is in this state (and I know the member for Flinders will talk about the narrow gauge system on the West Coast), something else has to give. There has to be more money put into roads and, certainly, it means a whole lot of shoulder sealing needs to be done, whether it is out towards Karoonda in the Mallee, Loxton way or out through Tailem Bend, Lameroo and Pinnaroo. I have said in this place before that there are theories that when the Lameroo to Pinnaroo road was built they paid more for putting in corners, because I am sure that is what happened. There are so many corners in that road it is just outrageous. Whether it was so you did not have the sun in your eyes all the time when you were driving west, I am not too sure. It is just one of those things.

If that is to be the future, and I hope it is not, money (millions of dollars) has to be spent on upgrading roads. I also note the safety factor of those extra tonnes, if they do come on the road network. It does impact, because there are no overtaking lanes on the Mallee roads. It is not like the Dukes Highway. We will need to look at that.

It is a pity the golden era for rail has gone. It is like everything: it is about the cost of running systems. I can remember when we used to have station masters at all our little towns. I know Coomandook had a station master, Harry Zarr. He was there for many years. Our station is still there, even though some have disappeared along the lines.

It was not always freight coming down the rail. I can remember travelling from Adelaide to home at Coomandook for three hours on the Bluebird, from 8 o'clock in the morning at Adelaide to 11 o'clock at Coomandook. I know the Melbourne express still runs and people say we should have public transport by rail through to Adelaide, but I do not think people would find it exciting or timely to be on a train for at least two hours from Murray Bridge into Adelaide. The answer for public transport out there is full public transport on buses coming up the freeway.

I cannot see it happening because there are a lot of other projects, like the intermodal project of running rail around from Monarto, skirting around the Hills and coming in at Two Wells or somewhere there with a road next to it to take both road freight and rail freight off the rail coming through the Hills into Adelaide and the heavy trucks coming down the South Eastern Freeway, because quite a few need to divert or their freight depots are at the north of the city anyway.

I did have this conversation with a constituent the other day because they were saying that we have to have rail passenger transport, and I said that I do not think it is going to work. The only way it will work is if someone spends enough money to put a light rail line from before where it starts twisting around at Mount Barker, run a line up the freeway and then punch another hole through the Hills at the Heysen Tunnels. You can already add up the dollars that are just tinkling over right now. Essentially, you would run light rail down to, say, the intersection of Cross Road, Glen Osmond Road and Portrush Road, shoot up Cross Road and cut into the rail system that exists there. I cannot see that happening, but I think that would be the only way that would justify that.

Certainly, in the history of this state, rail has opened up the state, just as you see internationally and in the old movies from America that showed how they opened up the West with rail. It has done a great job, and it is a pity if governments of any persuasion turn their back on it because there are so many opportunities. I look at what Victoria is doing with the Murray rail project. They are considering opening up the system and expanding it. We should be looking at opportunities to feed into that as well. I am sure our bulk grain operators would not be too happy about that, but we have to look after what our producers want and what they need to do in connecting so that they can get the right outcomes for their freight.

We have had great opportunity, as I said, to freight our produce. I know with grain now you can get on the Melbourne line at Tailem Bend, and there is a great system there where they do not even stop the trains. The trains are going through non-stop, loading at a slow speed and being loaded very efficiently, but it means that all those tens of thousands of tonnes of grain are being transported there by truck to the Tailem Bend strategic site, battering our roads and not coming by rail.

We need to look at what rail has done. In too many places around the state, we see where there used to be lines. You can see the mounds where the sleepers used to sit, where the iron used to be, and all those lines have a real story in themselves. I just hope that we do not see any more of those and that we do embrace the opportunities as they come along because if we do not, once you stop using a railway line and once they start pulling out sections and the maintenance disappears, it is history. It is gone.

Some careful decisions will need to be made about rail lines right across the state. They have done a great job. We do need to keep enacting laws so that they work, but we need to appreciate the full strength they have and the number of tonnes you can put over rail compared with road for the cost and make sure that we do have the appropriate network for this state to thrive into the future. With those few words, I commend the bill.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:28): I too rise today to support the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, which places the rail industry in South Australia under the national banner. I do hope that, with the national safety regulator, we will experience fewer hiccups and problems than the heavy vehicle regulator did when it was taken away from state hands into a national regulator. I note that there were a number of issues in the transition period that created quite a few headaches for operators and, obviously, the government had to act accordingly.

Essentially, the bill makes minor technical changes to the existing Rail Safety National Law which came into effect on 20 January 2013. The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator was established as a body corporate under the national law, with it now including South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and soon Western Australia.

The primary objectives of the ONRSR are to encourage and enforce safe operations and to promote and improve national rail safety. The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator goals, as set out in the corporate plan, are to:

maintain and improve rail safety through a risk-based approach to regulation;

reduce regulatory burden on industry;

promote greater self-regulation by the industry;

prepare for and support the entry of other state regulators into the ONRSR;

promote safety awareness and safety improvement initiatives and research; and

develop and enable our people to optimise internal capability and organisational effectiveness.

Those points are really about making it a better oiled and safer organisation and a regulatory body that has fewer bumps and is easier to navigate through for users and the impacts on industry.

I look over the national safety regulator's Annual Safety Report 2013-14, and I note that there were 93 notified fatalities on railways regulated under the Rail Safety National Law (RSNL), taking in South Australia, New South Wales, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the majority of railways in Victoria. The foundation of the report is notifiable occurrence data which is drawn from incident reports and submitted by the rail transport operators in accordance with section 121 of the RSNL.

The notified fatalities consisted of 84 acts of suspected suicide or trespass, three passenger fatalities (all fall-related, with two involving trains at the train platform interface), five fatalities at level crossings, and one rail safety worker fatality associated with ill health. The report also considers hazardous events on railways that can lead directly to injuries, such as derailments, train collisions and fires on rail premises. In this regard, the ONRSR notes some improvements in key areas of safety risk. Examples of those include a decrease over time in the number of arson-related fires on passenger trains and a marked drop in level-crossing collisions in 2013-14 across several states.

However, the findings also highlight several areas of concern, including the continued high number of train incursions into worksites and the high number of asset-related failures leading to train derailments, and there were several thousand occurrences in 2013-14 involving injuries to people on railway premises. Approximately 660 people were attended to by ambulance with three-quarters of these cases involving falls and another 10 per cent involving assault. Approximately 85 per cent of people attended to by an ambulance were passengers on the metropolitan rail networks of Sydney, Melbourne and, of particular note, Adelaide.

Suicide is the largest safety risk for many railways around the world and accounts for approximately 70 per cent of all fatalities in the ONRSR's area of operation over recent years. The examples of fatalities and injuries in the rail network across Australia demonstrate the importance of having strong legislation in the industry, and a national approach can have many benefits.

The Australian Rail Track Corporation owns and manages the east-west corridor in South Australia, approximately 2,000 kilometres aligning Sydney and Melbourne with Perth. Genesee & Wyoming Australia owns and manages about a 2,200-kilometre section of the rail network between Tarcoola, in South Australia, and Darwin, in the Northern Territory. The major intrastate networks regulated under the RSNL in South Australia comprise a narrow gauge line on Eyre Peninsula and about 300 kilometres of standard gauge line in the Murray Mallee region. There are also several smaller lines servicing specific industries such as coal transport at Port Augusta and iron ore for steel manufacturing at Whyalla.

I briefly want to touch on the Mallee rail lines. That is something of real concern to me as an MP. The two Mallee lines from Loxton to Tailem Bend and Pinnaroo to Tailem Bend have been under some pressure for a number of years. They are light rail and they have only one customer on those lines, Genesee & Wyoming Australia being the custodian of the rail line and Viterra GrainCorp being the customer. There have been concerns about the viability of that line and issues around restrictions. Once you put restrictions on any form of infrastructure, it takes away the viability of that line. It is well documented that there are load restrictions, speed restrictions and heat restrictions. To have those sorts of restrictions on a rail network, particularly in the Mallee where it is arid and hot, narrows down their operations. Older wagons and older engines are about 30 per cent heavier than the new wagons and that hampers the amount of grain that can be put on a load by about 30 per cent and, again, it affects the viability.

Heat brings down the speed, and in some cases it is down as low as 20 km/h. People ask me how that can be viable, how that can work. It is economies of scale. It is about taking large tonnages of grain on that train to make it viable. Its competitor, which is the road network, is becoming more and more viable because grain handlers are looking at ways that they can maximise their profit margins, and to do that they are utilising road more and more. Logistically, we can take grain off a farm rather than dropping it off at receivables and then rehandle it onto a train to Tailem Bend and, in some cases, rehandling to Adelaide or the Port. It is multihandling and adding to the cost, but it is also the time frame. It is about a 23½ hour turnaround from Tailem Bend to the Mallee and back, as it is to Loxton and back. They are issues of viability.

I also wanted to just touch on the rail line. When these rail lines were built through the Mallee they created huge population growth; workers had to travel there to build those lines. I have attended many large community events commemorating rail and what it did for the towns. In some of the railway towns hundreds of children attended schools as those rail lines were built, and once they were completed those towns almost shut shop overnight. That was a fatality of rail towns. Sadly, for the Mallee that has happened in many areas.

The larger regional receiving towns are still there, but they are under siege too. It is not just about the rail networks but it is about the jobs, the fabric of the town and the history of the town and what it creates. I make the point that it is not about the rail lines closing with the suspected cancellation of a contract with Glencore and Genesee & Wyoming: it is about no contract for the rail line to operate and transport grain. It means that those rail lines will stop operating and that grain, potentially 200,000 tonnes of grain, will hit the road and put more trucks on the road. It will create safety risks on the road and it will put more pressure on road infrastructure. That really concerns me, and the member for Hammond also has his concerns. The member for Flinders has a long-term issue with the future of rail in his electorate.

All the regional rail networks are under the pump: they are not being funded or put in a 30-year transport plan. The current government in South Australia is very focused on Adelaide: it is focused on passenger rail, passenger trams and passenger roads. It is not focused on productive infrastructure that keeps the cogs of this state's economy ticking along, and that is a real concern. There is no short-term plan for rail in South Australia in regional productive areas, and there is no long-term vision for rail in South Australia.

We mentioned the Murray rail project in Victoria connecting the east with the west and making it more economically viable. With regard to renewal rail projects in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, all the other states, nationally, are looking at investing in commercial rail except for South Australia. What is about to happen is an absolute travesty and the government has little focus on how many trucks will be on the roads. It has displayed its contempt for its $400 million rail maintenance program, and that is a major concern regarding safety.

We can talk all we want about more trucks on the road, but it is about the condition of the roads and the safety aspect of being on those roads. It is not just about putting more grain trucks on roads but local government is also taking all the rubbish from regional centres to Dublin or north of Adelaide. It is outrageous that, particularly the Riverland and some of the Mallee centres, are transporting all their rubbish down to Adelaide—that is more trucks on the roads.

If we look at the growing wine grape crush, again the Riverland produces about 64 per cent of the state's crush. That all goes on the road. Every day grapes, juice or wine are transported to a local winery or from the Riverland to Langhorne Creek, the Barossa or McLaren Vale. There is continued pressure on our roads, yet we do not have any long-term vision about whether we support commercial rail and continue to support safe rail or whether we support safe roads by upgrading roads. They are some of the real concerns I have.

Again, I must say I have worked with the Minister for Transport on this issue and I think he has come to the fore. In particular, we have had meetings with the Minister for Regional Development, the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Transport, Genesee & Wyoming and GrainCorp. The contract was not going to be signed in the latter part of last year. I think a bit of pressure was put on all three government departments. There was pressure put on both GrainCorp and Genesee & Wyoming to continue, and they did, signing up for another 12 months.

The government put some money towards a patch-up program on the Karoonda Highway and they have put a very small amount of money into the Mallee Highway—the Loxton to Pinnaroo road—but there is much more that needs to be done. When we talk about transport infrastructure in South Australia, it is becoming more and more evident that this government is looking less and less at a long-term vision for commercial rail which will have a serious impact on pressure on our roads. We are going to put more product on the roads and more commodity on the roads, and that will have a serious impact on safety and the condition of our roads.

Logistics is another issue. We must remember that, if we take rail out of the equation, that takes a competitor out of the game. If we are looking at transport logistically, and we are going to say that a road operator has no competition with rail, what do you think he is going to do? Yes, he will jack up the price because he does not have a competitor. Again, it makes that logistics chain more expensive and guess who will pay? It will be the grower; it will be the farmer who cops that in the neck once again.

Some of the issues I have already spoken about with the viability of rail—particularly in the Mallee, yet the same applies on the West Coast—are about having a long-term vision and putting a strategy in place so that we can utilise both road and rail safely, economically and for the better of the state's economy.

It has been noted that, yes, our major transport routes are in disrepair and there is a $400 million backlog in road maintenance, but there is also a huge backlog in rail maintenance and I think that we continue to take the easy way out and ignore it. While we say we are not going to renew rail contracts, the government has a responsibility to maintain a competitive logistic transport network here in South Australia like all the other states do. They are supporting their rail and they are supporting their road. Here in South Australia, I think we have lost our way. The government's priorities are on Adelaide's rail, on Adelaide's roads and on Adelaide, and I think that is sad for future productive economies here in South Australia.

I note the RDA report, the Freight Study and Rail Operations Investigation into Mallee rail, which states that up to $700 million could be required to replace lines to the standard requirement needed to operate safe rail, particularly in the Mallee. I think that is a lot of money but it does not have to be spent overnight; it can be spent over that long-term vision, that 30-year transport plan. It could be put into place if we knew what the future was with road and rail and if we knew what we were dealing with, but I have to say that the government has quite a secretive agenda and it is all around how they are going to support Adelaide.

The Mallee line is certainly one which may impact on safety, the future and transporting grains safely to export markets. Do we look at transporting grain out of South Australia to the east? That takes the bottom line off South Australia's economy. Is that the way the government wants to play it? We have an emerging domestic market that looks like it is going to double in the next five years. At the moment it is about a million tonnes, and it could be two million tonnes in the next five years.

The pork and poultry industry are being forced west with urban encroachment. Chickens and pigs are coming to the west of New South Wales and Victoria. They are going to need double the grain so, do we look at a domestic market that we push east, instead of pushing it down south to our ports, creating a vibrant economy, creating jobs, making South Australia a great place to live and work, because we know that jobs are hard to come by here in South Australia and certainly not living up to their 100,000 target, that is for sure.

My concern is the short-term future for rail in South Australia. What is the long-term vision for rail in South Australia? At the moment we seem to be looking at placing more trucks on the road and only patching up those roads. My call is that we need to have fewer trucks and better, safer roads. Do we look at being as competitive in the Mallee as we are on the West Coast? The member for Flinders is very proud to have a road-train network over there, whereas the people of the Mallee have to deal with trucks that are less viable in the same market. I think the government's priorities need to be adjusted. We need safer rail and that is something that I will support. This is an unconventional bill that has had stakeholder consultation and there are unlikely to be any issues with any of the amendments.

Time expired.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (16:49): I also rise to speak on the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. As many of my colleagues have alluded to on this side of the chamber, it is clear that this government simply is not doing enough in terms of rail, infrastructure and transport projects. The Labor Party does two things very well in terms of campaigning. One, is to campaign on fear and, two, is to campaign on hope. At the last state election, I have to hand it to them, they sold a lie to many people in Hartley because they offered them the hope of two things relating to this area. One, was that there would be trams on The Parade in the not too distant future, and we are still waiting for trams on The Parade. Two, is they made a promise that they would offer a parking solution in Paradise, and we are still waiting for that.

Mr Picton interjecting:

Mr TARZIA: No; we will build a car park—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, member for Kaurna!

Mr TARZIA: —without a car park tax. Any time your minister wants to say that he will introduce a car park at Paradise without a car park tax, that would be warmly received by the people of Hartley. So, two great hopes that we are still waiting for in terms of this area. Just broadly to commence my remarks, Deputy Speaker, it is great to have these things and it is great to look to the future, but the system we have, as the member for Chaffey just alluded to and as many members before me have alluded to, still needs a lot of work. So, I would encourage the government to have a good hard look at itself and address these weaknesses in the current rail system that we have.

The rail network system and the history of that is close to my heart. I actually had a grandfather who worked at the railways in the city many years ago. He was not a union member but he was very grateful for his time there and the skills he acquired and the friendships he acquired in the industry. So, I sincerely thank many of the employees who still to this day work in this area. Whilst I do not have rail in my electorate of Hartley, we are very grateful for the services provided to the people of South Australia.

I note that, in terms of the metropolitan public transport system, in 2012-13 total patronage on Adelaide Metro was 63 million. It is interesting that when you talk about trains, on average Adelaide Metro carries about 15 per cent by train. When you look at the different public transport infrastructure stops, there are over 80 railway stations and 28 tram stops. I note also that trams and trains are all accessible and our regular bus fleet, as at 2014, according to one of the DPC websites, was 86 per cent fully accessible. So, there are some things to be proud of, sure, but we have a long way to go.

I am generally supportive of this amendment bill and I will support it. I am pleased to support the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, which provides for an array of amendments to the Rail Safety National Law. I understand the Rail Safety National Law is contained in a schedule to the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act 2012.

As was pointed out, during the first year of operation the regulator discharged its obligations under national law facilitating the safe operation of rail transport in Australia, which included a scheme for accreditation across the country of several rail transport operators as well. Since the national law started, the need for minor amendments has been displayed to us, and if you look at what they are they are minor amendments. However, they will improve the law's operation overall.

I will just to touch on what these are, and I am generally in support of all of them. Firstly, the minor amendments will improve the law by removing a phrase from section 12 of the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act to ensure a consistent approach in drafting style; to substitute the word 'cancel' for 'revoke' through the national law to ensure consistent terminology; and, also, to remove a requirement that, before making a person appear in person to provide evidence or documents, the regulator must first take all reasonable steps to obtain information of which the person has knowledge in the form of a written statement or by production of documents. We also have minor amendments that will improve the law's operation by delivering to the regulator a power to suspend the accreditation of a rail transport operator for not paying its annual fee, and so forth.

These are minor amendments. They have been put to relevant stakeholders, notably, major stakeholders in industry associations, but also, I note, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union has been consulted on this. They are also in agreement with these amendments. On the whole, the amendments seem uncontroversial. They have had adequate consultation. They do go to amending and improving the law that we have, so I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the house. However, at the same time, I ask the government to look in the mirror and address the problems that my colleagues on this side of the chamber have humbly brought to the attention of the government.

Mr DULUK (Davenport) (16:55): I also rise to speak to the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2015. This bill makes a series of miscellaneous and consequential amendments to the rail safety regime in South Australia and further harmonises state law to accord with the national rail safety regime.

However, the bill leaves unaddressed others substantial rail safety issues in the state and in my electorate, particularly in relation to the Melbourne-Adelaide rail freight corridor. The Melbourne-Adelaide rail freight corridor carries approximately five million tonnes of freight annually. The corridor runs through my electorate, cutting Main Road at Glenalta and Belair. Taken together with Cross Road in Hawthorn, 63,000 vehicles cross the tracks daily in metropolitan Adelaide. Lengthy traffic delays are experienced at all crossings, especially at peak hours, as many of us know.

Urban development means that the corridor passes close to thousands of homes and businesses in Davenport and indeed many other electorates, giving rise to serious safety and health concerns. Health concerns associated with noise pollution from the line are manifest and have been raised many times in this house. The gradient on the line is steep as it comes through many places in my electorate and, when combined with tight corners, the noise emitted by the wheel squeal often exceeds 100 decibels. Noise of that intensity exceeds state and federal noise guidelines and indeed international guidelines.

My predecessor in this house (Hon. Iain Evans) was a strong advocate for Davenport and constantly raised the issue of moving the rail freight line out of the hills. He also asked the current government to review the health of residents living near the line. The government has declined this. Mr Evans also requested that a noise abatement scheme be introduced, including the double glazing of windows and other measures associated with, for example, noise abatement schemes near airports, as we have in the western suburbs. Once again the government declined this.

The safety issues that arise from having a significant rail freight corridor through my electorate were made clear at approximately 7.15 on 2 January this year. On that day, a catastrophic fire day, the boom gates at the Main Road crossing at Blackwood failed and remained closed for 25 minutes. As I said, a catastrophic bushfire warning was in place on that day for the Adelaide Hills and a devastating bushfire ignited the Sampson Flat fires that afternoon.

Main Road, Blackwood is the main escape route for residents of Hawthorndene and Coromandel Valley in my electorate. In the event of a bushfire sweeping through the communities, the vast majority of residents would seek to leave the electorate through Main Road, Blackwood. The prospect of a boom gate at Blackwood being down and obstructing the safe passage of commuters and residents in the event of a bushfire is concerning and unacceptable to myself and to the residents of Davenport. A derailment on the line, such as the derailment in Glenalta in 2004, would give rise to the same safety concerns and to concerns that any cargo or indeed parts of the train itself would cause injury and damage to people and property close to the tracks.

As is to be expected, Adelaide's freight rail needs will increase in time, and this increase will be exacerbated by the health and safety concerns that I have already raised. In a high-use rail modelling scenario, traffic on the line will increase 4.6 times by 2039. This is an increase from about five million tonnes of freight annually to approximately 22 million tonnes going through the Adelaide Hills.

We would need to ask the question today: is the rail freight line designed for 22 million tonnes of freight going through the Adelaide Hills on an annual basis? The Commissioner of Rail Safety recently suggested that rail safety issues, including issues at the many rail crossings throughout the Adelaide metro rail network, keep him up at night, and the transport minister made the same comment on radio this week in respect of his own concerns.

A long-term plan must be formulated for the rail freight going through the Adelaide Hills. The Adelaide Hills rail freight movement study released in June 2010 is inadequate. It adopts a distance-based approach to calculating the cost-benefit outcome of a northern bypass, that is, essentially dollars per train per kilometre travelled.

As has been said in this house before, modelling of this type gives no proper weight to the noise, health, safety and social dislocation factors that influence where and when heavy freight should be moved by train. No resident of my electorate or any other electorate in this state would accept, as the study effectively asks us to accept, that the noise and inconvenience of a heavy freight train passing through open flat land is in any way comparable with the noise of the same freight train climbing or descending a steep incline in the tight turns and narrow valleys of the Adelaide Hills. Notwithstanding my comments, I support this bill.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (17:01): I rise today to support the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. I note the patience and interest of parliamentary counsel and ministerial advisers in this motion. Everybody has a contribution to make. Many of us are impacted by trains as a mode of transport, and communication for that matter, through our electorates. It has been highlighted today how important that rail infrastructure is in South Australia.

The national law commenced operation on 20 January 2013. The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator was established as a body corporate under the national law, with its scope now including New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory, through legislation that has been enacted in those jurisdictions. It is expected that the national law will also be operating in Western Australia by 2015.

It is not unusual for Western Australia to be the last one on the list with any number of these national legislative changes, and there are a couple of reasons for this: I guess that they are more cautious about many things and less inclined to join a national scheme and more inclined to do their own thing as it would suit them—and in many ways you have to commend Western Australians for that.

I do recall that when we debated this bill in 2012, I think it was, many of us who had an interest in and love of trains and who had trains in our electorate took the opportunity at that time to speak. Mr Patrick Conlon I think was the minister for transport at that time, and I know that he enjoyed immensely the contributions from this side of the house.

Since the commencement of the national law, the need for minor amendments has been identified, and the minor amendments will improve the operation of the law. There are just a few amendments, probably half a dozen, that have been highlighted. They are minor technical changes in many ways, but I might just run through them for the record. A number of the amendments refer to a change in language and use the word 'cancel', rather than 'revoke', and that has been requested by the industry. I also add that there has been extensive consultation with the industry on these changes, and the industry is supportive of these minor amendments.

Section 20(4) is to be deleted, removing the requirement for the regulator to issue notice to compel an operator to appear before them. This is to prevent collusion—the time frame of issuing notice allowed operators time to collude before the hearing. We certainly do not want any hint of collusion in a modern business environment. Heaven forbid!

An amendment to section 76 makes it an express requirement to pay accreditation fees. An operator can be suspended for failing to pay those fees. An addition to section 96 compels a rail infrastructure manager to give the regulator an annual activity statement. This will help the regulator to maintain oversight and safety standards without as many site visits, so aiding efficiency.

An amendment to section 12 clarifies that operating under the influence can be determined by a breath test, by deleting 'by means of a primary breath test or breath analysis (or both)' and inserting, 'In some participating jurisdictions, provision is made that for the purpose of this law a concentration of alcohol in a sample of a person's breath will be taken to indicate a concentration of alcohol in the person's blood.' There will be no changes to actual practice.

An amendment to section 148, for 'general person on entry', deletes 'structure' and substitutes 'rail infrastructure' to keep this section in line with the rest of the act. An addition to section 168A grants the rail safety officer the power to compel an operator to produce documents. An addition to section 214 allows an exemption of accreditation fees for tourist operators.

So it is an uncontroversial bill. It has had stakeholder consultation, as I said, and there are unlikely to be any issues with any of these amendments, but highlighted all the way through these amendments is the issue of safety. Of course, safety is paramount in this industry and in any other industry.

A number of the members on this side have taken the opportunity to talk about rail operation in their own electorate, and I will do the same today. The electorate of Flinders has a narrow gauge autonomous railway line operated currently by Genesee & Wyoming, which is a significant rail operator not just in this state but in the whole country. It is American based company that specialises in short-haul rail. That said, they certainly have some long hauls in the big country of Australia. The member for Chaffey mentioned the line north of Tarcoola all the way to Darwin they are operating at the moment.

I have met with the chief executive officer of Genesee & Wyoming in South Australia, Mr Greg Pauline, and one of the things he has stressed to me and he has brought to the company in his role is this increased focus on safety. Everything he does has safety as a consideration, and I commend him for that.

I guess the future of rail on Eyre Peninsula is in the hands of Genesee & Wyoming. It is an interesting rail system, and there are many parallels with the rail system in the Murray Mallee. Essentially, they were built at the same time. The first length of rail extended from Port Lincoln to Cummins and arrived at the first terminus in 1907. Gradually, over the next two decades, it extended north and west of Cummins, going as far west as Purnong (west of the Port of Thevenard) and as far east to Kimba and Buckleboo.

It really did allow and coincide with the settlement of that dense Mallee scrub that proved to be such good wheat country but was very difficult to traverse and had little or no water. The train really rolled out with the settlers. As each and every hundred was surveyed, subdivided and made available for settlement, the train also arrived, and along the train line were surveyed sidings, town and roads and all that goes with it; it was a really critical part of the settlement of Eyre Peninsula.

It is a narrow gauge railway, as has been mentioned already. It is three foot six in the old school. It was very cheaply put down. It probably started a trend, even way back then. It was known as the hoop iron railway. It was laid with second-hand light rail they had dug up from somewhere and laid straight onto the ground with no ballast.

Ms Chapman: We pinched it from Victoria.

Mr TRELOAR: Pinched it from Victoria, the member for Bragg says. That could be right. It was laid on the ground with sleepers but no ballast, so you can imagine what it was like. Derailments were common. The member for Hartley mentioned that his grandfather worked for the railways for a while. Indeed, my great grandfather first arrived in Cummins as a carpenter in the railways all those years ago, pre World War I.

Right up until the seventies, the operation of that Eyre Peninsula line was really very labour intensive. There were huge numbers of men—and I say men because they almost always were men—involved with the building and maintenance of the railway line. Every little town had a railway gang, which supported the local school and the local shops. All those people are gone, for better or worse. Things have become more efficient and more technical in the way maintenance is done, but essentially it was there to transport the produce the goods from Eyre Peninsula to port from where it went to other parts of the state, other parts of the country and around the world.

We have seen the demise of that over the years. I should not call it demise: I will call it changes, and I am going to reminisce a little bit here. Of course, there was a change from steam engines to diesel electric trains through the 1960s. I am just old enough to remember the last steam engine ever to run and I believe it ran on the line from Kapinnie to Yeelanna—

Ms Chapman: I thought that was in the Barossa.

Mr TRELOAR: —this is Eyre Peninsula I am talking about—and through the siding of Yeltukka which I grew up adjacent to. Another significant change was—

Ms Chapman: You must be pretty old.

Mr TRELOAR: I am a bit old, member for Bragg. I do not think I am as old as the member for Hammond because he can remember the wheat stacks and I cannot. Another significant change was from wheat and fertiliser and all our grains going from transport in three-bushel bags to bulk transport and, of course, there was the end of passengers. The passenger line up and down Eyre Peninsula was interesting, in that it was operated via railcars which were converted buses—buses that were converted to run on a train line.

Many stories come from those days of the railcar public transport. I am going to refer to one of the amendments that has been made with regard to breath testing, and I can tell this story now because most of the railcar drivers have well and truly passed on, but they were notorious for their drinking while they were driving. Of course, the railcar stayed on the tracks, but you still had to know when to stop it. In fact, when an older friend of mine was at boarding school in Adelaide, he and a friend had to finish up at Buckleboo. They caught the Minnipa from Port Adelaide to Port Lincoln and then they had to hop on the railcar and go all the way from Port Lincoln to Buckleboo.

They had watched the railcar driver slowly work his way through a keg of wine and the further he went up the track, the more likely he was to miss a stop. In fact, so serious was this that these boys planned their escape. The terminus at Buckleboo was a pile of limestone rocks. They were fearful that the driver may well be asleep and that they would crash into the limestone rocks at the terminus and there would be a calamity, so their plan was to leap off the train just before it got there. Thankfully, they never had to do that, but I digress.

Interestingly, I became involved in the mid-2000s—2004 to 2005, or thereabouts—in an upgrade of the Eyre Peninsula road and rail system. It was a $43 million project. My congratulations go to the local regional development board at the time because they really pulled together funding sources that included federal funding and state funding. Genesee & Wyoming, as the operator, contributed; Viterra, as the storage and handler of the grain system on Eyre Peninsula, contributed; and interestingly, the grain farmers of Eyre Peninsula also made a relatively small contribution in the scheme of things. In a total of $43 million, a levy raised $2 million from the grain farmers of Eyre Peninsula. It was a voluntary levy, and for the most part, farmers were happy to contribute to that upgrade.

Most of the money was spent south of Cummins, and the reason is that that is the busiest part of the line, Cummins being where the lines north branch out from and also being a significant strategic site in the storage and handling system. That $43 million upgrade certainly contributed to the rail system on Eyre Peninsula becoming more efficient and much safer than it was. The trains were able to move more quickly.

I live adjacent to the township of Edillilie at the moment and I can tell you that the trains really whistle through Edillilie now. They go much faster than they ever did before, probably up to 50 kilometres. The trains are much longer. I understand that the most recent contract with Viterra is still for a million tonnes of grain to be transported on Eyre Peninsula by rail, so it is not an insignificant amount. I congratulate Viterra and Genesee & Wyoming for finally being able to come to that contractual agreement which will secure the rail freight program for the next three years.

At the same time as that upgrade was occurring, sadly, a decision was made to close the line north of Wudinna, so there is no freight north of Wudinna. The line is still in place and I understand diesel engines from time to time run up and down the line because, in the Far West, a train is still operating from Thevenard to the siding at Kevin (near Penong) where a gypsum mine operates. There are three trains a day from Kevin into Thevenard carting gypsum for export out of Thevenard, mostly for the building industry and mostly to the eastern seaboard.

At the same time the line was also terminated at Kimba so there is no freight north of Kimba. Once upon a time it went up to Buckleboo and, a few years earlier than that, the line west of Yeelanna out to Kapinnie was also closed. There has been some contraction of the rail service, but ultimately it gets down to economics and the viability of the operators. Essentially half of the central line has been cut off from service. What that means, of course, is that freight goes onto roads and the members for Hammond and Chaffey particularly talked about the impact of that on their rural constituencies.

There is no doubt that there is more grain and freight generally going onto the road and putting pressure onto our road system. At the moment we are handling it, but the government certainly needs to be cognisant of the fact that, if there is less freight on rail there will obviously be more freight going onto roads, which will put pressure on them. I have talked about the Tod Highway in this place many times and I will take this opportunity once again. That is a significant freight route on Eyre Peninsula and, in my opinion, it is simply not wide enough to be safely traversed by the road trains that go up and down that highway all year around, but particularly at harvest time.

There are plans by Iron Road, a mining exploration company, to build an infrastructure corridor from their proposed mine site at Warramboo to their proposed port facility at Cape Hardy near Port Neill. This infrastructure corridor would include electricity, water and, most particularly, a standard gauge railway of 147 kilometres or thereabouts which would transport ore from mine pit to port. Certainly this proposal has been around for a while. I do not know if it is likely to go ahead or not. Certainly the lower commodity prices are causing some reassessment of all of these projects, so we will wait and watch with interest. There is potential, should that corridor and railway be built, that we would also have the opportunity to have grain going out of that port.

I also note that in 2017 it is the centenary of the east-west line joining the west of this country to the east. I have already been approached by a couple of local historians who are keen to have some sort of ceremony. The Minister for Transport may be interested to know that they are planning an event near the siding of Ooldea. It was there that the build from the west and the build from the east met and Australia was joined for the first time ever by a railway line in 1917, so that centenary is coming up. There is very little there now to commemorate it. I understand there was a cairn or some sort of wooden structure that has fallen into disrepair. I know local historians and railway buffs around the country would like to make the most of that ceremony and reinvigorate the cairn, so we will watch that with interest.

The highlight for me in the last couple of years has been to have a ride on a train on Eyre Peninsula. The member for Morialta may be interested to know that you can no longer be a train passenger on Eyre Peninsula—

Mr Gardner: Nor in Morialta.

Mr TRELOAR: —nor in Morialta—but I did approach Genesee & Wyoming with my long-held ambition to go for a ride on a train on Eyre Peninsula, and they very kindly made those arrangements. It took some time, but they made the arrangements, and I was proud as punch to hop up on the engine with the drivers and ride the 42 miles, I think—so many chains and so many rods—from Port Lincoln to Cummins. That was a thrill for me. We get many opportunities in this place as parliamentarians, and that was an opportunity that I would not have had otherwise. They did not allow me to sound the horn, Minister for Transport. In fact, they did not let me touch anything, but I was allowed to sit there—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: So did you actually do anything?

Mr TRELOAR: I talked and I enjoyed the scenery immensely. I am grateful for the opportunity that I had that day from Genesee & Wyoming. With that contribution, Deputy Speaker, and given the hour of the day, I would like to say that we do support the bill and hope that, as part of this, the government consider their broader transport policy, and I urge them to include rail in that policy.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:21): I rise to speak on the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2015, which is a bill to amend 2012 legislation, which we debated and passed. At that time in this parliament we repealed the Rail Safety Act 2007, and the purpose of that exercise was to move from the state-based accreditation and regulatory system to a national scheme. It was consistent with the move to regulate and give accreditation to heavy transport—that is, road trains and trucks and the like—and also marine vessels.

The general consensus of transport ministers around the country was to enter into a national scheme for the usual arguments of efficiency, cost saving and to provide a better service, especially for national operators who were frustrated by the variety of schemes around the country. We ended up in South Australia, under Mr Rob Andrews at that stage, as the national regulator. Apparently, at that time South Australia was at the forefront of providing rail regulation, and we remained responsible for that. All marine vessel regulation came out of the ACT. I am not quite sure how much ocean they have to deal with, nevertheless, they got that. Road truck transport went to Queensland, which was then and still is a shocking mess. Nevertheless, consistent with that scheme we moved forward with rail transport.

I think it is fair to say that there was a reasonable expectation, especially as South Australia was going to be the base upon which we would operate, that it would reach some of the expectations, lofty as they may have been. The national law in this area commenced on 20 January 2013. I read with interest the final report of the state regulator at the time, when he provided his report to the parliament later in 2013, his final report to us about his year of work, and I will come back to it in a moment.

Two issues were raised at the time. One was in relation to blood testing and alcohol and drug use and the safety obligations surrounding that, and the second was about the money. I am going to deal with both of those issues. My colleagues' contributions have outlined a number of historical aspects of importance, and there is no question that rail has been an important contributor to the geographic, economic and social development of the state, the least of which was in the freight operations but also to enable people to keep in touch and have a passenger rail system which helped people get to work and stay in contact with others. It has been an important part of our state and it should remain so.

We have always supported the process of regulation. We have been a bit suspicious about what would happen with the cost of regulation as a result of going into a national scheme. As you would expect, we went down from about $2 million a year income harvested from our 50-odd regulated entities in South Australia. It has gone down, and I think there are now about 46 in South Australia which are accredited and regulated and pay these fees. It has gone from a revenue stream of just under $2 million a year a couple of years ago, but I do not know what the breakdown is now, and that is one of the questions we need answered.

New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT contribute to the scheme, and for obvious reasons Tasmania does not come into this system, but we are told Western Australia is coming on board some time this year. They are usually late; they were late coming into the federation, so nothing surprises me about them. Nevertheless, I make the point that we only have four jurisdictions involved in this system, and most of the rolling stock and infrastructure is in New South Wales. As you would expect, they would be a big contributor.

We now pay well over $24 million a year in income into the national regulator and it raises the question of how much South Australia is paying and what the costs were and whether, in fact, we ended up with an explosion of costs as a result of going into the national scheme. It looks on the face of it like we did, and it is exactly as we predicted, but I would be pleased to have those figures to tell us whether, in fact, we are being ripped off or not.

One of the amendments we are being asked to consider today is to have a massive increase in fines if one of the operators do not put in their infrastructure registered private sidings annual activity statement. If you do not put your form into the regulator you can have up to a $5,000 fine for an individual or a $25,000 fine for a body corporate. These are massive increases in fines and, on the face of it, to me they look like revenue raising.

However, we are in the national scheme and I want to go back to a couple of things in relation to South Australia. Apart from what appears to be an explosion of income generated from this, I take the point that these regulators are supposed to be cost recovery operating. In other words, if they have to employ 30, 40 or 50 people or whatever to administer this job, it is expected the operators will meet the cost.

As at January 2013, when we gave up the state system and converted to the federal, we had about 50 rail transport operators. The biggest in public transport, of course, is the Rail Commissioner, which is the statutory position of the person in charge of the public train and tram operations mostly in metropolitan Adelaide. They provide an annual report to the parliament. I noticed it appears on inquiry today that the Rail Commissioner's last report was for the financial year ending 2012, so I am at a bit of a loss as to why we have not had the last two.

I note from reading these reports in previous years that the Rail Commissioner is usually the chief executive of the Department of Transport. Mr Rod Hook held that position for a number of years. For a short time, refreshing my memory from Auditor-General's reports, Ms Thomas was an acting commissioner. We now have Mr Michael Deegan who is the head of the transport department, so I would expect he has been appointed as the commissioner of rail and also the commissioner of roads. It may be someone else, I do not know. Whoever it is, listen up: I would like to see the annual reports for the last two years, and if they have not been filed, please find them or finish them and file them as per the law requires. If they have and I have mislaid them, or the counter staff cannot find them, I would appreciate it if they could be found.

Apart from the government operation of the public transport system—rail and tram—in metropolitan Adelaide, the other major areas are commercial operators, whether they own or manage the rail infrastructure or own or manage the rolling stock or the service that is operating on them. We have commercial and historic, and there are probably at least a half a dozen historic registered rail operators, including groups such as the Australian Railway Historical Society which owns SteamRanger. They have an accreditation for both infrastructure and rolling stock. We also have the National Railway Museum, and there are a number of others that are covered in that regard.

We also have an enormous number of commercial operators. The usual well-known ones include Flinders Ports, Genesee & Wyoming, Great Southern Rail, Nyrstar at Port Pirie, OneSteel at Whyalla, and Viterra operations, and the services they provide have been covered by a number of members today in regard to operations in their electorates.

We have broad gauge rail lines within the metropolitan Adelaide area used mainly for urban public transport services and, as I say, controlled by the Rail Commissioner. We have the intrastate lines controlled by Genesee & Wyoming Australia Pty Ltd used primarily for freight services, and they include narrow gauge lines on Eyre Peninsula, broad gauge lines in the Mid North and standard gauge lines in the Murray Mallee region, and of course we have the Great Southern Rail owned and operated passenger terminal at Keswick.

They operate, and there are also regulatory bodies which I think still operate at a state level and which control access to those tracks and use of the tracks; sometimes they have multiple users on them, but usually somebody like Genesee & Wyoming will get the exclusive rights to operate a track. However, we have a regulatory group which controls the access so that if it is necessary for that to occur, or there needs to be a multi-use piece of a line, that can be dealt with on application.

That is what happened: we used to get a comprehensive report from the state regulator. They provided us with the details of who they accredited, safety matters and recommendations on what should be occurring in South Australia. Now we get a big, thick annual report. I have had a quick look at the one from the national regulator: South Australia gets a page, so we have gone from our own report with some detail to a page.

I am going to refer briefly to what the 2014 annual report from the regulator tells us. It tells us that there has been significant regulatory activity arising out of the electrification of rail to Seaford, and we know about that; it is a pity it is not to Gawler as well. Nevertheless, a whole lot of carriages were bought, and we have more carriages than we need at the moment because, of course, the government has not finished the Gawler line, but let's not traverse that. At the moment, we have plenty of rolling stock and they all need to be accredited, and that process has been happening.

We have the report of a major incident in South Australia during that financial year, that is, the derailment of the SCT freight train west of Tarcoola on the ARTC network on 10 April last year. Twenty wagons from a freight train derailed, of which nine ended up on their side due to the track washaway after a severe rain storm. The report tells us that this was the fourth incident of this type in five years, and obviously there were concerns about that and they raised it as a matter in our list of things to be attended to.

With the commencement of operations of the electrified portion of the railway, there were further incidents, particularly in relation to the electrical infrastructure; in fact, I think there was a notice recently that there were going to be more closures on the Seaford line. I am not quite sure what has happened there, but something has seriously gone wrong and it is going to cost quite a bit of money. It seems to clean up but, as usual, we have more closures. In particular, we now have the details in this report of what happened last year, in June 2014, when a scene was attended to by the regulator of an apparent failure of an overhead wire that resulted in the loss of power to an electric railcar in passenger service. The rail operator's investigation and the ONRSR's inquiries into this incident are still continuing.

From those few lines, we got a lot more information in this report than we got in the press announcements from the government at the time, and I will be interested to read the 2015 report for the next instalment of what happened there; in any event, we only get one page. The data I want to particularly refer to are the rail safety elements that arise out of the need to ensure that our train and tram drivers, signal operators and maintenance repair people, and anyone attending to the operation of the trains, are not carrying any level of drug or alcohol at the time of their work.

This was an issue I raised in the 2012 debates. I still have not had any clear answer to whether this has been attended to or whether the national regulator has looked at it, but I will place it on the record again. The national regulator from this report has not identified anything. I notice that he or she, because I think we now have—and I should acknowledge her—Ms Susan McCarrey, who is a former Western Australian department of transport senior person, in charge. I hope this does not auger that we are going to do some deal to relocate the national regulator to Western Australia, which I would be very disappointed if we do. In any event, we welcome her and I hope she will address this issue.

I raised it a couple of years ago and Mr Andrews, the previous national regulator, does not appear to have addressed his mind to it or done anything about it, according to his report, nor is it translated in the legislation we are currently dealing with, save and except that it appears he has recommended, or at least someone in his department has, that there be a minor change in the laws with respect to blood testing for drug and alcohol and that that change the definition to also include breath testing, but it does not really address the issue which I raised.

This is the situation: at the moment, we have, according to this report (that is, the most recent national report), a very considerable number of tests done a year. There are two ways that our operating personnel are tested. One, is by the industry operators themselves. For example, let me take Genesee & Wyoming, which, I agree (and someone has made the point), is strong on the question of safety. They do drug and alcohol testing of their employees on a random basis. The report tells us that the number of drug tests undertaken by industry in the 2013-14 year was 23,777. One hundred were found to be positive, and that is a concern in itself. There were alcohol tests of 227,380 and 66 of those proved positive.

The second area is when the regulator itself does drug and alcohol tests. Apparently, in that financial year, they did 206 drug tests and there were no positives and 203 alcohol tests and there were no positives, which I am assuming continue on a random basis. That is encouraging in itself that there were no positives in that financial year by the regulator, but there is an ongoing issue about the positive tests that come from, essentially, safety regulation and occupational health and safety requirements that we have random testing.

Remember, on the road it is .05 that starts to bring in a level of percentage of alcohol in the blood that brings in penalties for driving a vehicle on the road. It was .02 for trains and trams. When we dealt with this legislation last time, it was moved to zero, so there was to be zero alcohol and drugs in the blood, and I think that is a good thing, on mining sites and all sorts of areas of danger. We have thousands of passengers a day using these services. We have people working on the freight facilities. Nobody can be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, whether they are loading something onto a train or whether they are driving passengers to and from work.

The issue I raised was that there appeared to be no correlation between the positive blood tests and any transfer of that information to the police. Remember, the regulator comes on and does these tests, but the industry also does its own tests. So, the industry could be doing its own tests to maintain its accreditation and if it is not done by somebody completely independent of the accredited organisation then there would be an argument that that may not be an appropriate standard for the purposes of any prosecution.

It just seems inconceivable to me that we have a regulator (previously a state one, now a federal one) who conducts these tests and if they are positive there is no transfer of that data or information to the police because they then become the prosecuting officer. We went through this with marine where, in fact, if you were drunk and disorderly operating a boat, or with roads, drunk and disorderly. I mean, these are well known regimes of protection.

The police generally have a responsibility to board a boat to take a blood test or a breath test when called in by the marine people; similarly on the roads, and that is well known to members. However, with trains, there does not appear to be any kind of connection with what is happening with this regulator, which is set up for making sure that these huge pieces of equipment are safe. There is no transfer of this.

I have had meetings with the police regarding the management of passengers on public transport who are disorderly or who cause disruption to other passengers, people who get cranky if they asked to pay a fair or show their ticket—these sorts of situations. Obviously we can have disruptive users of public transport, and the police have a very significant role in helping to manage that for the operators of public transport, which of course is the government via the rail commissioner.

I am aware that the police are already significantly involved, but I am still at a loss as to why we are not getting an answer as to what is happening in relation to a safe workplace, which is necessary, and the safe transportation of either people or produce through our train system. I would like some answers in that regard.

There was one other matter that I wanted to address, but I am out of time. I look forward to some answers from the minister either in response or in committee, if necessary. I am happy to take the response.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (17:41): I appreciate the opportunity today to speak on the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, essentially a piece of administrative legislation that, as articulated by the shadow minister for transport and the many other opposition speakers today, the opposition will be supporting.

We have heard a broad range of discussions this afternoon relating to trains and the need for safety within the rail system, and I will continue that theme. Of course, opening up a piece of legislation such as this gives members the opportunity to reflect more generally on issues of rail safety, and it would, of course, representing a seat like mine, where the metropolitan rail network forms such a vital part of the public transport system. It would be remiss of me not to talk about the pressing rail safety issues in the community that I am fortunate enough to represent here.

As many in the house would know, rail safety is an issue of great importance to my community. In fact, the sound of the horn of the new electric trains is, and remains, the most common issue raised with me in my office. I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that if on election night I had been told that during my first year in office I would deal with the issue of the sound of a train horn more than any other issue, I probably would not have believed you, but that is the life of a local member. In taking on this issue, I seek to provide a voice for the 650 people living in my electorate who have indicated to me over the last 12 months or so that this is an issue of major concern.

There is no doubt in my mind that the horn, which acts as a warning device in the electric trains, is out of proportion with what is required to strike an effective balance between community safety and maintaining a healthy noise-free community environment. For years diesel trains running on the Noarlunga line had a horn which was a low drone. Its volume was substantial enough to highlight that a train was approaching or moving away from the station, but it did not carry significantly outside of the train corridor.

The situation we now have is that horns are not only louder but have a much higher pitch mounted in speakers on the front of the new electric trains. This results in a sound which carries much further and penetrates through communities in a way that the old horn never did. I do not just get complaints from people who live in the streets immediately flanking the Seaford line: this concern extends further to North Brighton, some two kilometres from the nearest point to the line, to Dover Gardens (in the member for Mitchell's electorate), again a couple of kilometres from the line, and even within the Brighton central shopping centre precinct, where someone got a blast from a train horn for picking up a lettuce. It is bizarre that we have such an invasive horn penetrating our community. Complaints have been received from the member for Reynell's electorate, from the member for Elder's electorate and from the member for Ashford's electorate. I hope that they will work constructively alongside both the government and the opposition to come up with solutions for this problem.

Bearing in mind that if the horn is not fixed on the Seaford line, when the government finally commits to electrifying the Gawler line (and perhaps even the Outer Harbor and Belair lines at some point in the very distant future) this will become a significant problem for the communities which live along those train lines as well.

We hear this situation sometimes dismissed as something that people must put up with as a price for living near a train line and benefiting from the convenience perhaps of being close to a train station and being able to commute at relatively low cost back and forth from the city or other destinations. However, this is not like living next to or around Adelaide Airport and then complaining that there are planes landing and taking off every few minutes. This is not an issue where you can suggest that the buyer ought to have been aware of the situation because this is about a local environment which has fundamentally changed as a result of the train horns and which is no longer like it was when the majority of people initially entered and established their homes in that community.

The horn is not a light toot; it is a loud and cutting blast. When I speak to members of the community, particularly in the suburbs of Hove, Brighton, Seacliff, Kingston Park and Marino, which are the suburbs in my electorate most impacted by this issue, they certainly at no point are saying that they want the train to stop using its horn. Something that has been canvassed time and time again with me is that, 'Yes, we do need a horn. We need the train to be able to have a warning device to alert people when there is an emergency and to provide people with an understanding that the train is approaching or pulling away from a station or something like that.' It is the type of horn and the method of use of the horn that is really troubling people.

I have been very encouraged, though, in recent times, having been able to see a couple of public statements from the transport department. I have seen on the department's website a communique from the chief executive of the transport department saying that the minister had directed the chief executive to look into this contentious issue. He described it as a contentious issue and that they were committed to looking into it. I certainly do appreciate the department's taking this issue seriously; it has taken quite a long time to get there. I really hope that we can get a resolution in the very near future because this is an issue that is making the life of many, many people along the train line miserable.

I have sat in the home of people who have been in tears at the thought of potentially having to sell their home because of this issue. I have spoken to a Vietnam veteran who has post-traumatic stress disorder that was triggered by the sound of the horns. I have spoken to someone who is recovering from an operation for a brain tumour; he is unable to sleep during the day because of the train horns penetrating his home and is looking to convalesce in another location. I have spoken to young mums whose children and babies are constantly being woken up by the horns during the day, and I have spoken to shiftworkers who have been unable to sleep because of these horns.

We had a situation a year or so ago with diesel trains on that line, and this was not an issue. The diesel trains also had to pay attention to the occupational health and safety requirements of travelling along a train line. They were able to do so by sounding a horn that was loud but not invasive in the way this horn is, and they were able to be part of the community without getting hundreds of residents offside. We now have an improved train service on the Seaford line. We have more trains, and we have far better train infrastructure.

Members of this house would know that I use the train on a very frequent basis. I travel daily on it to get into parliament and when I need to get to other meetings in the city. It is a great piece of infrastructure which serves me and thousands of other people living on the Seaford line. It is certainly not public transport that we are attacking when this is raised. It is not the government's investment in the line. What we are raising and what our real concern is that we must get the balance right between that horn and the liveability of that community, and I hope we will be able to work towards that in the very near future.

In closing, I want to discuss the train network more generally. We have had a lot of discussion today about both rural and metropolitan train services and how they assist communities, whether that be in the movement of freight or the movement of commuters and other passengers. When I stood for election, I identified six priorities for my community and one of them was to ensure that we always had a really good public transport system in the seat of Bright, and that is something I am incredibly committed to.

I have said in a number of written items that I have put into the electorate and also said in this place before that I believe that the great cities of the world are characterised by the strong effect of frequent, accessible public transport systems. I am a huge advocate for public transport. When we look at those cities overseas that have invested in their public transport systems, and have done that well, they reap huge rewards from them. I congratulate, and have always congratulated, the government for its investment in public transport and would like to see that extended over time.

Particularly, I would like to see the electrification of the Gawler line sooner rather than later and, also, a look at the other lines, the Outer Harbor line and the Belair line, because I think we should be expanding and investing in providing a high quality, environmentally friendly, frequent and accessible service for local communities that moves people en masse in a way that buses do not necessarily do.

The government has been doing that in recent years and there have been many teething problems with that. Overall, I think it is a good direction but really do want to see that continue. I want to be part of that vision, whether it is from opposition in supporting further investment in public transport and creating a future vision for that or, hopefully, at some point in the future, from the government benches as well. I am very committed to public transport and will always support government plans to extend that in a cost-effective and appropriate way.

In closing, I commend this legislation to the house. I reiterate my support for public transport and, particularly, rail infrastructure and, of course, remind the house of my ongoing concerns about the use of the train horn along the Seaford line and my hope that the government will, in the coming weeks, be able to get a solution in place which strikes that balance between occupational health and safety and liveability in the communities along the Seaford line.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister Assisting the Minister for Planning, Minister Assisting the Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (17:53): I thank the other members for their contributions on this bill. I note that many of the members made reference to the changes that have been made in terms of national rail regulation in recent years, in particular, the introduction of the Rail Safety National Law, of which South Australia is the lead legislator, which then bears the requirement of what we are doing here today and making some minor technical amendments.

I was also very interested to hear the different issues which have been raised by the various members opposite relating to rail. There are also some issues which were raised relating to buses but that would be par for the course for the member for Hartley, but we welcome his contribution, in any event.

It has been a great pleasure for me to work very closely particularly with the regional members of this parliament on some of the issues that we face across different regions in South Australia, whether it be the Mallee lines, the Eyre Peninsula lines, which the member for Flinders spoke about at some length, and also the lines in the Mid North which are all managed by Genesee & Wyoming Australia.

Given the hour, I will not go into a lengthy and enjoyable rebuttal of many of the issues that were raised. I can move that we extend time, Deputy Speaker, but it would be self-indulgent—

Mr Gardner: Lily-livered, weak-kneed minister!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Don't slow him down.

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Many people say to me, 'Without the very substantial contributions of members of the chamber like the Deputy Premier and the deputy leader, where would we be?' Of course, the response to that is, 'Home.' I do not want to indulge myself to the same extent, but I do thank all members for their contributions and I look forward to prosecuting some of these issues a little more thoroughly in other capacities.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister Assisting the Minister for Planning, Minister Assisting the Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (17:56): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.


At 17:56 the house adjourned until Wednesday 25 March 2015 at 11:00.

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