House of Assembly Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3) 51 3 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Holden Hill Police Station HOLDEN HILL POLICE STATION The Hon. L. STEVENS House of Assembly Little Para The Hon. L. STEVENS (Little Para) (15:35): I begin today by congratulating the two new ministers on this side of the house: my friend and neighbouring member, the member for Napier, and also a young colleague, the member for West Torrens. I wish them well and I am sure they will do a fantastic job. I also congratulate the retiring ministers McEwen and Zollo for the work they have done. In particular, I pay tribute to minister Zollo who demonstrated, in all my observations and certainly in the time that I worked with her as a co-minister, that she was conscientious, capable and committed at all times when carrying out her role. I congratulate her, wish her well and hope she has an enjoyable time in the future in the parliament. I also want to spend time today talking about a very successful initiative that has been underway in parts of my electorate covered by the Holden Hill Police Station. About a year ago, after a number of complaints about hoon driving in the Fairview Park area of my electorate, I decided that I would have a meeting with the superintendent, Barry Lewis, who is the officer in charge of the Holden Hill local service area, so that we could talk about the issue and how it might be dealt with better. He brought with him Senior Sergeant Leonie Holland, the traffic manager at Holden Hill. They talked about how they were now undertaking a much more focused approach to dealing with hoon driving in that area. Fairview Park is characterised by a lot of winding streets. It has a large golf course in one section of it which means that the streets have to curve around a very large blocked out space, and that makes it difficult for people to be tracked easily. There are some through roads but lots of winding roads. Residents complained about hoon driving on a regular basis. Under the leadership of Senior Sergeant Leonie Holland, the police have made a considerable difference. Essentially, they have put somebody with good communication, good organisational skills and leadership skills—dare I say it: she is also a female—in charge of following up, attention to detail, answering and replying to the concerns of residents, and allocating tasks to various members of her team to deal with the issues in the locations that have been reported in order to place people there and to provide feedback to residents. It has definitely borne results. She gave me some statistics on how things have changed over the period July to November 2007 compared to July to November 2008. The statistics are: instant loss of licence, 241 in the 2007 period and 280 in the 2008 period; vehicle impounds, 37 in the 2007 period and 267 in the 2008 period; hoon apprehensions, 39 in the 2007 period and 238 in the 2008 period. I think this has come about because we had a focused approach, great leadership and management by the traffic manager with a team of police officers all committed to the task, working in partnership with residents, listening to concerns, following them up and getting back to the people. I have had lots of comments from residents about how well this has gone and I congratulate the police on their efforts. Time expired.