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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-30 Daily Xml
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Main South Road Duplication

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:53): Yesterday, members of the Liberal government turned up at Aldinga to announce that they were going to do some consultation on the duplication of Main South Road. This is a project that was in the 2017-18 budget, so it was midway through 2017 when we announced that. Until now, nothing has actually happened even though we went out pretty much immediately—almost four years ago—and did community consultation in the form of a community meeting where we had the then minister for transport and infrastructure, we had the CEO of the department of transport and infrastructure, and we had senior executives there.

What we heard at that meeting back in 2017 was that the people did not want to have roundabouts. Soon after the election, it was great to have the then transport minister come down, the member for Schubert. He met with some of the people from the Main South Road Action Group, and they made it clear that they did not want roundabouts. We had a petition presented in here, with 1,200 people signing, saying that the people of Aldinga, Sellicks, Willunga, Yankalilla and Myponga did not want roundabouts.

Now the government comes back after not listening to the community, after refusing to respond to correspondence from the Main South Road Action Group from September last year and failing to engage with these people, these hardworking people who have brought this deadly road to the attention of successive governments. When we were in government, we went down and met with them. We doorknocked the area in 2016.

In 2017, when we sat around the cabinet table, we saw it as a priority project from a Labor government to duplicate Main South Road from Seaford all the way down to Sellicks. We listened to them, and we have worked quite closely with Craig, Fred, Dale, Jess and all the other team members in the Main South Road Action Group. What they have had from the Liberal government since they came to power over three years ago is absolutely nothing.

You do not have to take my word for how disgruntled the people of Aldinga, Sellicks, Myponga, Yankalilla, Willunga and the rest of the southern area feel about the Liberal government. Just go on Facebook. Have a look at the Premier's page and the announcement on the Liberal Party Facebook page and have a look at the comments there from the people who live locally and what they are saying about this Premier, about this transport minister and about this Liberal government.

They are not speaking favourably of this government. They say that our area has been absolutely ignored by the Liberal government, and guess what? They are absolutely correct. All we have from this government is a proposal to dump PFAS toxic waste in the McLaren Vale wine region, ironically on the corner of Main South Road and Tatachilla Road, one of the most dangerous intersections in the area.

They are calling our area 'the forgotten Fleurieu', and I am really sad to say that I have to agree with the local people in our area. It has become the forgotten Fleurieu. We are being ignored by the Liberal government and being offered roundabouts when we see that other places, such as the South Eastern Freeway, the Northern Expressway and all these other major builds around the place, have overpasses or underpasses included in them.

Mr Knoll: Yes, with five to eight times the amount of traffic.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Again, the member for Schubert, the former transport minister, wants to have a fight with the people of the south through me and yelling things out at me. I am here to represent those people. I will stick up for them all the way. I heard from the Main South Road Action Group that, when they met with the Liberal candidate for Mawson on Saturday, she said that she would not stick up for them and fight against her own government to make sure that roundabouts are not built there but overpasses or underpasses.

She is not game enough to have the fight for the people. She will not stand up for the people. Where was she when the fight was on to stop PFAS being dumped in McLaren Vale? Nowhere to be seen. Where is she on this fight? Nowhere to be seen. I have been the member for Mawson for the past 15 years, and I will continue to fight hard day in, day out for the people I represent.

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