Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak about infrastructure in my electorate of Boothby. One of the issues I have spoken about several times before is the issue of having a non-stop South Road from Darlington to Wingfield—22 kilometres of non-stop expressway. It is a priority of the RAAA of South Australia; it is a priority of a number of economic development councils; and it is a priority of two local councils which cover my electorate—the City of Marion and the City of Onkaparinga.

There is a bit of history here. In 2006 the South Australian government promised that they would fix the intersection at Sturt Road and South Road. That has not happened. In 2007 the federal Labor Party in opposition then through Kevin Rudd and also the then shadow minister for transport promised that they would fix Sturt Road and South Road. Again, it has not happened. They have commissioned a traffic study which looked at fixing this intersection and at present it involves approximately $1 billion of infrastructure work and is currently unfunded.

But today we had the extraordinary announcement that the South Australian government have decided to switch an interchange worth $75 million, which they promised 18 months ago, with a traffic light. After all of the waste which has occurred—the billions of dollars at state and federal level—we have now have no sense of priorities. Something that was promised to voters only 18 months ago has now been ditched—a $75 million interchange for a traffic light. Worse, it was left to the department to announce this to parliament. The secretary of the department confirmed it before a committee hearing and the departmental executive responsible for this, Andy Milazzo, said before the hearing that he did not know if the minister had been informed.

My question is: what is it about Labor governments and funding infrastructure in Darlington? We have a whole succession of promises going back 5½ years and nothing has happened. It is really not good enough. This is something that has been promised and still never delivered. Rod Hook, the chief executive of the department, said they were hoping for federal funding. Well, the federal funding that was promised for the intersection just down the road still has not been delivered after the federal government has been in for almost four years and 5½ years after state government promised it. It is not good enough. This is another breach of faith. It is another broken promise for residents in the southern suburbs. It is just an extraordinarily chaotic process, and incredibly cynical, whereby something is promised before the election and then never delivered and the promise is just quietly shelved and not acted on. It is not good enough. It cannot happen again.