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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-10-15 Daily Xml
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Train Services

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Can the minister detail to the house the extra services Keolis Downer will deliver to train commuters above what they are already receiving now?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD (Gibson—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:55): I thank the member very much for his question to talk about the services at the end of the year that we are going to bring online that Keolis Downer will be delivering. I just outlined them, in fact. Nearly 12,000 extra trips—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —are going to come online. Keolis Downer are going to deliver them for us and we are very appreciative of that. Again, their history of customer service is second to none.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister will resume his seat. The member for Reynell will leave for 20 minutes under 137A.

The honourable member for Reynell having withdrawn from the chamber:

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned for a second time. The member for Kaurna is warned. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: We are talking about the extra services that are going to be rolled out on the Flinders Link line—nearly 12,000 extra trips that are going to be there for the people of that community. I talked about the evening services that were ignored under the previous government. If you work a little bit late, forget getting the train home under these guys—you couldn't do it. The train didn't run in the evening. That will happen going forward under us, and Keolis Downer will deliver that service for us. It will be weekends as well. You want to get a train on the Tonsley line, now the Flinders line—

The Hon. A. Piccolo interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Light is warned.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —on the weekend? Forget about it. It can't happen. It can't happen under their watch, but we are going to be doing that. We are putting those services back in place and the people of Gawler are going to love the new electric trains. They have had diesel trains for so long. We are going to be rolling them out and Keolis Downer are going to be delivering that service. They have a history and I have talked—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: They keep wanting me to talk about it—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the leader!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: —is all I can presume because I talk about their great history. Have I mentioned about how well they are doing up in Queensland with the Gold Coast line, and also in Melbourne? You don't have long to wait. They could be an award winner again in a few hours' time in the Australasian Rail Industry Awards. Get online and watch because it's exciting; and, if not, if they are just a finalist, that is a pretty good effort as well, so I dip my lid to them.

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: They are providing really good services and they will be providing those good services to us as well. They bring great ingenuity and great innovation in the way they operate. They've got experience from all over the world and they will be bringing that to delivering the services here for South Australia, and I point to that fact. Part of the discussions with them is very much focused around service delivery to the customer and making sure that interface is better than ever. We are going to be delivering extra services. We are going to be delivering more services. Do I need to mention it again? Maybe I do, maybe just so that it gets through. The people on that Tonsley—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Badcoe will leave for 20 minutes under 137A.

The honourable member for Badcoe having withdrawn from the chamber:

The SPEAKER: The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: I don't know what the member for West Torrens has against an extra 12,000 services on the Tonsley line, but he is really agitated by this and we are delivering it. We are building the infrastructure—$141 million worth of new infrastructure on that Flinders line—and that means jobs. There are jobs that are happening right here, right now.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: The new Tonsley station.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: There is the new Tonsley station as well that the Attorney points out. This is great infrastructure. We are investing dollars into this infrastructure so we can generate these jobs. How can you have the money to do that?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: How can you be investing in the schools that the Minister for Education talks about and the hospitals that the Minister for Health talks about? What you do is you get a better service and you get a contractor that is actually going to save the government money. We can save $118 million over the course of this contract.

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader!

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: What will be saved is $118 million for this state government over the course of this contract, and that goes into delivering better services, be they education, be they health or be they the Gawler electrification of that train line that the Leader of the Opposition hates so much. He hates it. I can't work out why he does that. The member for Light would be very, very interested in that because he was in government for a long, long time and did he electrify the Gawler line? No, he didn't. But guess what? We are doing it. We are delivering.

Like with Flinders, with the extra services running there, and like with the Gawler electrification, we will be running better services for the people of South Australia. Again, I stress the point: those opposite don't like it, we are delivering it, we are just getting on with the job, creating jobs for South Australians along the way.

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