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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-16 Daily Xml
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Truro Bypass

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (15:25): I rise to speak about some disappointing news that my electorate has just received today, and that is that the Truro freight route in my electorate has been axed by the Labor government. This is a project that was announced in 2021 and had security in funding by both the former Coalition government and also the former Marshall Liberal government. It was a $202 million project that was ready to go when we left office, unfortunately, in 2022.

I would like to paint a bit of a picture for the house about what currently occurs in Truro on a daily basis. Each and every day in the Truro main street, there are 4,500 vehicles that move through, and 30 per cent of those are heavy vehicles. What that means is that there are approximately 600 B-doubles and road trains that are coming through a small township and its main street, a main street that has beautiful businesses, residential homes and, of course, children who are crossing the main street just to be able to go to school.

Really, the whole value of seeing this project was not just getting trucks off the main street and therefore providing a bit of road safety relief for residents, who have been fighting for this type of project for such a long period of time, but it was also going to be an extraordinarily significant boost for the productivity of our whole state. I speak to people in the trucking business who also do not want to be driving their B-doubles or road trains through the main street of Truro, and to be able to have a freight route that would take them off the main street and hook them back up with the Sturt Highway would have been so beneficial.

Delivering this project, as I mentioned, was on track under the former Liberal government. In fact, when we did leave office, we should have been seeing shovels in the ground on this project late in 2022. Of course, we did not see that. The irony of this whole situation is that, had the Labor government actually stuck to the time frame and ensured that shovels were in the ground by the end of 2022, then the Truro freight route project would never have been caught up in this infrastructure review that has led to around $400 million worth of projects being axed right across South Australia.

When you have a look at the make-up of where these projects have been cut from, it is super disappointing to note that the majority of these projects are in regional South Australia. Regional South Australians deserve credible and valuable infrastructure, just like those people in the city do. As I was writing to the minister not just in South Australia but also in Canberra, as I was standing with locals, whether that was at community forums or street-corner meetings, they really wanted certainty provided to them much sooner than today.

In fact, when we did write to the minister, Catherine King from Canberra, we asked her to come out to Truro and see for herself the massive impact of having 600 B-doubles come through a main street. When I speak to residents, they often talk about their houses absolutely shaking from 600 trucks going through their main street. I speak to local families who genuinely do not want their kids to be walking to school in what is an absolutely tight-knit town. That is not what we should be seeing in regional South Australia, and that is why it is particularly disappointing.

When we were asking for this government, this Labor state government, to stand with us and take the fight up to Canberra, they really failed to do so. We saw every other state in the nation have their premiers and transport ministers take the fight up to the federal government. We did not see that here in South Australia. All that we saw were, frankly, a silent minister and a silent Premier, who were just waving the white flag, almost in an accepting way, just accepting that these projects would be scrapped, and that was really, really disappointing to see. I have been on the phone already to locals in my community who will continue to fight for this project.

This is a huge kick in the guts for the residents of Truro. It is a huge blow for their ambition to get trucks off the main street. It is a critical blow for productivity right across South Australia. Let's not forget that so many of the goods and services in South Australia come through the Truro main street to head interstate to get onto people's plates over on the eastern seaboard. Abandoning these critical infrastructure projects is not just a setback for South Australia but is a massive blow for my local community and a kick in the guts for regional South Australia.

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