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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Birdsville Track

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart) (14:44): My question is to the Minister for Transport. Can the minister update the communities around the Birdsville Track regarding accessibility across the Cooper Creek crossing? With your leave and that of the house, sir, I will explain a bit further.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK: With the recent rains in Queensland resulting in lots of water coming in to fill up Lake Eyre, which I will say is going to be an absolutely fantastic opportunity for tourists up there, and with the water coming down Cooper Creek, Cooper Crossing will be inaccessible to vehicular traffic in the future. I know that the minister has been trying his very best to get a solution for us.

The SPEAKER: Before I give you the call, I would like to say I was up there a couple of weeks ago. It is looking fantastic at Lake Eyre. I went out to Clifton Hill Station as well. It is a great part of the world.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:45): It would be totally out of order for me to also remind the house that Dr David Day is also in the house, sitting alongside the most talented Liberal opposition leader we have ever had. I thank the member for his question and I—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Liberal, I said—Liberal. He is Labor. I know it is a difficult concept for all of you to understand. There is a difference between the political parties. Ask Ashton, she will explain it to you.

The Premier has—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, see, you're doing a great job. The Premier has responded to this question when asked in the media and I want to thank the member for his question. The member for Stuart is deeply connected to regional South Australia, whether it is people living on stations, regional workers. If you want to know what is going on in the Mid North of the state and the north of the state, you speak to the member for Stuart. He knows exactly what is going on and he is a great barometer for the government.

It is a complex process which takes time. I know that the floods coming from Queensland are causing a great amount of disruption in our north, especially for our cattle graziers who are very concerned about how to get their cattle to market. The government is actively considering and will make a decision shortly on options that will best benefit the people of South Australia to make sure that we can keep people in regional communities connected to the rest of the state but also keep in mind the cost to the taxpayer. So there is an analysis here that we have to do and it is difficult to contemplate that in terms of remoteness.

Often people living in remote areas feel as if they make a very large contribution to the state, yet the contribution in reverse is very, very little. This government is acutely aware of that and the benefit that regional communities, especially our farmers and our cattle graziers, provide to this country and this state in terms of offering us protein and investment.

A lot of work has been going on. Obviously, there are some people who want us to build a bridge. Building a bridge for one in 20, 30, 40-year flood events is expensive and difficult, especially in that terrain. Given the very nature of regional South Australia, it would be difficult to build something that would be event-proof. So we are looking at many options.

The government has been in contact with a range of people associated with the livestock industry at the behest of the Premier and the member for Stuart and the Minister for Primary Industries and, of course, Minister Bourke, who has been up in the Mid North talking to those local communities. We are interested in what producers are saying; what the impacts are on our economy; what the impacts are on our abattoirs, especially in Murray Bridge and the like. We are talking about jobs, we are talking about grocery prices, we are talking about people's livelihoods. So we are acute to all of those concerns.

Of course, we have to make sure that this is a national problem, this is not an acutely South Australian problem. This is something that impacts the entire nation, not just the state. The commonwealth has a role here and it is important that the rest of the nation knows that South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia are the bread baskets of this country. We want to make sure that the rest of the country knows that when our primary producers in regional and isolated areas are in trouble, it is not the requirement just of 1.6 million taxpayers to take care of. It is the requirement of over 26 million Australian taxpayers to make sure that they know that there are requirements. We are making sure that this is a national issue.

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