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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-28 Daily Xml
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Main South Road Duplication

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:24): I rise to celebrate what is almost the end of a major project in the electorate of Mawson, and that is the duplication of Main South Road from Seaford down to Sellicks. It is something that we took to the election in 2018. We funded it in the 2017 budget and then put the next bit in in the Mid-Year Budget Review in December 2017. Little work was done in that first four-year period; in fact, the real work did not start on the project until 2022.

Since that time, locals have put up with a lot of disruption as hundreds and hundreds of workers have been out there turning a really unsafe, deadly piece of road infrastructure into a safe, efficient dual-carriageway network that we can be very proud of and that will help people in the Port Willunga, Aldinga, Sellicks, Myponga, Yankalilla and Kangaroo Island areas get to and from Adelaide and northern parts of the state much more easily and much more safely.

But it is to those hundreds of workers that I really want to give a special thanks to today. They have done a remarkable job, working out there in driving rain, windy conditions and beating-down sunshine. I got to meet a few of them a few weeks ago. It was on the Friday morning before the October long weekend and we went down to muster. Before each shift starts, everyone comes together. On this particular morning, they put on an excellent egg-and-bacon sandwich breakfast and coffee for all of the workers, and they had one of my favourite people—Fred Sheilds—come along and speak.

Fred was one of the driving forces for this road duplication. A lot of times, governments get all the credit, but governments do things on behalf of the people. Democracy is very simple: of the people for the people. Fred had a serious crash on Australia Day in 2003 on Main South Road, and he spent 47 days in hospital. When he came out he was in a wheelchair. He had to learn to walk, learn to talk and to read again. It was a traumatic experience for him.

I first met Fred in 2005, when he was working on a local road safety group, and Fred came along and spoke that morning. He brought the red accident marker from the crash that nearly took his life. That red marker is now where the second lane is on the duplication of Main South Road. To Fred, to everyone else who was injured on that road, and to those families who have been left behind because they had loved ones killed on that road, we hope that these new works will make it a much safer trip to wherever people are going.

Apart from the workers who have done an incredible job, I would like to thank the engineers who somehow have managed to keep the road open so that you can still get through. Sometimes you might have to slow down a little bit to get through, but it never ceases to amaze me how they can work out the traffic flows and the workflows to ensure that, while this really important work is happening, cars and trucks and other vehicles can keep moving through the area.

I would also like to thank Lee Waters, Jeanette Koukourou and Michael Rander, who have worked for the Department for Infrastructure and Transport. They have a weekly call with Jenni Mitton, who is the office manager in the Mawson electorate office. With those lines of communication by having that weekly call, people in our area who might have a complaint or a suggestion or some feedback can contact our office and we are across all of the issues. So it's terrific that we have had that great relationship, and I want to thank them.

It will not be long now—end of the year or early next year—when this project is complete and it is owed to so many people, including the politicians of the day: Jay Weatherill was Premier, Tom Koutsantonis was Treasurer and Stephen Mullighan was transport minister when we went down there in 2017 to announce this fantastic piece of infrastructure. So to all of those people—whether you have been out there in a hard hat and a fluoro vest, or you have been running this state as the Premier—I would like to put the thanks of all the people in my local area on the record here today.

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