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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-09 Daily Xml
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Transport Infrastructure

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:34): My question is to the minister for infrastructure. Is the minister aware that in the federal budget last night over the forward estimates only $52 million was committed to Regency to Pym?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:34): It is interesting. A couple of questions ago they did not understand how the money worked, and now magically they think that they have figured out how the money works. What I would say, though, in all seriousness is this—that every single one of the projects, besides what we will call bundle 2 and bundle 3, has money inside the forward estimates.

That means that there is money for these projects to start. There is money there for early-stage works to commence, for designs to be finalised and completed and for works to begin, which is the federal government's way of saying, 'We are committed to delivering this money. It is real. It is in the forward estimates.' Now, what it's also saying is: 'We need to sit down and work out exactly what your priorities are, which project you want delivered first, which one comes next and which one comes after that.'

The reason I say it in that format is that we call that a continuous pipeline of infrastructure projects. The defence industry has shown the way that boom bust really doesn't work, because you build a whole heap of skill and you create a whole heap of excess and impetus that delivers a project or projects in a short period of time and that it all falls away and those skills go to waste. Those skills go to waste, which unfortunately is the situation that I found myself in as a new minister coming in. There is a fantastic amount of work going on at the moment. There are three stages of the north-south corridor, which are currently being completed—$2.3 billion worth of works. The difficulty is that those projects are going to start completing very soon—Torrens to Torrens first, then Northern Connector and Darlington after that—but if we were to have started a pipeline of work—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Deputy Premier!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —that would have been more continuous, then that work would have had to have started a couple years ago. That does mean that we are going to have to pick up the ball, and we are going to have to accelerate, and we are going to have to work overtime—night shift overtime—to actually develop this consistent pipeline.

Now, there is money in the forward estimates for each one of these projects. We are going to sit down with the federal government, in line with our own priorities, about understanding which projects should and can be delivered first and in what sequential order they need to be delivered, and we will get on and do that work over the coming months. Then what will happen is that we will start to see those shovel-ready projects get underway and the ones that require more work continue to happen a little bit further down the track.

That is the normal course of things, and what I am struggling to understand is how we are now, after seven weeks, being held to a standard that those opposite refused to hold themselves to for sixteen years. I do not understand that all of a sudden we are playing a game of limbo and the bar has just been dropped. Well, hang on, that's not the way it works. There is a consistent process. There is a mature adult process that needs to be undertaken, and we will undertake it. We are unapologetic about that, because we know that that is what responsible, mature governments do.

All of these projects do have funding in the forward estimates. The funding is committed. The federal government is committed to partnering with the state government to deliver these projects. There is more work for us to do, and we will undertake that work to make sure that motorists, whether it be those long-suffering commuters on the Gawler line or those long-suffering truck drivers who worry every time they go through Port Augusta—you know, that there has not been a heavy rain or that there is something wrong with the bridge—will get the infrastructure upgrades they need. But the state government needs to do its homework, and that's what this government is going to get on and do.

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