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

I rise to honour the memory of Frank O'Sullivan, the first Mayor of the City of Elizabeth. Frank was born on 24 March 1924 in my home town of Kapunda and, like so many of his generation, served in the Australian Army during World War II from 1943 to 1946. He was later employed as a district officer of the Commonwealth Employment Service at Gawler and moved to Elizabeth with his family in October 1956.

The new suburb of Elizabeth came under the Salisbury City Council and in 1958 two wards were formed—Elizabeth South and Elizabeth North. Frank O'Sullivan was elected as a councillor for Elizabeth South from 1958 to 1962. He then became involved in the severance of the then suburb of Elizabeth from Salisbury Council into its own council, the Council of Elizabeth. Frank became the Mayor-designate of Elizabeth from 1964 to 1965. In John Lewis's history of Salisbury, it was said of Frank O'Sullivan that he had:

... a natural flair for communication and debate. A sense of logic and fairness characterised his deliberations and his influence did much to raise the standard of council meetings. His election as first Mayor of Elizabeth was a surprise to nobody.

Frank O'Sullivan obviously was a pillar of the community. He was part of the Elizabeth RSL, a justice of the peace, active in the Catholic Church and the Central Districts Legacy, and he was on the local school board. He was married to Pauline and they had seven children. It seems to me that the first mayor of Elizabeth very much characterised the nature of Elizabeth itself. Elizabeth is a great working-class community—a great place to live, work and raise a family.

Most recently we have seen some new initiatives in Elizabeth. The government has looked at some of the problems that the local community has identified and is acting to help the community to fix them. One of those initiatives has made northern Adelaide a priority employment area. It is one of those areas across Australia that is receiving $45 million over two years from the current budget to support new activities to help retrenched workers to get back into work and to help job seekers get the training they need to gain jobs in areas of skill shortages. The funding will support opportunities for disadvantaged job seekers to get a foothold in the labour market, to foster social enterprises, provide new opportunities for work, provide information on how to access assistance, and support communities to run local job drives and industry events. In 2010 we had a jobs expo in Elizabeth and thousands of people turned out. It was quite an incredible event. People lined up to get into the jobs expo and literally hundreds of people got jobs that day as part of that process.

One of the other important things the government has introduced in the city of Playford, which encompasses the old city of Elizabeth, is income management. This program has been trialled in five communities across the country—a $96 million initiative over five years. It is a targeted program and one that will help vulnerable families and individuals to manage their households. It is all about stabilising households that have had some trouble. It includes parents who have been referred to Centrelink by state or territory child protection authorities and then assessed by Centrelink as vulnerable, as well as people who volunteer for income management.

These initiatives and others like them will help return the city of Elizabeth and the city of Playford back to that great working-class community. We want to make sure that we get the best results in this growing economy. Where there are jobs to be had, we want to make sure that we rebuild communities that have been buffeted over the last three decades by some of the changes to the economy, recessions and the loss of unskilled jobs. Just as Frank O'Sullivan worked so hard to make Elizabeth a new suburb, we want to make sure that it is a great working-class community in the years ahead.

See this speech in context