27 November 2024
The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (23:15): I want to thank the Hon. Ben Hood for his contribution and other members who have contributed to this discussion previously. I should recognise that it is a real breakthrough that we have seen tonight because the shadow minister for transport has clearly read and engaged with the report but the Minister for Transport still has not done so. Despite the fact that this report was handed down nearly two years ago, the minister has still not engaged with the recommendations.
The Hon. Ben Hood, the shadow minister, was not even in the parliament when this committee met, yet he has taken the time to read through the report, to look at the recommendations, to form a view and to provide a report to parliament. Meanwhile, the minister is missing in action. I do not intend to go through all of the recommendations again because I have talked to them many times before, but I will say that one of the glaring themes that runs through the report is the need to improve the frequency and accessibility of public transport, particularly in the regions.
The Labor Party talk a big game about representing regional South Australia, but I do not think you can be fair dinkum about representing regional South Australia if you do not seriously engage with the public transport question. These recommendations are not ideological. They were consensus recommendations that were supported by representatives from across the parliament. It was a committee that included crossbenchers and Labor and Liberal representatives. They were very sensible recommendations and central to them was the idea of looking at how we can expand the outreach of transport in the regions in particular. Surely, this is something that this Malinauskas government should engage with.
On the first anniversary of this report being handed out, I organised a cake with members of the committee to celebrate a year anniversary since the report was handed down, with no response from the government. As we head into February, it will reach two years without a response and I expect I will be celebrating it once again with members of the committee. We are heading into the Christmas-New Year period and my message to the transport minister is, when he is setting his new year resolutions, maybe one of his new year resolutions should be to actually read the report, to pick up the phone to the Chair of the committee and arrange a meeting to finally talk about the recommendations and to finally provide a response to the parliament and to the over 100 South Australians who took the time to engage with this report.
When people engage with these committees, they do not expect that the report just gets spat out and put in the middle of a drawer somewhere, they actually expect that the government is going to engage with the content. That has not happened with this minister and that is very disappointing.
I do have a bill before parliament that would force the government to provide responses to select committees in a timely manner, and the failure to engage with this committee demonstrates why that bill is needed and it is one I intend to revisit in the new year. I thank members for their support of the work of the committee. In particular, I thank the Hon. Ben Hood for taking the time to read the recommendations and to engage with the work of the committee.