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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-02 Daily Xml
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GOVERNMENT FEES

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (15:30): This afternoon, I want to talk about three things: the government's failure, the government's failure and the government's failure. I have just spent a week or so in far-flung parts of my electorate. I went west to the Eyre Peninsula and to the Far West Coast. I also went to Cowell and learned about the government's failure to deliver adequate water and how that is stymieing progress and prosperity. I went to the bakery, the service station and the local grocery store. Of course, everything comes to Cowell by truck: flour for the bakery, petrol for the service station and groceries for the IGA.

Shawn Hornhardt, who owns the local IGA, said that freight is a massive cost component. His freight bill last year was $120,000. So what does the government do? What is its answer? It has raised road train registration fees by 21 per cent. It is the single, largest registration fee and federal fuel increase in history. It will raise the price of flour, petrol and groceries in rural and regional South Australia.

At Tumby Bay, trucking company owner David Smith said that the government will cost him an extra $100,000 a year. He said that the entire section of the state will be affected. What does minister Pat Conlon say in response? He says that he will continue to listen to industry concerns. In other words, he will flap his ears.

Of course, as transport minister, Patrick Conlon has failed, and failed, and failed again. He admits that our roads are lethally dangerous. His solution is to double the cost of holding a motorcycle licence. He will rake in an extra $50 million every 10 years in motorcycle licence fees, and he claims that he will spend this money on motorcycle safety initiatives.

Our roads are death-traps. His answer is to make holding a licence so expensive that people will stop riding. There are 168,000 South Australians who hold a motorcycle licence. Just like a one-car family, where the mum and the dad both have a licence but share one registered family car, not everyone who has a motorcycle licence has their own bike. There are not 168,000 registered motorcycles in this state. So this sneaky government is not just increasing motorcycle registration fees—that simply would not raise enough money to satisfy its greed—it is doubling the cost of carrying a motorcycle licence in your pocket. Labor will collect $112,569,000 every 10 years in motorcycle licence fees.

I would not be surprised if those drongos in Pat Conlon's office are dreaming up other idiotic ideas, such as fining scooter riders, registering pushbike riders and making it illegal for the elderly to use an electric wheelchair, such as a gopher, unless they hold a licence. An amount of $670 per pushbike rider and senior citizen every 10 years—think of the pushbike and gopher safety initiatives that Pat Conlon could have named in his honour.

Last October, a 40-year old Paralowie father was killed on Port Wakefield Road. He was riding a motorbike. The bike skidded on painted white road markings and gravel which was lying on the slip lane from Bolivar Road. A truck hit the rider, injuring him fatally. In some civilised parts of the world, it is illegal to use glossy paint on roads—it is too dangerous. They use paint with a high friction coefficient. A tin of proper paint could have saved a life. And gravel on the road?—a road sweeper or a broom.

Outside the Stirling pub in the Adelaide Hills is a roundabout. In the middle of that roundabout is a manhole cover, smooth and as slippery as grease and next to impossible to see after dark. Any pushbike or motorbike that rides over that manhole cover in the rain will fall over. If there is a car behind him or her, that could be fatal. It could be prevented, not by increasing licence fees, not by some expensive motorcycle advertising campaign on prime-time TV, but with a proper, nonslip manhole cover—a two-minute job.

However, this government cannot organise that. It sits in its offices and conjures up plans to increase truck registration fees by $100,000 per operator and double motorcycle licence fees. As I said, there are 168,000 motorcycle licence holders in South Australia; there are 168,000 South Australians who have yet another reason to vote Liberal at the next state election.

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