HORROCKS HIGHWAY

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Frome) (14:59): My question is to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. Minister, can you update or advise the house about any audit, costings or designs done on the Horrocks Highway, as this was mentioned as a high priority during the recent state election?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (15:00): I would like to thank the member for Frome for his question. He and I share the Horrocks Highway. It’s a road that needs a lot of love. We are lucky that in this last financial year the Marshall Liberal government has committed about $2½ million dollars to start fixing the Horrocks Highway.

We have committed money to resurface about seven kilometres of the Horrocks Highway between the Wasleys turn-off and Roseworthy. That work is actually underway at the moment. It is quite a difficult patch—there are a lot of Bay of Biscay soils underneath there that create a lot of volatility in that patch of road—but we are well underway to having that resurfacing work completed.

There are also two sections of shoulder sealing and, essentially, road maintenance being undertaken around Yacka and some fixing up of the road there.

There is a lot more work that needs to be done on the Horrocks Highway. I don’t have a figure in front of me about what total works would be needed, but it is an example of a road that in various sections takes about 4,000 cars a day. Up north, more towards your patch, member for Frome, it’s around 3,000 to 3,500 cars a day. It’s a very important part of our road network. It does need more love and attention.

As a government, when we brought down our budget last year, we made good on our commitment to put $315 million into regional road funding. There is more to come, and we know that we need to do a lot more. We will continue to find more money to put into regional roads, such as the Horrocks Highway, to make sure that people are safer on our roads. Horrocks Highway is a stretch of road that, off the top of my head, saw two road fatalities last year, which is absolutely awful. Again, it is a road that is a very high priority for this government to get on and fix, amongst a whole heap of other roads.

I don’t want to just talk about the member for Frome’s electorate and my electorate. There is a whole host of other roads. We have seen the RAA, in the last few days, come out and talk about the Dukes and the Augusta. We have seen them previously talk also about the Horrocks and the Victor Harbor Road—these were their picks for the state election that they wanted to see fixed. The truth is that we have had a huge backlog in road maintenance in regional roads in South Australia—fixing up regional roads and doing simple things like sealing shoulders, providing tactile line marking and safety barriers and trying to separate road medians. These are expensive but practical measures that we have to put in place if we want to see the road toll reduced in regional communities.