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

I rise to speak in this address-in-reply debate and firstly note that when the motion was moved it was of course to the Governor-General representing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and in the intervening period of time this address is to the Governor-General representing King Charles III. Again, as I did in the condolence debate, I acknowledge the passing of Her Majesty and the remarkable service she gave to the entire Commonwealth, particularly to the Commonwealth of Australia.

I want to start by thanking the people of Sturt for placing their trust in me to serve for a second term in this parliament. It is the greatest of honours that we all share—the distinction of representing our communities in the federal parliament. I know we all hold the same view as to what an honour it is and how lucky we are to be here, and I certainly continue to cherish every moment I have here in this chamber, to participate in the important work we do, and just as much—if not more so—continuing to be in my community all the time, working with so many people to help them with the issues and concerns they have. We of course at times deal with people in some of their most vulnerable states, and they need their local democratically elected representatives to help them with challenges from a variety of issues. Sometimes there are things they need from the federal government, and the government at times can do better in the way in which we support and look after people, also hearing the issues they have more generally. It certainly informs the perspective that we have in coming to this chamber and contributing to the debates we have and the decisions we make. So, my deepest thanks and appreciation go to the people of Sturt, in the eastern and north-eastern suburbs of South Australia. I hope to live up to the very high standard of representing you again for the next three years—or 2½ years, as it is now.

Equally, this is an opportunity to talk about the election campaign. I want to thank all the unbelievable volunteers who contributed so much to my campaign for re-election—all the staff in my office, all the members of my FEC and the many volunteers beyond Liberal Party members who helped and contributed in the campaign. We are at least the equal greatest and most vibrant democracy on the planet here in Australia, and election campaigns remind us of that. Of course, when we are out there doorknocking, phone canvassing, holding our supermarket stalls, meeting with people, attending events and in a campaign, all of that goes on to top volume. And there is a whole range of other things in the heat of the campaign—debating other candidates, participating in the great contest of ideas. I acknowledge all the other candidates who contested the seat of Sturt. We had 11. A couple of colleagues have mentioned that they came close to that or that they too had 11 candidates. That's a great thing. We welcome as many people as want to contest in their local electorates. So, to the other 10 candidates who contested the state of Sturt, thank you very much for putting your hand up and wanting to represent your community and making sure there were many options for the people of Sturt to consider. Having more candidates helps to make sure that there are more ideas about both our local community and how we run our nation, and that's an excellent thing.

To my team, I really appreciate the sacrifices and the work done by staff, party members and volunteers and the team in the Liberal Party campaign headquarters. Andrew Hirst is the campaign director. The member for Cook, former prime minister Morrison, was our party leader. Party leaders do an enormous amount in election campaigns. I have seen up close leaders of parties in campaigns and the hectic schedules that the campaign directors and all the senior ministers had. I thank them so much for the enormous effort they put into contesting elections, and it should be acknowledged.

At a local level, we made some important commitments that a re-elected government would have delivered. I was very proud of those being things that were very worthy, locally developed ideas that were brought to us and that we made commitments to support, particularly those from the local governments in my electorate. I always find local government really do an excellent job in my area of identifying really worthy projects that they are prepared to invest in themselves. But, of course, they can only do so much within their budget envelope, and there are always opportunities for us to partner with local government, so we made a series of announcements during the campaign that we would have committed to.

Some of those are ongoing, despite the fact that we were not re-elected, because they were committed to before the caretaker period. In particular, the new government has reconfirmed—and I will certainly be holding them to this—that the allocation of funds to the Parkinson Oval redevelopment at the Kensington Gardens Reserve that was in the pre-election fiscal outlook will be proceeding. That's a vital co-investment between the Commonwealth, the state government—which had already committed funds and, in fact, surprisingly deposited them in their bank account before we had finalised our commitment—and the local council. Three levels of government are committing to that $8½ million redevelopment, and it has been indicated that that will still proceed because it was in the pre-election fiscal outlook document. I am pleased about that.

I am disappointed that other commitments that I made won't be proceeded with—in particular, the Campbelltown Urban Village. The Campbelltown Council will attempt to proceed with that without federal funds, and I hope that they can. If they can, they will have to use more of their own resources, and that just means other things they could have done with those funds won't occur in our community, so that's disappointing.

A project that I am very passionate about is investing in the River Torrens Linear Park precinct throughout the city of Adelaide. This is something that doesn't only benefit my electorate of Sturt but absolutely benefits every riparian electorate and every community along the Torrens, which is from the beach right up to the source of the Torrens in the hills. I am still committed to making sure that we are delivering an investment in that very important piece of environmental investment that also has very significant recreational outcomes.

Most major cities in this country were colonised on a river. The Torrens, as everyone would know, is the river that runs through Adelaide, from the Adelaide Hills, through the eastern and north-eastern suburbs of my electorate, through the city and down to the beach. We didn't always have the highest of standards in the early days of urban development throughout that catchment. The project that I was able to secure a commitment towards—it would be, again, a partnership between state and local government—involves us investing in both environmental projects and recreational enhancements throughout the entirety of what we call Linear Park, which is either side of the River Torrens. Linear Park runs all the way from the beach, through my electorate, into the Adelaide Hills. Linear Park and the River Torrens are really one and the same thing, and there are opportunities to improve, from an environmental point of view, that corridor and, more broadly, the Torrens catchment. There are equally opportunities for us to have higher standards and more consistent recreational investment throughout that corridor—with things like better and wider paths so we can share those tracks across a variety of recreational pursuits; more, better and safer public toilets; and lighting, from a safety point of view. There are a whole range of things that are opportunities if we invest in that. I'm going to keep very much focused on that throughout this term, and I hope to take a similar commitment to the next election.

Another very important issue of focus for me locally is bushfire preparedness. We had a bushfire on the cusp of my electorate only a couple of weeks ago, in Montacute. Some residents in my electorate had to evacuate their homes. It's a really significant reminder that we have to be ever vigilant to the risk of bushfire. We need to be prepared, and I want to make sure I'm doing a lot within my community to keep that awareness as heightened as it needs to be in the suburbs where people must have a bushfire plan, must know what to do when a risk develops that may mean that they have to leave their property. People must also make sure that their property is in the best condition it can be in, to assist our heroic firefighters and volunteers where there is a risk. We must make sure we keep fuel loads low, make sure people have got their bushfire plans et cetera and make sure that the resources are there for our local Country Fire Service brigades and the other emergency services that engage in protecting our community from the very real risk and threat of bushfires. Next week is the 40th anniversary of the Ash Wednesday fire, which was a devastating bushfire in the Adelaide Hills that traversed the electorate of Mayo and came into my electorate of Sturt. That's a good reminder to all of us of the need for bushfire preparedness.

The other important issue is local recycling and making sure that we keep a very high awareness of it in households and businesses in my electorate and across the nation—but I can do my bit locally. We need to make sure people understand how they can maximise recycling in the household, in particular. Of course, we work with local government, who have responsibility for waste collection, and East Waste, who are the alliance, predominantly, in my electorate that do waste collection. I had the privilege to attend, on behalf of then Minister Ley, the opening of a major recycling facility in suburban Adelaide in late 2021. It was a great example of government investment in increasing and enhancing our capacity to recycle. I'm very passionate about improving even further the amount of recycling that we do and trying to reduce as much as possible what goes to landfill and increase as much as possible what we can re-use, and using that circular economy principle as broadly as possible.

Those are three very important things locally in my electorate. The other thing that is extremely important to my electorate, and to the whole state of South Australia, is the full implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. There was a terrible mistake when the Australian Constitution was ultimately finalised and adopted, and that was that the Commonwealth did not have power over interstate waterways, and it absolutely should. I'd love to see, in my lifetime, the Constitution amended so that the Commonwealth has power over interstate waterways, because obviously water resources flow from one state to another, and one of the great advantages of our Commonwealth government is that we are in the best position of anyone to manage competing interests.

Nonetheless, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is something we should all be very proud of. It addresses the deficiency in our Constitution whereby the Commonwealth does not have responsibility for interstate waterways and, through the agreement of those that do—the constituent states and the ACT area within the Murray-Darling Basin—it creates a Commonwealth-supported funded entity, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, develops the plan and is implementing it.

It's something to be proud of. A lot of people around the world look at it and ask, 'How have you done this as well as you have?' There are parts of the world that struggle with this. Even though we have our challenges, most look to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan as examples of world's best practice in managing the challenges of securing the water that is absolutely necessary for the environmental sustainability and health of the Murray-Darling Basin against the obvious competing interests of human sustainment and economic use.

This is a problem for watercourses around the world. Hopefully, fully implementing the plan is something that we will achieve and get right. The now government made a big deal about this in my home state of South Australia, that they would be implementing the plan on time and in full. I expect them to honour that promise, and I intend to be part of holding them accountable for that.

The plan basically involved looking at all the water that was being diverted out of the system—the baseline diversions—then taking a science based approach to determining a sustainable amount of water that could come out of the system. The gap between the baseline and the sustainable amount is the water that has to be recovered: the 3,200 gigalitres of water.

Everything the now government needed to know about the plan's status and the requirements for its full implementation was well known during the campaign, when they made the commitments they made. I wish them well in honouring that promise and keeping that commitment. It is going to be a challenge. There are competing interests. I hope we do not descend into battles about who is more worthy of this scarce resource. We all understand that there's a challenge in competing interests, but the commitment was made, and it's very important to South Australia. No excuses will be acceptable for not implementing the plan on time.

I make these comments at a time when we have flooding through the Murray-Darling Basin system, and the last thing on people's minds is scarcity of water in the basin. But people in the basin know full well that, whilst we are having floods right now, and we always hope to have consistently excellent rainfall, there are going to be droughts and tough times for the basin. The point of the plan was to make sure that, once it's fully implemented—by 30 June 2024; less than 18 months from now—regardless of where in the cycle we are between heavy rain and drought, we have a long-term plan to sustainably manage the basin. That's why it absolutely must be implemented.

In the last few months in particular, in my community, as in every other community in this country, the most consistent thing people are raising is cost-of-living pressures. We are in a cycle of significant wealth reduction in our economy right now, which is absolutely terrible. We have people whose home value is decreasing while their mortgage repayments are going up and their real wages are decreasing.

The current rate of real wage reduction is really frightening. It's at a level that I've never seen in my adult life. Inflation is running at 7.8 per cent and wages growth is at 3.1 per cent, so people are really going backwards out there. It is really, really tough. I urge everyone in this chamber, particularly the government, to prioritise the really tough times that people are going through at the moment.

Whilst they have an agenda to implement from the election and a whole range of other things that they seem to be choosing to focus on, cost of living is clearly not one of them at the moment, but it needs to be. I implore the government to understand the pain that people are feeling out there. Prioritise that. There are all the other competing things that you could spend your time on as a government, but the thing that people need is relief from this cycle of wealth destruction that they are going through. It is really tough, and we need this to be a priority of the government so that people's wages aren't going backwards and their mortgages aren't spiralling out of control while their home values also deplete. With that, thank you again to the people of Sturt for sending me back here for another term. I commend the address to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.

See this speech in context