Onkaparinga Council Green Waste

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:36): I will be very better behaved, Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, that would be unusual, but let's have a go.

Mr PICTON: Decaying debris and mulch matter, festering smells in a dark place and compost in the making—these are descriptions that could apply to green waste sitting in a bin for a month waiting for collection in the City of Onkaparinga, but perhaps these phrases could apply to the decision-making of the City of Onkaparinga when it comes to green waste.

There are 18 local government areas in metropolitan Adelaide. There are 17 of 18 areas where councils collect their green organics waste bin every fortnight as part of a standard level of service to ratepayers. They are the cities of Adelaide, Adelaide Hills, Burnside, Campbelltown, Charles Sturt, Holdfast Bay, Marion, Mitcham, Norwood Payneham and St Peters, Playford, Port Adelaide Enfield, Prospect, Salisbury, Tea Tree Gully, Unley, Walkerville and West Torrens. I have been through today and checked all those council areas and they all collect their waste every single fortnight.

There is just one council in the metropolitan area of Adelaide, the City of Onkaparinga, where residents receive half the service for no discount whatsoever in the rates. This stops residents from doing the work they need to do to keep their gardens, their yards and their properties in a manageable and attractive state. It also stops residents from doing the necessary clean-up prior to bushfire season in a number of areas across the City of Onkaparinga that are subject to significant bushfire risk. While we are sending out the message that we need to do everything we can to clean up the bushfire season, we have one council in Adelaide that limits the amount of clean-up residents can do.

Since before I was elected, I have raised with the Onkaparinga council their lack of green waste collection for residents and asked them to provide the same service level as that of other council areas in Adelaide. I have been joined in this effort by my fellow local MPs, namely, the members for Fisher, Reynell and Mawson, as well as the federal member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth. The pressure we have applied has recently led to council reconsidering its position. They brought a paper to the council to look at the options for bringing in the same level of services as in other council areas. However, the council then rejected the proposal to give residents the same service that everybody else in Adelaide expects.

Last week, the Southern Times Messenger report on the meeting, entitled Bin Change Scrapped, stated:

Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg said she could not justify changing the service to appease a relatively small group of residents. The committee asked for the report to be drawn up in March after 83 per cent of the 718 residents who responded to a council survey said they were 'dissatisfied' with their bins being emptied every four weeks. 'It is an awful lot of money for very few people, Ms Rosenberg said. 'It really would be making a major change for a small number,' Ms Rosenberg said.

I absolutely disagree with that, and I do not think that on any statistical analysis you could regard 83 per cent of residents responding to a survey as being a very small number. This is something that a huge number of people in the City of Onkaparinga are very concerned about.

I was particularly shocked to read this morning's Advertiser where Mayor Rosenberg said, 'Local gov is much more highly respected in China than here and has a higher impact.' The People's Republic of China is a communist state where individuals have no choice but to respect the different levels of government. Here in South Australia, we are a democracy and people have the birthright to decide for themselves what respect they want to give to local government or any level of government. Those governments need to earn that respect and that is what should apply here to the City of Onkaparinga.

People in Onkaparinga are increasingly saying that they feel let down by their local government. They are let down by the lack of services, and they are frustrated by the waste and bureaucracy that they see and they are very free to say so; that is their right. As we enter the time when council determines its rates for the next year and usually puts in a rate rise, I know my other local MPs and I will be representing our residents and putting pressure on councils not to increase rates yet again, unless they can demonstrate that they are cutting down their own waste in council and collecting our waste from the kerbside. There should be no rate increase without a requisite increase in services to the level that other residents in Adelaide expect.