James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I was about two-thirds of the way through my contribution on Thursday before we adjourned. I was of course focusing my comments then on the Urban Congestion Fund, to remind everyone in the chamber that didn't check the Hansard in the last hour or two about the comments I made. I'm of course very grateful for the investments that are being made in the electorate of Sturt: nearly $200 million worth of infrastructure upgrades to major intersections in my electorate. They are going to be a great benefit to many in my community from a safety point of view and from a speed point of view. People will be quicker home, safer home and with more time with families and also the economic benefit of that activity locally for jobs.

I want to spend the remainder of my time talking, from a community point of view, about three other smaller but very important commitments that are contained in this appropriation bill in my area. The first is the $5 million that we are contributing towards the upgrade of the Max Amber reserve in the suburb of Paradise in my electorate. With support from the Campbelltown council, this is going to see a transformative upgrade to the Max Amber playing reserve for the Athelstone Football Club and the Athelstone Cricket Club, and there is also now the establishment of a netball club as part of this upgrade. We are knocking down completely the current building. It has provided great service to the community, but it is getting quite long in the tooth, and I don't think anyone from the clubs that currently use it would find it offensive to say that it is in dire need of an upgrade. They themselves are the ones who have been fighting so hard to see this commitment made, so I was very pleased to be part of a team that, in the recent election campaign, committed to contributing $5 million to that project if we were successful. The community consultation on this, conducted by the Campbelltown council, has finished now. It's got very strong community support. We've now settled on the design principles and we have an indicative budget. The $5 million from the Commonwealth is now committed. The Campbelltown council are moving forward to do the work needed to start construction of that, probably at the end of this football season in around October this year.

This builds on the back of some great sporting infrastructure investments that have gone into my electorate over the years. My predecessor was very effective at getting support for other upgrades, like the Campbelltown Memorial Oval and the ARC leisure centre. Those both had significant Commonwealth contributions, and now we have this contribution for Max Amber. I am eternally grateful that when we raised this with the Deputy Prime Minister he understood the benefit that this would provide to our community and was only too willing to commit to that for a re-elected Morrison government.

The second project I want to talk about is the Magill Village Project. We are making a $2 million contribution to the Burnside council on this. This is a joint project between the Burnside council, the Campbelltown council, the state government and of course the Commonwealth government, through our contribution of $2 million. We've seen the undergrounding of power lines in the stretch of road on Magill Road—which is the boundary between those two councils—between the St Bernards/Penfold intersection in Magill, down through the retail area. The undergrounding of power listens has occurred at a cost of around $7 million to $7½ million. The icing on the cake with this project, now that the powerlines have been buried, is the opportunity to re-streetscape that area, plant lots more trees and put in place lots more public amenities to create a better public realm and better atmosphere for pedestrians and people out with their families during the week and on weekends. Businesses can get on the back of that and see the benefit of the more activated village precinct that we are planning to put in place there as part of this project. So that's a very exciting investment from the Commonwealth, which was the difference between whether or not that project went ahead. Now it is going ahead, and I'm extremely proud of that.

The final project I want to talk about is our contribution of $3 million towards the Kensington Gardens Reserve, which is famous as the home of the Kensington Cricket Club—Sir Donald Bradman's cricket club. More importantly, this is an environmental project to provide a major upgrade of what is at the moment quite a dangerous local hazard, particularly for young people: a duck pond that was built many decades ago, which captures water on Stonyfell Creek. We've had to fence it off because it's become quite dangerous from a drowning point of view, and it's also not very hygienic. What we are going to do with this project, which we are working with Burnside council on, is turn that into a nice, free-flowing wetland. That's going to provide an excellent environmental outcome and a great safety outcome, and improve the local amenity for residents in that area. It's coupled with a commitment to reline the hardcourt tennis courts that the local tennis club use there in the Kensington Gardens Reserve. This is another fantastic local project, where we are working with local communities, local sporting clubs and local councils to invest in local community.

I intend, for however long I'm lucky enough to serve in this chamber, to always be someone who fights for these local community projects and secures financial support from the Commonwealth as regularly as possible. When we invest in our local communities, there's such a fantastic outcome—from a safety point of view, an economic point of view and a community point of view. I reiterate that I'm very proud to be a part of a government that understands the importance of investing in our communities and is doing so in spades.

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