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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-05 Daily Xml
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Roadworks Legislation

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:40): My question is for the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Will the minister update the house on the Road Traffic (Roadworks) Amendment Act that came into effect last Friday?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:40): Very happily will I answer this question and say that this is one of the very early fixes that the new Marshall Liberal government has been able to undertake very quickly upon coming to government. To step out how we got here, and prior to the election even, I think that all South Australians would have heard the Premier use the phrase that we are not for deregulation: we are for wholesale deregulation. We don't want to nibble around the edges. We want to be able to actually take chunks of regulation away.

In fact, I think I heard it said at the AmCham conference the other Friday that we have now upgraded to radical deregulation. I think what we have been able to do and demonstrate in relation to the road traffic (roadworks) variation is radical deregulation. There are two steps to this that, essentially, we have been able to make sure come into place on 1 June. What was to come into place on 1 June was a draconian, expensive, punishing regulatory regime that would have cost councils, the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure itself, as well as every contractor in South Australia, a whole lot of money.

To give you a couple of examples of that, it has been put to me by the Civil Contractors Federation that, in relation to the O-Bahn city access tunnel project—keep in mind these are their figures, but even if we are only talking about a fraction of what they are talking about then this is extremely scary—based on the information and using the tier 1 value within the regulations as they were at that point, the additional fees for the O-Bahn city access tunnel project would have cost an estimated $4.16 million. If they were defined as tier 2 roads, this would have been $780,000.

In relation to a 35-day Goodwood Road reprofiling, if it was a tier 1 road, $194,000; if it was a tier 2 road, $36,000. If we go to the Montefiore Road-Morphett Road bridge, with speed restrictions and lane closures in place for 78 weeks, if it was a tier 1, it would have cost $6.24 million in permit fees, and as a tier 2 road, $1.17 million in fees. This is absolutely ridiculous.

This idea that somehow we can tax our way to better roadworks is patently ridiculous. It is something where the former government took a very simple idea from the member for Unley, who just said, 'Hey, if we increase the penalties on those doing roadworks, maybe we can get them to finish their roadworks a bit quicker and comply with the rules within their permit.' The former government said, 'Hang on, we can turn this into a behemoth. We can make this underwrite the budget of the government into perpetuity.' Never mind the fact that it would have halted construction and punished South Australian civil construction businesses. They thought, 'Let's get on and let's do it.'

Very quickly upon coming to government, I sat down with the industry and said, 'This is unacceptable, and I will work to fix it.' What we have been able to do, and what I tabled in the house only half an hour ago, is to disallow the regulations that were put in place but ensure that we can still keep the penalties that are part of the legislation in place that started on 1 June. So what we have been able to do is ensure that, where the holder of a permit does not comply with the conditions of the permit, they are fined for a first offence $20,000 and, for a second and subsequent offence, $50,000.

These are significant fines that will actually do what the intent of the legislation was in the first place and that is to punish civil construction companies that are doing the wrong things to make sure that we get roadworks finished as soon as they possibly can be. What we aren't going to do is make the cost for South Australian business more expensive so that it actually hurts taxpayers who end up having to foot the bill for Labor's over-regulation and mismanagement. It's something you are going to see happen more and more in coming months, as we put into place the radical deregulation agenda that the Marshall Liberal government has promised for a long period of time.

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee, who will be heard in silence. The Deputy Premier is warned.

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