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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-02-13 Daily Xml
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Olli Bus

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:47): My question is to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Can the minister inform the house about the Olli bus operating on the Glenelg foreshore in my electorate of Morphett?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:47): I certainly can, and I would like to thank the member for Morphett for his support. He is somebody who was keen to help get this trial off the ground. It is sad that he couldn't be there on the day we went down there, although he did miss some of the hottest weather we have had this summer so maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

More broadly, South Australia has an opportunity here, when it comes to future mobility, to actually be ahead of the curve and stay ahead of the curve. In the last parliament, this parliament passed a piece of bipartisan legislation in relation to making sure that, when innovative opportunities such as this come around, regulation doesn't get in the way. The future mobility lab funding and the trials of autonomous vehicles are the best examples of that.

Essentially, we take a risk-based approach from a committee that looks at every angle and then provides advice to me to say, 'Go ahead and break the law.' We do allow these companies to break existing law, but to do so in a controlled environment that allows us to test new ideas. That is something this government is not scared to explore, and certainly not scared to explore in the transport space.

However, by far the biggest issue we have with emerging technologies is around community acceptance, and that is why having a trial on the Glenelg foreshore is important. It helps, in a very highly visible environment, to show the broader community how this piece of technology can work. This is a shared-use path and requires cyclists and pedestrians and now this Olli bus to live in harmony and work alongside each other, realising that whether it is a road corridor or a shared-use path, wherever it is, people of different abilities and with different modes, all need to work together to use the public infrastructure in a harmonious way.

Building this community acceptance is made all the more easy when people can see these things. What is interesting with this trial is that it is demonstrating a first mile, last mile solution that we need to get more innovative about. It is the part of our public transport network that South Australia as a low-density city has historically struggled with. This is a potential way to be able to deal with that problem.

It is also inclusive. It is why on the day Rachael Leahcar, who lives around the place down in Glenelg, was keen to lend her support to this trial, understanding that this is something that in the future can help people living with a disability or people living with a sight impairment to actually access public transport more easily. She does like Olli, if only because Olli actually tells some very bad dad jokes. We were listening to them on the trip and they got worse and worse as the trip went along. Again, Rachael lending her support helps to show the community how this can be a legitimate form of public transport into the future.

So there are a number of these trials existing all over the place. We have now also put one up into regional South Australia, up in the Riverland, combining with trials at the Lyell McEwin Hospital down at Tonsley and some of the work that Cohda Wireless is doing around trials in the city, which is a very different type of connected and autonomous vehicle, showing South Australians that this can work. I look forward to updating the house further as we go along about how these are progressing and how the community is coming to understand and grapple with these things.

In relation to this project, I also want to thank the Holdfast Bay council. Mayor Amanda Wilson was a great supporter of this. Again, where we as a state government were comfortable with the risk that we were taking to drive innovation, we brought Holdfast Bay council along with us, and I am very glad that they partnered with us and the local member to bring what is a fantastic opportunity to fruition on one of our busiest foreshores.

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