Golden Grove

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright) (15:11): The City of Tea Tree Gully council is meeting tonight, I understand, to adopt its draft budget for 2016-17. The budget will be out for community consultation, and I am urging residents in Golden Grove in particular to make sure their voices are heard in relation to this current budget.

About $1 million worth of verge beautification, tree screen rectification, road reconstruction, and playground equipment has been taken from the budget for Golden Grove and allocated elsewhere. Residents are right to ask how this could possibly happen with the unanimous support of all elected members. This means all councillors representing the Golden Grove area—councillors Paula Luthern-Soper, Bernie Keane, Paul Barbaro and Sandy Keane—supported this move.

The dreadful thing is that the money is there. This has not been a saving, it is just that our councillors appear to have simply given it away to other council areas—areas where they have councillors who are prepared to stand up for them. Once again, we have been let down by those who are supposed to represent my area, and local families must be truly questioning if their councillors have their best interests at heart.

A $340,000 upgrade of the Modbury Vista Soccer Club has been proposed—it is a great club, and I know that you know the club well, Deputy Speaker—but it is on condition that council gets permission to sell another community asset, the Wynn Vale Community House, so this is not guaranteed. There are $750,000 of capital works proposals that would have benefited the South Australian District Netball Complex, provided barbecues and shade sails for Golden Fields and a playground at Greenwith that have been put on the backburner.

Again, there was no argument put up by our councillors. This means no improvement to access in the car park where, every weekend, hundreds of women and girls play netball. This means the highly used Golden Fields will see no improvement for families, and no funding has been provided for the replacement of play sculptures at Castle Eaton Reserve. Again, there was nothing from our councillors and nothing from Councillor Paula Luthern-Soper in particular, who claimed to have been doorknocking in relation to the refurbishment of these sculptures.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE: I spoke about this matter back in February, about the destruction of these specially carved play sculptures, and it was very nice to have the support of the member for Hammond in the disgust that I, residents and obviously he felt about this matter going ahead.

Yesterday, I received a letter from the Mayor of Tea Tree Gully confirming that no moneys had been set aside for the replacement of the sculptures. I have taken up this matter with the council on numerous occasions and, back in March, the mayor sent me a letter apologising, saying that they should have conducted community consultation, underestimating the value that the community placed on those play sculptures.

As a result of my most recent correspondence to Kevin Knight, the mayor, he advised that he is now putting the matter before council for inclusion in the budget. Now, there is a glimmer of hope. We have had no response, no positive response from the local councillors, but now we have a glimmer of hope from the Mayor of Tea Tree Gully. He says that there was no provision in the draft business plan for the sculptures to be replaced, but he said that he has requested a report be provided to council to specifically raise the issue of whether council wishes to explore the replacement of the sculptural elements of the reserve. He goes on to say:

Unfortunately I cannot predict whether the Council will or will not support the replacement of the sculptures but I can assure you that a report raising the issue will be tabled in June 2016…

I hope that our local councillors come to their senses and understand that they have been elected to represent those suburbs in the Golden Grove (and slightly beyond) areas. Giving away in excess of $1 million worth of funding that had been allocated to our area is not what the local residents think is adequate representation.