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

The member for Boothby asks whether I am offering myself. I can assure him I am not. I would avoid local government like the plague. But I do think Elizabeth deserves a non-partisan, full-time mayor myopically interested in its own affairs. Every day when I am back in the electorate, doing street corner meetings and shopping centre stalls, I hear from people about the footpaths, about trees that need to be removed, about local neighbourhood issues that they are concerned about. These are issues that I do not mind bringing up with the council, but they really should be attended to by mayors and by local councillors. I do not think it is appropriate to have a local mayor who is focused on the next move in state parliament. It is fair enough that that is what he wants to do, but it is completely unfair to the City of Playford. I think that, particularly after the big rate rises in the last couple of years, people are entitled to demand that all of their elected officials are completely committed to the local area and are not off campaigning in another part of town for a different group of people in a partisan way. I urge everybody in Elizabeth, and Munno Para and places like Hillbank/Craigmore, to express this view to the council and to the mayor to make sure that we get our money's worth out of local government.

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