Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:46): I rise to speak on the motion about the overtaking lanes between Normanville and Cape Jervis. This is welcome work, as the member for Mawson has outlined, certainly linking people towards that vital sea route through to Kangaroo Island. I am sure the Mayor of Kangaroo Island, Michael Pengilly, will be pleased as well.

It is certainly a very windy road. As has already been described, the overtaking lane just out of Cape Jervis will be really handy for people to get going and get out of there instead of having the frustration of being held up. They are only being held up because there is vital freight coming off the island, which could be livestock or other materials, to make sure that the island essentially functions.

Sometimes there is not too much reality in regard to overtaking lanes. I see it on the Dukes Highway where, for whatever reason, the government does not want to take down a small amount of native vegetation in order to have the overtaking lanes in a straight line, because a lot of the time they are built on corners. I see it on the Dukes Highway near where I live at Coomandook, and it just seems a bit ridiculous and it causes confusion. I believe it has caused some fatalities where people are coming around a corner and do not know whether the overtaking lane is finishing or not and it causes a lot of confusion. I think there needs to be some more reality in regard to where these lanes are put for road safety. That is as simple as it gets: for road safety and to save people's lives.

We also see another issue, and the member for Finniss made me very well aware of this, with an overtaking lane that was proposed to be put in on Victor Harbor Road. At the last minute—after a land acquisition process was in place and the fencing had gone in; it was only a few kilometres out of Victor Harbor, to make overtaking lanes I think at five-kilometre intervals along Victor Harbor Road—this one got stopped. It was stopped because a group from Victor Harbor had protested about native vegetation being removed.

Anyone who drives down there—and I certainly drove down there to have a look at it in regard to going down there for various meetings and other things—can see that the trees were planted; they are all in a straight line. That does not happen naturally; it just does not happen. These were planted trees, and it was decided that they could not be removed to put in this vital piece of road safety infrastructure so that we can get everyone to and from Victor Harbor in a safer manner. Sadly, we have seen too many fatalities on that section of road, noting that there is a large retirement population in Victor Harbor.

Not only that, apart from all the other residents who are in the Victor Harbor and surrounding areas, it is the host to schoolies. We certainly want to do all we can to make sure that our young people who wish to celebrate the end of their 12 or 13 years at school can do that in as safe a manner as possible. I am literally appalled that this overtaking lane got taken out of the system right at the last minute after the processes had been gone through with land acquisition and fencing had gone in and then, 'Oh no, we can't do it.' We have to get some more reality into making our roads safer, and I am certainly not talking about broadscale clearing of native vegetation.

What I am talking about is a more realistic approach in how we manage it, and it can also encompass safety with wildlife, especially in these drought conditions when we have more kangaroos heading south. You certainly see them in urban areas now—you see them in Adelaide—and I certainly see them on main roads, right in the middle of Murray Bridge. In fact, one night I hit one. We need to get more reality into the safety of citizens, because we end up with these perverse outcomes where vegetation that is not even native is put above people's lives, and I think that is disgraceful.