Coober Pedy District Council

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:35): I rise today to talk about a number of issues, especially in some of the smaller communities in my electorate. Before I do so, I would like to say that this Liberal Party mantra of the Labor government ignoring the regions requires an incredibly blinkered look at this state. When you talk about the federal government's investment in regional South Australia—for instance, in the biggest seat in this state, the seat of Grey, which is over 90 per cent of the state—since the election of the Liberal government, led by Abbott and then Turnbull, there has been a massive collapse in federal government discretionary investment in regional South Australia.

Indeed, in the member for Frome's seat, when the smelter was facing a crisis it was left to the state government to do the heavy lifting to actually underwrite the reinvestment that was needed in that community. The federal government was nowhere to be seen. The federal government would have let that industry just slide away, and the impact on Port Pirie and the region would have been devastating.

My community of Whyalla has just recently been through what was an existential crisis. We lost over a thousand direct jobs in the lead-up to administration and, once again, the federal government was missing in action. At a time when my community needed assistance, the federal government was nowhere to be seen when it came to helping the community. Indeed, part of their response was to cut some of the programs they were supporting, and it was left to the state government to step in and provide the funding for those programs. That was not going to be the subject of my grievance, so I will get onto the subject of my grievance.

I want to start with Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is a great community, and when I use the word 'unique' it has genuine applicability to Coober Pedy. It is in an incredibly challenging place. Earlier this year, I wrote to the then treasurer to indicate that I believed it was beyond the capacity of the Coober Pedy council to run some of the essential services that they were expected to run in that community when it comes to water and when it comes electricity distribution and billing. I thought, 'Enough is enough. We need to take those responsibilities away from the council.'

They have an incredibly small rate base. They have had revolving door senior officers. They have had revolving door mayors. Many people in that community are socially and economically disadvantaged, yet we expected that council to run services that no other council in this state is expected to run. Last year, we ordered the Auditor-General to carry out an investigation into the Coober Pedy council, and I await with interest what the outcome of that investigation will be; irrespective, I believe that we do need to be looking at what services the Coober Pedy council have the capacity to run.

There are people up there who have amassed electricity bills in excess of $10,000. These are people on Centrelink payments. They have no chance of being able to pay that back, and when people are cut off—these are usually people in above-ground housing in Coober Pedy—the consequences are pretty dire, especially if you have young kids or elderly people in those houses through the summer months.

So I will be writing to the new government, laying out some of my thoughts about Coober Pedy and what needs to be done. I think, as a first step, SA Water would be a reasonable body to take over the running of the water assets up there in Coober Pedy.

Time expired.