Issues concerning Eyre Peninsula residents are being exacerbated by the same problems being statewide issues.
Flinders MP Sam Telfer responded to concerns raised about lack of police in some towns and problems attracting doctors and other medical professionals to the region at the recent Cleve Liberal Party branch annual general meeting.
“The problems we have got at the moment with regional South Australia is that there are challenges in the metro areas,” he said.
Mr Telfer, who is the Shadow Police Minister, said at the moment South Australia had 200 fewer police officers than it needed.
“Once again we are facing issues in the metro area which is exacerbating issues in our areas.”
Several people raised concerns about the poor quality of Eyre Peninsula roads, and the number of times work had needed to be redone on two entrances to Port Lincoln.
Mr Telfer said the problem was that roadworks were being allocated on tender to a cost, without accountability to the standard that work needed to be done to and to cope with the traffic using it – in particular what was needed to cope with the large number of road trains.
Asked about a proposal to reinstate rail on Eyre Peninsula, Mr Telfer said it was the markedly higher cost of rail freight that led to it being stopped previously.
In addition, since then competition meant that infrastructure had been put in place at other places that were not on the rail network, and grain was also exported from Lucky Bay.
Cleve couple Errol and Pauline Schuster were reelected branch president and secretary respectively.
