Seaford Ambulance Station

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:50): I rise today to talk about a very important issue for the electorate of Kaurna, which is the provision of an ambulance station at Seaford. This is something that the community in Seaford has been campaigning on for a long time. As members would know, Seaford is a growing area; it is a relatively new suburb with significantly more houses going in every day.

The Seaford District Residents Association ran a very large petition a number of years ago calling for an ambulance station to be provided in the area. This government, in the last election, committed the funds to do that as part of our commitment to build three new ambulance stations: one at Northfield, one at Noarlunga and one at Seaford. The Noarlunga station is going ahead, and is to be built near the Noarlunga hospital. It is to be a very large ambulance station and will be the central hub for ambulances and paramedics in the southern region.

The Seaford ambulance station is to be a spoke to that hub. The only issue is that we need a site for this ambulance station. The South Australian Ambulance Service spent some time looking at the call-out data and the location data to determine what the optimal site for that station would be, and they determined that that site would be best placed next to the Seaford CFS station located on Seaford Road.

They then approached the local council (City of Onkaparinga) who owns that site to ask whether a lease or ownership arrangement could be entered into so that the ambulance station could be placed there. Much to my dismay and that of many people in the community, the City of Onkaparinga said that they did not think that that was an appropriate place for an ambulance station as it did not fit the 20-year strategic vision that it had determined for that site.

I was very staggered to hear this, as I think were many people, because an ambulance station is obviously one of the most crucial things that an area needs. It is really at the top of the list for health services that a community needs. People have greater need for health services than almost any other service in a particular area. So, I was very disappointed that they rejected this, and they did not even give any other proposed sites that they recommended.

Since this has been raised in the media, they have now turned around and started discussions with the government about where the station could go, so that is a positive development. However, they still have not turned around their original objection to that particular site next to the CFS station.

They talk about this 20-year plan that was developed, and I am very concerned that the plan does not actually look at the health services of the particular area. It proposes, for this site, a BMX track. I am sure many younger people in the area would like to have another BMX track; however, I am sure most people in the area would actually prefer to have the ambulances located there. It is an area where there is a retirement village close by, and there is an aged-care facility immediately next door to the site.

There is also the growing suburb of Seaford Meadows, which has many young families—some of whom I have spoken to—who are concerned about their children and potential asthma attacks if they are asthmatic. I have also spoken to older people who have had heart attacks and there have been issues with ambulances being too far away. Of course, this area is located quite a fair distance between the existing ambulance stations of Aldinga to the south, Christie Downs to the north and McLaren Vale to the east, so it does take ambulances quite a significant amount of time to get there.

We are now looking at whether we can squish the ambulance station on the current CFS site. I am a bit concerned as to whether that is possible. I do not want to see any reduction in the available car parking for the CFS station because that is obviously needed when there is a major call-out and everybody needs to arrive at the station, drop what they are doing and head out on a call-out. So we do not want to see any reduction in that.

There were other suggestions raised by the council that were all very unhelpful in terms of large commercial properties that could be for sale. Essentially, they looked at realestate.com.au and sent us a list of properties that could be for sale. There has been an analysis done of those properties and none of them were particularly useful or could be worked up for this site. I am going to keep campaigning on this issue and will be launching a petition in the coming days. I call on the City of Onkaparinga to reverse their decision.

Time expired.