Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

It is an honour to be elected in the same parliament as the member for Wakefield and others. I thank the people of Mayo for their trust in me and for the small improvement on the margin that was held by the former member for Mayo at the 2007 election—just a small improvement, but enough for bragging rights at least. I am pleased with that result and I am pleased the people of Mayo gave me that trust. I thank them for that and I do not take that trust for granted. It is there to be taken away at any time at future elections.

During the campaign we all made a series of commitments to our electorates and we all seek to implement those commitments. I am no different to other members of this place on both sides who have made those commitments. I want to address a couple of those commitments in particular this evening. Hopefully Labor ministers and the government take them up and implement them because they were good commitments that were well thought through. They would make a genuine difference to my people in the electorate of Mayo.

At the moment the biggest issue facing people in Mount Barker, where I live, is the second freeway interchange off the South Eastern Freeway into Mount Barker. It is an area that has grown significantly and has been one of the fastest growing areas in the country in the last 10 years. If the Rann state Labor government has its way, it will grow even quicker still, which I will address a bit later. This issue needs to be resolved and it needs to be addressed. We had a plan to provide funding towards the building of this second freeway interchange. It is an important project and I do hope the federal transport minister pinches it and implements it, because his state counterparts have failed in this area. They have failed to provide any decent assistance to the Mount Barker and Adelaide Hills community to upgrade this infrastructure, given the very large amount of development that has occurred in our area over the last 10 years or so. This leads into an issue that did dominate part of the campaign—that is, population growth and population growth in areas such as mine where state governments are not thinking it through and are not planning properly. I know the member for Wakefield has made comments in his electorate as well in relation to the state government planning on how population movement and growth will occur.

At the moment, there is a genuine challenge from the state government, who have decided to release a large amount of land, which is not supported by the community, is not supported by the local members, both state and federal, and is not supported by the Mount Barker council. It has gone through a process in which the development panel took submissions. They are now at the end of that process. However, a really concerning aspect of this process is that a state government minister, Mr Holloway, is saying that he will not release publicly the advice that he will get from this development panel assessment. That is a mistake. I agree with the member for Lyne, who says, ‘Let the sun shine in on these sorts of issues.’ This advice should be released publicly so that we can see what the state Labor government has been told. The infrastructure spending should be there. That is why my major commitment in this campaign was to address some of those infrastructure bottlenecks. This is a big issue and it will continue to be.

On top of that, there are the issues of community safety and community facilities. We had a very good plan, which was released by the shadow minister for customs, the member for Stirling. He came up with a plan in relation to CCTV and community safety. We had two announcements in the electorate in relation to Mount Barker and, in particular, Victor Harbour, which is an older community whose residents are very concerned about community safety. It is something that governments should look at and consider.

In relation to specific promises, the community of Victor Harbour has for many years been campaigning for a pool. We promised funding towards it. It is a worthwhile project and I hope that the Labor government will consider it in the near future under their regional programs.

The biggest issue in my electorate continues to be water, the Lower Lakes and the Murray-Darling Basin. Fortunately, in the last few weeks and months we have had quite substantial rainfall. It has been for some a very joyous occasion to see the northern parts of Victoria under water. That means that water will flow into the river and into the Lower Lakes. For the first time in about 10 years, there is water flowing out of the mouth of the Murray. For the first time in a very long time, the dredging equipment can stop operation at the Murray mouth. That is great news. Lake Alexandrina is connected again to Lake Albert and the Goolwa Channel. These are all good events. For the first time in a long time, people can see some light at the end of the tunnel after what has been a debilitating and dreadful drought.

The rainfall highlights just how bad the drought was in 2006 and 2007. In the first week of September, the inflows into the Murray-Darling Basin were more than the inflows in 2006 and 2007 combined. That probably shows just how dry those years were rather than how wet August and the early parts of September were.

This issue will continue to be a major challenge for us. Next Friday the guide to the Murray-Darling Basin plan will be released. This plan was initiated by John Howard and the member for Wentworth in January 2007, when we released for the first time a national plan to deal with the Murray-Darling Basin. That was the first time that a government had taken on this issue. It is still to be resolved. The criticism that we rightly made of the former minister for water during the election campaign was that she had been too slow in implementing this plan and that it had been too delayed. This plan will be a very important document. It will give consideration to the science of the basin. It needs to give consideration to the communities that it will affect. We all wait with bated breath to see what is in it so that we can move the basin forward in a sustainable manner, continue to grow our own food in the Murray-Darling Basin and have a sustainable and healthy environment so that the Lower Lakes in my electorate survive and flourish.

There are other local challenges that I will continue to pursue in this parliament in the next three years. Some of those are the ongoing cost of doing business on Kangaroo Island and the challenges that its people have with their road network. Being a very large island with a very small population, it has a very small revenue base and has constant difficulties keeping its vast road network up to date and safe. It is a tourism mecca for South Australia. It is South Australia’s largest tourism icon and one of the country’s largest tourism icons. It does not get enough funding from state government in particular, who have really dropped the ball in dealing with Kangaroo Island. Unfortunately, the federal government needs to provide more assistance so that this island can continue to be the great tourism destination that it is. About 60 per cent of international tourists who visit South Australia do so to visit Kangaroo Island, so it is a great attraction for our state and for our country. It is a shame and a big disappointment that we do not fund it properly, given its very small population—it has only about 4,500 permanent residents. We need to ensure that it can continue to be what we want it to be.

In addition, those 4,500 residents face increased costs because of that 14-kilometre water gap. It is like being in a very remote community. It faces very similar challenges, no doubt, to some of the communities in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, in that the costs of doing business, the costs of transport, the costs of getting to market are that much higher than what they are in other areas. That is a real challenge that needs to be considered. I know that the regional development board under Barry Featherstone as the CEO and Mayor Ann Ferguson as the chairman will continue to push for solutions to these challenges as well.

In the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu Peninsula there has been a large spate of road accidents this year, with up to 40 deaths on roads in my electorate. About 30 of those came in the first six weeks of the year. The nature of the towns and villages and the areas between them is very hilly. The roads are very windy. Unfortunately, sometimes the quality of the roads is not up to the way that people drive on them. There needs to be improved driving efforts but also increased funding to address the many black spots that we have to ensure that people are safer on those roads.

19:13:39

Finally, the other local issue I wanted to address briefly this evening is the ongoing challenge of the freight rail network that goes straight through the Adelaide Hills and which is far out of date. A longer term solution should be planned to look at taking this rail network onto the flat lands north of the Adelaide Hills, bypassing the pristine environs of the Adelaide Hills and into the lower part of Mitcham, which also affects the member for Boothby’s electorate. It is a big issue. I know some do not think it is a big issue but we will continue to look at long-term solutions. It is not going to be fixed in five minutes but it should be addressed in the coming years. It will be economically efficient to get the rail out of the Adelaide Hills because you will get—

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