Grievance Debate

Member for Frome

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (15:12): All of us who are lucky enough to be elected to this place stand for election based on very strong principles—community service, supporting people, being part of the future and wanting to be a decision-maker. Being an MP demands the integrity to stand by your principles at all times. Yesterday I was reminded by the Leader of the Opposition that, indeed, it had been nine years since I was elected, a nine-year period that has presented some challenges and some opportunities and has had highs and lows in it—there is no doubt about that.

The personal high was being re-elected on 15 March of last year with the absolute low being 23 March—that Sunday when the member for Frome announced with the Premier that he had decided to support the Labor Party and form government. In the following days, weeks and months, the member for Frome and Minister for Local Government and Regional Development went around South Australia saying that he was a voice for all regional people and that he would do his best to achieve outcomes. But what are the actions against those words?

I accept that the minister has travelled thousands of kilometres. He has met with numerous groups and individuals. He has been given the honour of making cheque presentations to worthy groups based on the funding programs he was able to include as part of that agreement—funding programs that were a copy of strong Liberal policies taken to the election, to the people, not policies that were forced upon the Labor Party to get the one seat they required to continue in government.

It took the minister eight months to announce guidelines attached to the $10 million Jobs Accelerator Fund that he created. It is important to reflect on that eight months. It is a time when South Australia needs investment. The unemployment figures released today for the Barossa, Yorke and Mid North region, an area that the minister and I both have the opportunity to represent, in its original data showed the unemployment rate as 9 per cent. This is up from 8.4 per cent a year ago and it represents 5,300 people in the region looking for jobs.

It appears that the minister was upset with the six-month report card that was circulated in Frome in mid-September last year, but the facts in it were correct. The minister did vote against the motion supporting CFS volunteers receiving the same cancer compensation as MFS firefighters. The minister did vote against marine park sanctuary zone amendments proposed by the Liberal Party, based upon the commitments that communities wanted us to follow through on.

As a minister, he supported the emergency services levy increase but doubted that the figure quoted of 1,223 per cent was correct. Minister, I spoke to people in my electorate whose increase was 1,173 per cent and I know that it is an extra $90 million per year that South Australians have to take out of their pockets to give to the government.

The minister's position on marine parks I found to be disgraceful. He told the people at a Port Wakefield meeting before the election that politicians and bureaucrats do not know what they are talking about. He told the people to keep fighting for what they know is important for the future of their community. He left the people with a very clear impression that he would support them if it ever came to a vote but, when it came to that—a vote where the Port Wakefield community and communities across regional South Australia wanted his support—he did the opposite.

On pensioner concessions, I have asked the minister questions here today. I know he was supportive of the principle when he was just the member for Frome before the last election, but he has walked away from people on that. A year and a half ago, he talked about increases from $190 to $230. His agreement with the Premier includes a review of pensioner concessions. It must have been an upward movement, one would think, but instead it is going to be completely removed by July 2015

I wrote to the minister in December 2014 forwarding the concerns put by people who contacted me. I asked what he was going to do to help those people, and his reply about a month later said, 'While I appreciate receiving your correspondence, I advise that the matter falls within the portfolio of the responsibility of the Minister for Finance.' That is clearly a disgrace. The minister responsible for local government has to accept responsibility and work to achieve outcomes for it, and he has failed dismally there.

It was a matter that was very important to local government, a matter that was important to 160,000 property owners in South Australia, who are going to lose this concession, and a matter very important to regional South Australia, people he continually talked about representing, and the minister has nothing to say, other than the fact that someone else has to look after it. It is disgraceful. It is a shows a complete lack of responsibility and it is demonstration that the minister does not follow through with actions. Minister, the people of South Australia, I believe, will remember it.

Minister, you cannot afford to attend meetings in the Frome electorate about the Repat Hospital and say you are there solely as a local MP and not as a minister, as I am advised you did three weeks ago. You are a minister. You are in a position to negotiate, arbitrate and support communities, and you lost that. Minister, it was a truly unique position you held, but you do not any more because of other election results. What did you truly do while you held it? Minister, you had the opportunity to make a difference to the most basic of problems—that of the cost of living pressures for all South Australians as a legacy of 13 years of a Labor government—but what have you truly done?

Time expired.