Adjournment Debate

CAPITAL WORKS PROJECTS

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (16:20): I could not pass the opportunity to make a contribution at this time. A number of us will be going off to enjoy the school holidays. My children are way past school age but I will be enjoying them nonetheless. I will be castrating a few cattle next week, and other things, which will be an interesting task. The purpose of me speaking today is to place on the record one area of concern that I have post the budget process.

Shortly prior to the budget being announced this year, I attended a Public Works meeting for the consideration of a project by the Metropolitan Fire Service to redevelop an existing Metropolitan Fire Service operation on Portrush Road in my electorate. It is something which I have championed for some time: firstly, that it be retained, in light of a new facility being built in Norwood a number of years before, with the prospect that the station at Glen Osmond might be forfeited in some way and lost.

I had taken up with the minister and others, the need to ensure that we maintained a Metropolitan Fire Service profile in the electorate, and adjacent to the major South-Eastern Freeway, and also to service people who are resident in the Waite area, and, as we move up the hill, in addition to Bragg, obviously into Heysen and the like. So, it was very important that we maintained a Metropolitan Fire Service right next to the major arterial road leaving Adelaide to the east.

I was pleased that the matter had progressed into a Public Works consideration, that is, it had been announced late last year and had progressed that far. The reason that I was particularly pleased was because I had not seen it in the previous year's budget as a capital works.

Normally a project of more than $4 million—as this one was to be—not only needs Public Works approval but is usually sufficiently important to be announced in a budget. As pleased as I was that this project had advanced, what I did learn was that it was a project that was utilising funds for smaller projects that had been announced in the previous budget. When we have a list of capital works projects, they are identified, but there is also an amount of money used at the end of these lists of projects for most portfolios for other projects.

They usually relate to smaller projects for which, often, the minister subsequently provides a list. They might only be for a few hundred thousand dollars, sometimes they might be up to a million dollars, so it was very unusual that most of a portion of other project's money should actually be allocated to one major project that had not been identified in last year's budget.

As the local member, I am not complaining, but why is it that halfway through the financial year a decision is made for other projects money—which I assume had been earmarked for smaller projects—to be given to this one major project? I am grateful for it, but I ask the question, what other projects have missed out? Have there been other smaller projects—I am not saying they are any more worthy—for which there would have been a reasonable expectation of having that money that they would otherwise have been eligible for?

If I could have some reassurance that the minister had not in any way, or if the department had not in any way, cut off the expectation of other people who were looking for smaller MFS projects—for example, to buy a vehicle or replace some equipment in an existing station—then I would feel much relieved. I look forward to the minister giving some reassurance on that, as I do not feel that has been done.

I will report to the house in due course as we progress the Public Works report, which I note has been tabled today. I will be very happy to speak on it and support the worthy project that will progress as soon as public works approval is complete.