Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are fixing it, and that is one of the reasons that places like Smithfield Plains are getting a GP superclinic. We never saw any indication from the previous government that that suburb had any interest in health, and yet, in 2011, there will be a brand new GP superclinic opening in my electorate, down there on the Peachey Belt, which is an area that has cried out for medical services for a long time. The local residents appreciate, I think, the fact that we have taken some time to consult with them and talk with them about the health services they want.

I will return to the substance of my speech rather than that of the member for Herbert. This appropriation bill includes some money that was unspent in the last financial year for the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. It was my great pleasure in two recent visits to the north of my electorate to cut the ribbon on a number of very important projects, the first of which was done through the District Council of Mallala. I was there with Mayor Marcus Strudwick, a very hardworking mayor for the local area; the CEO, Charles Mansueto; and Pat Thompson, who is a very active resident of Dublin and takes great care of the Dublin Institute. In particular, the funding has been used in the Dublin Institute to upgrade the ceiling—the ceiling in the kitchen had been falling in—to upgrade the lighting in the institute and also to give the institute disability access. That gives this very small community’s institute a new lease on life. I know that Pat Thompson is particularly happy about it. She recently had a fall, which we hope she recovers from, but I think it just highlights the importance of disability access to that institute.

I also visited my old home town of Kapunda. I was there with Mayor Robert Hornsey and a number of other councillors from the Light Regional Council: Jane Alcorn; Ron Kubisch; Bill Carrick; Dean Rohrlach, who was my old principal at high school; and Lynette Reichstein, who is a resident of Freeling. We were also there with Roland Davis, who is a council worker who manages these projects, and Rory Zilm, who also works on these projects. What we did there was reopen the memorial garden in its new waterwise capacity. The memorial garden has been there for some time. I can remember it from my youth. It is a memorial for nurses who served in various wars and also, most recently, there is a new memorial to sailors and members of the Royal Australian Navy who served. It has a unique feature fountain which was donated by Mohamed al-Fayed, would you believe, in the eighties. One of the residents of Kapunda knew Mr al-Fayed, and he was good enough to donate a fountain. That sits at the centre of the memorial garden.

We now have waterwise plantings, underground watering and a whole new layout. It is a new lease of life for these memorial gardens. It is an important part of the Dutton Park sports fields, and we certainly hope the community gets good use out of it into the future. I would particularly like to thank Roland Davis for his design work and the many hours he put into the application to get that done.

The other project that was opened in Kapunda was the Kapunda swimming pool. I can remember getting badly sunburnt at this pool. I am glad to say that it has been retiled and that disabled access has been provided. That also provides important access to aged residents as well. Obviously opening these two projects in my home town brought up many fond memories. I have got to thank the Light Regional Council and all the people on the pool committee for their hard work. I know when Kapunda Primary School have their swimming carnival—I think it is this week—they will have a lot of fun.

From there we went down to Freeling, home of the Redlegs footy club—archrivals of the Kapunda ‘Bombers’. We announced some $14,000 to keep the home of the Redlegs safe from vandals. It was $14,000 spent on CCTV and other crime prevention projects, which will allow the town to defend and protect these very important community establishments. I can remember going there as a lad to 21sts and obviously to footy games. We always lost at the footy, unfortunately, in those days, but I am sure the record has been evened up since.

We also reopened the Metiske Park. That was the first project undertaken by Roland Davis for the council. He is a resident of Freeling, so I am sure it was a labour of love. The new design saves up to two-thirds of the water they had been using to water this park. I went out there during the construction phase and met a young contractor who had one of those Dingo diggers who had been put on for the project. So it does create important local employment. It has given this park a new lease of life and has rehabilitated a public space. Metiske Park was named after another local resident who lived just up the road who had long guarded it from his front verandah and cared for it every morning. He went down there and made sure it was all clean. So to give this park a new lease of life, to create jobs and to give it a new public area in effect while the town is experiencing substantial population growth, particularly of young families, is a really good project to back and I was happy to be part of it and part of the construction of it.

From there we went to Hewett. I can remember when Hewett was just farmland, but it is now an expanding suburb. It was one of the first places I doorknocked when I was a candidate. It is a great place to live and to raise a family, but many residents expressed to me the real need for community infrastructure. Developers in the past had promised bike paths, walkways and other community facilities but they have never eventuated. I have got to commend the Light Regional Council for putting up this community centre and for the support it received by Mayor Robert Hornsey, by all councillors and of course by the state member of parliament, Tony Piccolo, who also has a great interest in Hewett. In this new project, $4 million will provide a new meeting space, 84 car parks and a multiuse venue. It is done in partnership with the Hewett Community Church of Christ. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new reverend, Scott Combridge, and his family to Hewett. They have come from Victoria but they are South Australians originally. I would also like to thank the many members of the church who attended the turning of the sod ceremony for this important project. This project will be incredibly important for Hewett. I know they have waited a long time—some 10 years or so—to see these community and recreation facilities catch up to the growth in their suburb.

I want to talk a bit about Tony Piccolo, who is the state member for Light and, obviously, a Labor colleague of mine. He is well known for his advocacy on behalf of franchisees, as the House would know. Most recently, he has been instrumental in establishing and conducting an investigation into the issues that farmers have with farm machinery, warranties and legal disputes. In particular, he got the Economic and Finance Committee of the South Australian parliament to look into this area. The committee has produced a report called Consumer protection for farmers: reaping a fair harvest. This report highlights the experience of farmers with faulty and sometimes dangerous farm machinery. It examines the business costs that farmers incur when machinery breaks down while still in warranty or just out of warranty, the high cost of legal redress for many of these farmers, and the safety and liability issues involved for those farm businesses and for the distribution chain. The report raises many issues that should concern all members of this House, farming communities and, I think, the general public.

When looking at the report, you notice that confidentiality was requested for a number of submissions to the inquiry. Many who have issues in this area cannot easily tell their stories or take up their grievances. One family courageous enough to make a submission were Malcolm, Bradley and Andrew Lucas, who are all residents of Wakefield. A farming family, they had the courage to make a submission and give evidence, which is to be applauded. It is not an easy thing to do. I have had the great pleasure to meet with Andrew Lucas and his wife, Roseanne. They are good people and reminded me a lot of the forgotten people in Menzies’ great speech—the middle class of farmers, small business people and professionals who are not represented by unions, big business or the respective lobbies. In this case they have found a fighter in their corner. Tony Piccolo has been a vocal advocate and has given them the chance to tell their stories and put forward their point of view. This report raises a lot of serious issues concerning farming communities and we can only hope that the executives of state and federal governments have some regard to the findings of the committee.

While I am on the subject of local issues that Mr Piccolo is taking up, a Telstra tower is proposed for Hillier, which is just outside Gawler. The Gawler council have been attempting to negotiate with Telstra about the location of this tower—not whether it will exist and not whether it will be moved from this location to another but simply its location within the suburb of Hillier. It is a great pity that Telstra and their representatives have chosen to exercise their rights in the court rather than negotiate with local people. It seems to me that local landowners are prepared to negotiate in absolute good faith, and very quickly. There are a number of alternative sites which are as good, if not better, and it would not hurt for Telstra to take up their concerns and at least enter into good-faith negotiations with them, while preserving their rights, obviously, in the courts. I notice that Mr Barry Neylon has written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, the Bunyip, titled ‘Standing tall’, where he praises the council, the DAP, Mr Tony Piccolo and me, for which I thank him, for our role in helping this local community negotiate with a very big company. We just hope that Telstra does the right thing and negotiates with local landowners about this tower.

Finally, I would like to make a few comments about the state Liberal Party’s policy called ‘Northern suburbs: time for change’. If this were a positive policy, I would not seek to criticise it, but in the press release a number of allegations are made about the Rann government, and I think they reflect on my performance as well. Isobel Redmond says:

Instead of working with the community to address issues like unemployment, declining access to health services, unreliable public transport and lack of police presence, the Rann Government has continued its game of spin which doesn’t achieve anything.

I think that is a completely wrong statement about both state and federal Labor. I can reel off things off the top of my head. On 19 February we are going to have a jobs expo. We have already held a jobs expo and provided job services to the Bridgestone workers who were, sadly, made redundant as of April. When Isobel Redmond talks about health she chooses to ignore the upgrade of the Lyell McEwin Hospital. She chooses to ignore the fact that the state government is building a GP Plus centre opposite the Elizabeth city centre. She fails to acknowledge that we are building, as of 2011, a GP superclinic at the Peachey Belt. In terms of transport she fails to acknowledge the $550 million going into the Northern Expressway and the $290 million that will be spent electrifying the Gawler to Adelaide rail line. There are many areas where Ms Redmond has failed to make any positive comment at all.

Then she says that the government have not worked on law and order. I find that extraordinary. The biggest law and order problem in the northern suburbs is the issue of people riding monkey bikes and trail bikes through our parks, on our footpaths and in our recreation areas. I have spoken about this issue many times in the federal parliament. It is an important issue because, besides the amenity issue of having a bike hurtle through a park and the noise it creates, there is also the safety issue. I am terribly worried that a child, an older Australian or a family will get bowled over by one of these monkey bikes. When the state government announced they were cracking down on these bikes, they were going to crush them, Isobel Redmond responded by saying that that was a farce. She ignores the biggest law and order problem in the northern suburbs and she says the solution is a farce. That is just crazy and smacks of someone coming down from the hills into the northern suburbs and preaching to the local community. This policy is extraordinary.

Finally, this policy proposes to fund a feasibility study to run the rail line up to the Barossa Valley. On the face of it that sounds as though it is a good thing but, if you talk to anybody in the Barossa Valley, one of the great fears held in the Barossa is that its unique rural character, based on the wine industry, will be overtaken by the development of suburbs by developers. People in the Barossa Valley have been trying to hold on to this identity. It is a very important thing to the Barossa Valley. If a feasibility study is conducted it will set off alarm bells in every developer’s headquarters around the nation as signalling that this is an area which, potentially, could be developed. You will have developers swooping in and buying up land from family vineyard owners, who currently face a very tough time. We will slowly but surely see the pressure come on to develop the Barossa Valley. I think this is a very short-sighted promise. It is glibly popular, but the reality is that it will threaten the unique character of the Barossa Valley and it will set off developers and their lobbyists and they will start cutting up the Barossa Valley and turning it into housing. It is a very short-sighted policy. It is not what local people want and certainly not what local councils want. Local councils do want to extend the rail line, but not into the Barossa Valley. I think it is a very short-sighted policy. The Barossa Valley should be very wary of it. Frankly, I am very surprised that the state Liberal Party thinks that it is a good idea, because it is a very real threat to the unique character of the Barossa Valley.

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