Southern Roads

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:50): I rise this afternoon to put on the public record some comments further to a petition that I tabled here last week, signed by 402 people calling for an urgent assessment of road safety upgrades to the Pages Flat Road from the Victor Harbor Road near Willunga Hill through to Myponga.

I particularly want to put on the record my thanks to Mr and Mrs Pentelow, who actually spearheaded the petition and initiative after a very tragic recent fatality, where a highly respected and good man from Willunga, with a loving wife and three beautiful children, tragically lost his life after swerving to miss a kangaroo and unfortunately veering across the road and hitting a truck. Our farm is not far from the Pages Flat Road, and in fact one of our farms actually fronts the Pages Flat Road, and I travel along it regularly.

This road was originally built by local government. It did its best at the time, but the road is not structured for the heavy volumes of traffic it now gets. It has a lot of bike riders on it as well because it is part of the Tour Down Under route, and people go up there from this time of the year right through training. It carries heavy B-double loads of livestock, particularly from Kangaroo Island to Thomas Farms at Murray Bridge. It has the quarry trucks on it and milk tankers, and carries a lot of heavy vehicles because it is a semi-arterial road.

The trees are too close to the road, there is no road shouldering, no audio line marking to alert people if they drop off, and because of the narrowness of the roads (probably just meeting specifications) the semis cannot help but blow away the rubble from the edge of the road, and when you drop off that road you have a 75 millimetre drop, and you struggle to pull the vehicle back on to the road. I am sick of the blame game; I am sick of the nonsense about Abbott government cuts. This government has a budget and has to prioritise that budget.

Apart from the Southern Expressway, which I am happy to see duplicated (but that was done after some urgent polling in the 2010 election which said they had to do it, and of course that is accumulated core debt now and is not paid for, but I accept and acknowledge that it has been done) and apart from some money from the Motor Accident Commission, little money is being spent in the South.

I am lobbying for work along the Sellicks section of the Yankalilla Road; I am lobbying for work on the Malpas Road to the South Road Aldinga section from McLaren Vale to Willunga, where the old road needs serious, long-term, permanent work done on it. But over and above that I agree with the 402 constituents who have signed the petition saying that they want an urgent review. I will be writing to the minister.

I appeal to the minister to try to prioritise within a difficult budget—and I acknowledge that the minister has that difficult budget, but that is part of being a minister—to look urgently at road shouldering and to get serious about proper trimming of the trees. If a kangaroo comes out of a paddock you have no chance of seeing it with the way the trees are now. Hundreds of kangaroos would cross that road every week.

They are almost in plague proportions at the moment, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources acknowledges that because you can get a permit very quickly now to reduce kangaroo numbers. Notwithstanding that, in all my life this is the most kangaroos I have ever seen, and they have now caused at least two fatalities in and around the proximity of the Pages Flat Road, a very tragic situation.

I also would like to see a staged redevelopment, as that is what our constituents want, and we do need some serious money spent there. I drive a truck along that road from time to time and I said to the minister, the Hon. Trish White, at the time, and I say to the Hon. Mr Mullighan, come out with me in my truck and I will drive you along there and that is when you know whether you have a reasonable road or not.

When you are bouncing all over the road in a truck, you have a problem and that can lead to road tragedy or trauma. I strongly recommend that the government take notice of this and, on behalf of all the people using that road, somehow make serious upgrades of that road an urgent priority in the interests of road safety and in the interests of giving southern people a fair slice of the budget when it comes to road transport.

The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Hon. Mr Brokenshire. I would be happy to go along on the trip with you if you like.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I will take you for a drive in my truck.