Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I will speak briefly on a couple of points that the member for Hindmarsh made. Generally he is a good man, but it was of course John Howard and the member for Wentworth who initially came up with the idea of a national takeover of water in this country, so it is actually a Liberal Party initiative that remains our policy. We are the only people who are interested in saving the Lower Lakes. We are not interested in getting front-page headlines about fake water which does not exist to mislead people to win a state election; we are interested in actually fixing an environmental crisis in that area.

The reason I have risen today is to speak about local roads in the electorate of Mayo. Unfortunately, in South Australia this year we have seen an extraordinarily high road toll, particularly in the earlier parts of the year, with 65 people having died. About half of those people have been in my electorate. The Adelaide Hills and the Fleurieu Peninsula have winding, small roads and unfortunately we have seen too many deaths due to a range of factors. One of those factors has been the quality of the roads and the lack of investment by the state Rann Labor government to keep these roads safe for the people who live in my area. I am talking about roads like the one at Crafers. I have recently done a survey of people who live in Crafers and there has been an overwhelming response about concerns as to the main street of Crafers, about people speeding up on it to get onto the South-Eastern Freeway, so using it as a launch pad. State Rann Labor government ministers have said there is no problem, although I am pleased that the new state minister, Jack Snelling, has taken this on board and is now looking at it after substantial community pressure. Over 10 per cent of people replied to the 700-odd letters that were sent out into Crafers, which I am sure members would acknowledge as being an extraordinary number of people, and we sent that information to the state Rann Labor government minister.

In addition to that, Kangaroo Island—which is often left out by state Labor, as the Rann government does not like KI; they like to use it as a tourism attraction but they do not like to invest any money down there—has enormous challenges with roads and we need to do more. There is a lot of attention always given to the Victor Harbour road—and it should be duplicated—and, equally, I think we need to pay significant attention—perhaps more attention—to the road that goes down from Normanville and Yankalilla to Cape Jervis. It is a major tourism attraction. I think it is a long-term challenge for South Australia that we upgrade that road to increase the capacity for tourists to get to Kangaroo Island safely and for locals to travel on that road safely. It is a burning issue and it will be an issue into the future that I will be fighting over on behalf of my community.