Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am here, Julie, so it must have been highly effective. To all of these people, I say thank you. I would also like to thank my amazing staff, who worked day and night throughout the campaign, as they do throughout the term to ensure that we can carry on in this role. One of the consequences that is sadly inevitable in moving from government to opposition is that you do downsize those staff considerably, but we have a saying, 'Once a member of team Ellis, always member of team Ellis.' I know that they will always be there and I will always show my gratitude for having the absolute best staff members, best campaign committee members and best support that anyone could ask for. To all of them, I say thank you.

Now the job is to make sure that we stand up strongly for the people of Adelaide. Sadly, there is already evidence that there is going to be much to stand up against. I am really proud that we have managed to deliver record levels of investment and results to the Adelaide community over the last few years, but we have seen in the early stages of this Abbott government that they are a North Shore Sydney government who have never shown any interest whatsoever in South Australia or, particularly, in fighting for South Australian jobs. Already, just months in, we have seen the Holden closure and the thousands of local families who will be affected by that.

I will also place on the record today my thoughts for the Qantas workers who were delivered the incredibly bad news of 5,000 job cuts just last week. I know that many of those Qantas workers are residents of the seat of Adelaide. I have visited and spoken to them about their concerns about a lack of job security. I would like to say that I will absolutely use this parliament to ensure that we pursue a plan to get them back to work and to turn around the statistics which we have now seen showing that, since this government was elected, there has been one job lost every three minutes. That is unacceptable to my local community and it is unacceptable for our nation.

We have seen an emphasis by the Prime Minister, by the Treasurer and by others on Sydney, particularly North Shore Sydney. It is my job to make sure that South Australia is not overlooked. It is my job to make sure that the residents of Adelaide are not overlooked, and there are many key issues which are at stake. At the last election we already saw a number of issues to which we pledged funds for the Adelaide community which have so far not been matched and honoured by the government. I talk about things like the Women & Children's Hospital Foundation's funding for a feasibility study to look into increasing their research capacity, something that I would think that every South Australian should stand up and fight for and support.

Also in the local community there are things like new lighting and upgrades to the club facilities at the Broadview Football Club. This is a club that has gone through hard times. This is a club that has worked through those hard times and has massively expanded to see that the Broadview Football Club is now offering sport, entertainment and a community hub, and it has huge numbers of junior players coming through. We want to make sure that we are not turning away people who are engaging in a healthy pursuit on the weekends because the facilities are not there to support them. It is shameful that the incoming health and sports minister has said that they will not be matching just $120,000 for the Broadview Football Club.

One of the areas of my electorate for which I have a particular soft spot is Kilburn. The good people of Kilburn have worked long and hard and have too often have been overlooked by governments of all persuasions at all levels. These are people who have worked hard, have largely have come through public housing, have too much pollution in their area and have a lack of community facilities. Yet, when Kilburn Primary School was closed down several years ago, I launched a campaign to ensure that that space would be used for the local community, that there would not be more heavy industry moving into the area and that we would have a place where the community could come together. I was so incredibly proud to be able to announce $1 million in funding to build a sporting complex at the Kilburn Primary School site. It would be the new home of the West Adelaide Football Club, but, perhaps more importantly, it would also be open to community use.

Kilburn is one of the areas in the community that I represent where the demographics have changed hugely. They have an ever-growing Afghan community, who are pretty handy on the soccer field, I have to say, but are looking for a place to train and to play. There are also members of the Sudanese community moving into the area who are very keen to ensure that there is some place provided for sporting facilities and a facility where people can meet one another and come together as a community regardless of their background. Sadly, the Abbott government have failed to match this commitment too.

The situation of the Victoria Park grandstand is perhaps the most shocking. An area has been redeveloped around Victoria Park so that it can host a number of different community and sporting events. We pledged $62,000 for disability access at that grandstand. That is something that I would expect every member of this parliament would support, but, shockingly, $62,000 has now been ripped off of them so that this disability access will not be able to go ahead and so that these community events will not be able to be attended by all members of our community. It is on issues like these and so many more that it will be my role to stand up for the Adelaide community.

One issue that I particularly want to touch on, noting the minister who is at the table today—Minister Briggs—is the issue of the South Road upgrade. The assistant minister may know that this is a particular pet project. It is a big project. It is an incredibly important project for both Adelaide and South Australia. It is a project that was estimated to cost $896 million to upgrade South Road between Torrens Road and the River Torrens. It is a project which the former Labor federal government struck a deal with the state government on a fifty-fifty funding commitment so that this project could commence. This project did actually commence. There have been properties that have already been acquired. There was work that had already commenced. There is a site office that is up and running that had conducted community consultations. There was actually work happening on the ground to ensure that this became a very long overdue reality.

Even this year alone, it is an issue that I can say I have heard about at countless street corner meetings—that the residents are absolutely furious. Not only has this project now been brought to a stop but the residents in the local area actually received a flyer in their letterboxes during the election campaign saying, 'If you vote for the Liberal Party we will upgrade South Road to the western suburbs.' This was to the very residents who had fought for the Torrens to Torrens upgrade—not just for years but for decades—only to then learn that indeed the progress on that project would be stopped.

But I am hoping that there will soon be good news on this front. This is where I look towards the assistant minister. I was delighted on the weekend when I read The Weekend Australianwhich does not always bring me delight, I should say! But I was particularly delighted to read this article, 'Tony Abbott eyes $5 billion for new road funding'. I note that the assistant minister said:

Infrastructure is already a major commitment of the federal government and I think you’ll see an even greater commitment, because there is a great need to lift our national productivity.

Now, I do not always agree with the assistant minister sitting at the table—

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