Giles Electorate

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:28): As someone with a large country electorate, I am not a big fan of long parliamentary sessions. I guess I formed the view early on in my term that time spent in the electorate was more valuable than time spent in the chamber. This is not to make light of the parliamentary process, but it does strike me—and others, I would imagine—that reform of our processes might lead to greater effectiveness and focus. Too many words are spoken for the sake of speaking too many words. Parliamentary reform is not the subject of my grievance; my electorate is—or at least some parts of my electorate.

I spent the week before our return to parliament visiting Andamooka, Roxby Downs and Coober Pedy. I thank BHP Billiton for organising an opportunity to go on the ground at Olympic Dam, which is something that I have not done for many years. The last occasion was when Western Mining owned Olympic Dam and I would carry out worksite assessments after workplace injuries. It is interesting to reflect on the nature of mining in the electorate of Giles, ranging as it does from the small business hit-and-miss nature of opal mining on one end of the spectrum to the seriously large scale, such as Olympic Dam, at the other end of the spectrum.

I enjoy getting out on the road and visiting people where they live and hearing their concerns and ideas, and there is always plenty of both. During the week, I visited the schools in Andamooka, Roxby Downs and Coober Pedy. While in Andamooka, I also caught up with some members of the Andamooka Progress and Opal Miners Association and visited the Outback Community Authority.

As always, it was a pleasure to catch up with the people responsible for delivering preventive primary health care in Andamooka, which now comes under the banner of the Royal Flying Doctor Service following the departure of Frontier Services. I cannot emphasise strongly enough just how important the on-the-ground delivery of the health service is by people committed to the community and with an extensive knowledge about the people they serve and their circumstances.

The Andamooka school might be small when it comes to enrolments, but it is an essential community hub for the families of Andamooka. It delivers a range of services beyond the early years of primary school. The school principal, Tricia Williams, is both enthusiastic and committed to ensuring a high quality educational experience for her students. Tricia holds multiple degrees and previously worked as a hydrologist, so that is an interesting shift. If we are serious about teaching subjects related to STEM, we need more people like Tricia Williams in our education system so that we make the most of our commitment to invest in the creation of modern physical science infrastructure in our schools.

On that note, the $2.3 million commitment to provide state-of-the-art STEM facilities at the Roxby Downs Area School in the last state budget has been warmly welcomed by the school community. As a result of the previous federal Labor government, the Roxby Downs Area School has a new trade training centre which will complement the proposed STEM facility. While in Roxby Downs, I took the opportunity to visit the hospital and meet with some of the staff. The staff were generous with their time and gave a comprehensive overview of the range of services delivered and some of the local challenges.

I had a worthwhile meeting with the interim administrator at the Roxby Downs council, Geoff Whitbread. As a members are aware, the local government set up at Roxby Downs is a creature of the indenture and it lacks the usual democratic input. I have put the view in a letter to the households in Roxby Downs that there should be a move towards a hybrid model that would enable a degree of local democratic input and accountability. A number of constituents were keen to discuss various models, including the one that has been formally proposed, that is, a CEO answerable to two administrators but with a far more robust community engagement process and with a far greater emphasis on transparency.

I left impressed with Mr Whitbread's approach and experience and his clear commitment to ensuring greater transparency in decision-making. Not only has Mr Whitbread been the CEO of a number of Adelaide councils but he is also the former CEO of the Geelong council, which employs roughly 2,000 people. It is great to see a man of such experience working on an interim basis in Roxby Downs.