Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Dawson on his maiden speech. We all remember our maiden speech. I cannot help but think that his skills in oratory might have been honed on a soapbox in Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. I would also like to congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your election to that office, an office that was also occupied by your father. We have enormous respect in this House for the way you have carried out all of your duties and responsibilities as Deputy Speaker and also Speaker. I would like to congratulate you very sincerely on your election to that position.

I would also like to record my thanks to the voters in Boothby who, on 24 November, re-elected me as their representative. I will do my best to see that their views are faithfully represented in this chamber. It is a great honour for anyone to be a member of the House of Representatives in the federal parliament. Since Federation in 1901, just over 1,000 people have served in this House. It is an honour that none of us takes lightly. I regard it as a great honour, and I am glad that I have the opportunity to continue in this role.

A lot has been written and said about the 2007 campaign in the electorate of Boothby. The Labor Party said a lot about it before the campaign, during the campaign and after the campaign. I do not seek to add to the commentary on the 2007 campaign, but I will say that a lot of hard work went into it and that I would not have missed a second of anything that happened during it. Since 2004, I, as the member, and my team have doorknocked over 10,000 homes on our spare Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I have held thousands of conversations with the local people and their families on their doorsteps, sometimes from behind their doors. I heard directly from them about the issues that they would like to see action on—the issues that are important to them.

I have many memories of these conversations. For instance, I remember being at a railway station at 7 am and explaining to a constituent the intricacies of our tax plan and the low income tax offset, which had been released only the day before. It is the sort of thing that you are expected to do as a member—to be on top of everything. I found many people in their front gardens when I came to talk to them, and they spoke of their enormous frustration over the lack of water and lack of security for Adelaide’s water supply. This was one issue that many voters in Boothby wanted to see action on. The crippling drought and the severe water restrictions were almost always a topic of conversation at the door or in the front garden.

Last week, I presented a petition from 7,000 constituents calling on the South Australian government to do more in providing security for our water supply and to revisit the water restrictions, including the bucket policy. The petition was distributed last September, and I am pleased that the South Australian state government has moved, slowly, to begin work on a desalination plant and that it has modified its water restrictions in the face of overwhelming community opposition.

I am also pleased to note that it is the Liberal Party in South Australia that is now setting the agenda on a whole range of things. They have a vision for South Australia and a comprehensive plan to deal with the drought and our reliance on the Murray. At the beginning of the year, I flew over the Murray, from Mildura to Murray Bridge, and it was clear that, where once lagoons supported bird life, all that was left was a salt pan. Beaches were exposed in the river which were previously the river bottom. The state of the Murray, the drying up of Lake Alexandrina and what that means for the environment of the Coorong are the reasons I supported the $10 billion plan for water security in the Murray-Darling. It is worth noting that the new government is over 100 days into its term. This plan was 90 per cent complete when it was presented to Labor on the change of government, but we still have not seen any action on it. This is a very important issue for my constituents, and it is one that I will take an interest in as long as I am the member for Boothby.

The environmental issues raised by constituents ranged from local to global. I am pleased that the Liberal Party supports the ratification of the Kyoto protocol. While our concerns about signing it were legitimate, once we were on track to meet our commitments it made little sense to continue to decline ratification of the protocol. I pledge to work with local groups to help restore our coastal dunes, eradicate weeds in our local reserves, improve the quality of the Sturt River and Sturt Creek and help reduce the bushfire risk to homes in the Hills Face Zone.

In January, our local community had a serious bushfire which threatened homes in Brownhill Creek, Mitcham and Belair and which consumed over 20 hectares of bushland. The CFS and MFS responded with every asset they had and were able to contain the fire within three hours of its outbreak. It is 25 years on from Ash Wednesday, and this recent fire has been a reminder that many of our built-up areas are too vulnerable to the threat of bushfire. This makes it absolutely critical that households eliminate any fuel loads on their property and have a detailed fire safety plan available that they can implement when they make their decision to stay or go.

Local and state governments also have a role in helping to reduce the risk of flammable weeds and in ensuring that fire services have the assets that they require. I have spoken on this previously, but we have a particular problem in our area with feral olives; they are highly flammable. It requires a concerted effort from all levels of government to reduce this fuel load. On the issue of fire assets, the helicopter did fantastic work filling up from the Playford Lake and dumping its load on fires. However, I wonder whether the time has come for us to consider having an Erickson sky crane full-time in South Australia. The one currently based in Canberra is available to us. But fires occur very quickly. This latest fire broke out at 4 o’clock and was contained by 7 o’clock, with the work dealing with the logs and so on continued overnight.

Another issue which I will continue to speak out about is the quality of local infrastructure. You do not have to travel far to realise that the quality of infrastructure in Adelaide is very poor by comparison with other capital cities. During the campaign, while talking to people at railway stations last year, it was clear that people are fed up with the lack of investment in infrastructure by successive state governments. Breakdowns are a common occurrence on the South Australian rail network, and delays on our simple train system are part of commuters’ daily routine.

Something else that I have also spoken about is the vision of a north-south road corridor. The RAA visited me on this issue last year, and I took up the issue of the north-south road corridor and putting a stretch of South Road from Sir Donald Bradman Drive to Darlington on the national road network, which allows it to receive AusLink funding. I was very pleased that, after a lot of lobbying, the Prime Minister made this announcement in August last year. While I am disappointed that it will not be my side of politics that will now be in a position to fund this north-south road corridor, I am pleased that the Labor Party made a similar commitment to the one made by the Howard government, so this important project will go ahead. I welcome the $500 million which was committed by the Labor Party to continue the work on this vital piece of infrastructure. It is not clear to me how much the South Australian state government will be contributing over the same period—we had a proposal that it would be matching funding—but I do welcome the $500 million which has been committed by the Labor Party to work on grade separations and an upgrade of South Road between 2009 and 2014.

Another issue which concerns residents is law and order and crime. Just last month, there was a serious incident in my electorate involving over 100 youths from the southern suburbs swarming on a party. Police cars were vandalised. It was apparent that people had used the internet and SMS to descend on what was a child’s party. This now means parents have to have security for children’s parties, and we also have an issue with gangs in the southern suburbs. One of the things I was very keen to do, had the Howard government been re-elected, was push for CCTV cameras to help local policing. With the City of Holdfast Bay, we were able to get a CCTV camera in Moseley Square in Glenelg. This was the major priority for the Sturt LSA and also for the southern suburbs. That has been welcomed by the community, it has been welcomed by traders in that area, and it has also been welcomed by the police.

The Labor Party made a number of commitments in the electorate of Boothby during the campaign. They made a commitment for $3 million for a feasibility study on alternative rail routes through the Adelaide Hills. They made a commitment for $2 million for a performing arts centre at the Brighton Secondary School. They made a commitment for $1 million for an upgrade of the Marion Sports & Community Club. They made a commitment for $130,000 for lights at the Blackwood Football Club. And they made a commitment for $20,000 for the Sturt Baseball Club for nets and for junior sport. Of those commitments, four were taken from my future plans, but I am pleased that they did take up my future plans, and I look forward to these commitments being delivered by the Labor Party as soon as possible. These are all worthy projects which have my support and, I am sure, the community’s support, and I will be asking that this money is forwarded to the local groups as soon as possible.

There are many features of the electorate of Boothby which I have spoken on in the past. One of the things that make it special is that we have a number of landmark institutions in disability services: Minda Inc., Bedford Industries and CanDo4Kids, which used to be the old Townsend House. While these names are not always known interstate, they are certainly outstanding facilities. Bedford is now the second largest provider of disability employment services in Australia. Also, Townsend House has been providing education for children with multiple sensory disabilities for over 130 years. As the local member, I have been pleased to have a great relationship with all of these organisations, and I look forward to working with them on any issues that they would like addressed.

There are a number of issues that the parliament will have to consider. One of them is, obviously, the ageing of our population. It is expected that, in less than 40 years, a quarter of our population will be over 65. As a result, we are going to have much lower growth of the labour force, and this means it is absolutely critical that we improve workforce participation. This was a focus of the previous government. There are a number of areas for older workers, for men aged between 25 and 54 and especially for women in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s where our participation rates are much lower than those of comparable countries. We can do better there, and we will need to do better if we are going to maintain our standard of living into the future.

The most recent unemployment figures show that the unemployment rate is at four per cent. This is before the new government has made any changes to any of our settings on workplace relations or tax—although it is our tax policy that the new government will be implementing. However, I saw in the newspaper that Access Economics believe that, as a result of Labor’s strategy on inflation, we will see the unemployment rate go up to five per cent. That will mean that 100,000 people who would otherwise be in work will be put out of work under this government’s economic policies.

Recently I visited the Mitsubishi car plant in my electorate. As members would be aware, a decision was made in February to cease operations in Australia this month. The plant has been operating since 1964. At the time it was opened, it was one of the jewels in the crown of South Australian manufacturing. It has been an important source of employment in the southern suburbs. My principal concern is for the workers at Mitsubishi. I am pleased to say to the House that the support they have had from the company, from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, DEEWR; from the South Australian Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology, DFEEST; and from a whole host of businesses and training providers has been outstanding. The way that all of the workers are getting advice about their futures has been well thought through. I think it is certainly a very good example of government, the company and business working together to find jobs for these skilled workers.

In concluding my speech in the address in reply debate, I would like to say that it is a great honour to represent the electorate of Boothby. It is a fantastic electorate to represent and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to continue my work as its member.

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