Address in Reply

Address in Reply

Adjourned debate on motion for adoption (resumed on motion).

The SPEAKER: Member for Elizabeth.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (16:19): Thank you, sir. Welcome back. I think I left my remarks before lunch around the redistribution and I was reflecting on the fact that the member for Lee had already made many pertinent remarks about the redistribution and its effect on the overall result of the election. I was making some comments about the effect that it had on the electorate of Elizabeth, which was to make it ostensibly safer on a two-party preferred nominal basis but also, at the same time, more attractive to a third party. I will go into that a bit later.

During the course of the election campaign, because of the substantial redistribution and nearly a third, I think, of my electorate changing hands, I got to know what I will call in shorthand new areas, although they are not particularly new to me. The first and largest of those was Elizabeth Downs where I grew up and went to school and where my parents still live. It is a great pleasure to be able to represent the people of Elizabeth Downs in this place. It is a place that is close to my heart. My son played soccer there. I have so many connections to Elizabeth Downs that I cannot count them.

It was interesting to see the Hon. Rob Lucas from another place make a surprise star appearance at the Elizabeth Downs Primary School on election day. I am not sure what that was about, but suffice to say that it did not help. I have inherited the rest of Craigmore from my friend the member for Taylor. Again, Craigmore is a place I grew up in and around. There is also Blakeview and Blakes Crossing. When I was growing up in Elizabeth Downs, Blakeview and Blakes Crossing did not exist. There was a large expanse of bamboo and wasteland in between Elizabeth Downs and the old town of Smithfield. Now, there is housing there, the Munno Para shopping centre and the very nice new development of Blakes Crossing.

It was my great pleasure to knock on doors and get to know the people of Blakes Crossing well. It is a fine development with great kids' playgrounds and a nice new shopping centre. Monica's dine-in and pizza has to get a mention: it is one of my favourite places to eat and go to after the playground. It has been great to get to know what I will call new areas. It has also been instructive, certainly over the last five or so years, but also in the intensity of the election campaign, to get to know many of the new arrivals in Elizabeth.

When I grew up in Elizabeth, it was extremely monocultural. Essentially, everybody looked like me and the member for Napier and my parents, but now there are people from all over the world, particularly from Africa and the Middle East who have come to make Elizabeth their home. They left in circumstances that sometimes are difficult to stomach hearing about, and they are great citizens of Elizabeth. I got to know many of the communities well, particularly, as I said, over the course of the election campaign. I want to thank them for their support in quite large numbers as well.

I will continue to work with those communities to help them better integrate with the rest of the Elizabeth community, although that process is already going ahead in leaps and bounds, particularly through the primary schools. I was at the Elizabeth Downs Primary School on Monday, hearing some great success stories about how the kids of Elizabeth Downs now see the world through very multicultural eyes.

As I said, it was an interesting election on paper. Mine is a nominally safe seat, two-party preferred, but there was a third candidate. It was an interesting election in that I felt that I was the only person on the ground campaigning and shadowboxing. The Liberal Party preselected very late. They preselected a candidate whom I am sure they did not expect to win, but I could be wrong about that. There was a third candidate of course in SA-Best. The SA-Best candidate came second overall, although I hasten to add that I increased my primary vote. The SA-Best candidate came second overall and the Liberals came third. The Liberals did come second, oddly enough, in the newer areas—Craigmore and Blakeview—and I will have to look at the reasons why that happened in coming years.

It was an interesting election. I felt like I was the only person on the ground and, happily, we won. Of course, if was not me who won. It was a huge team effort, and I want to thank a few people here while I have the time. First of all, I want to thank the former premier, the member for Cheltenham, who led an incredible campaign, obviously with help from his cabinet, the party office and many other people. It was due to the force of his leadership, his relentless positivity, his relentless focus on winning every seat that we could and his genuine interest in every seat. He was in Elizabeth on the Thursday night before the election. I assured him everything was fine and he went away.

The Hon. C.L. Wingard: Was he worried?

Mr ODENWALDER: He was not worried. He was not worried by the time he left, I will tell you that. He was convinced that what I had been saying was true, that we were going to win Elizabeth and win it well. But this is about him. He was a great leader. He will go down in history as one of the great Labor leaders of this state.

Of course, there is the senior party, the cabinet and the party office, too many people to name in that respect, but I thank them all. The people in the premier's office and the party office and everybody across our great party worked together cooperatively with one goal in mind, which was winning the election. As many people have already, I want to pay special tribute to Reggie Martin, who led the campaign, who led the machinery of the campaign. He is one of the great campaigners of the Labor Party, ably assisted by Eamon Burke and many others. The team they assembled did some great work, some really innovative work, and the results spoke for themselves in the seats where they were working.

In the Premier's office, there are again too many people to thank individually, but I want to make special mention of Amy Ware, David Wilkins, Emily Bourke and Emmanuel Cusack, and, as I said, many others. All those people in their own different ways contributed immeasurably to the campaign. They were always there when we needed them, working very hard at all hours of the day and night so that we could prosecute our agenda.

In my own team, I want to thank Chantelle, who has been with me from the beginning. Indeed, she has worked in the office where I work longer than I have. She was the trainee for the Hon. Lea Stevens when I first started working for Lea Stevens back in 2003, so she has been in that office all of that time. She knows the electorate of Elizabeth back to front. She is invaluable, and I hope she sticks with me for the next four years at least.

I also thank Chad Buchanan, who was new to my team, Wendy Gee and Zach Galloway. Those three came together to form a really strong team, particularly early this year. We did immense amounts of work. I probably worked harder than I have ever worked in my life, largely due to those people pushing me. I thank them very much. Brad Templer, who left my office before the campaign, deserves special mention. He went on to bigger and better things. He has a bright future, I think, in the Australian Labor Party, and I wish him all the best in his endeavours.

I want to quickly congratulate everyone who was elected. I think it was the member for Mount Gambier who observed how odd it was to walk into this place and see a whole lot of people whom I barely recognise, having been so immersed in the campaign in Elizabeth. I want to welcome you all to this place. Hopefully, I will get to introduce myself and get to know you all fairly well. I want to particularly welcome the new members on our side: the member for Wright, the member for Playford, and, of course, our new MLCs, particularly Emily Bourke, whom I have known for a long time, whom I worked with in the Legislative Council a long time ago. I welcome her to the other place.

As everyone else here has observed—except the member for West Torrens—opposition is a new experience for us and a sometimes baffling experience. Like the government, we are learning a little as we go, but it looks like it will be an enormous challenge. It should be said, notwithstanding all the words that have been spoken about learning from our mistakes and things like that—which are all true—that the previous government was a good government. It was 16 years of good government. There were some mistakes.

You can make some fair criticisms of the previous government—or the previous governments, however you want to characterise it—but there were many things to be proud of. As the leader said in his Address in Reply, Adelaide is consistently now rated by The Economist and others as one of the world's most livable cities. This does not happen by accident. I think it will be one of the great legacies of the last Labor government. the livability of Adelaide will be comparable to the reforms of the Dunstan era, in the sense that it really put Adelaide on the map.

This has largely been due to the leadership of the member for Cheltenham and the former members for Ramsay, Elder and Port Adelaide, but also the member for Enfield and the member for Lee, who each in their own way have contributed to what I would call Adelaide's rebirth, whether it be investment in the arts and the expansion of our world-class festivals and Writers' Week; our record investment in infrastructure and public transport, which connect communities, and which other people have spoken at length about; our changes to liquor licensing legislation and the small bars, a great initiative; and the revitalisation of the CBD generally, the Riverbank, the Festival Plaza, the Oval; and the list goes on.

Adelaide is one of the most livable cities in the world and one of the most walkable cities in the world. I think there is more to be done in terms of cycling infrastructure, and I hope that the new Minister for Transport and Infrastructure is as keen on seeing some cycling infrastructure as I am; I would not hold my breath, but we will see. I am honestly not playing politics when I say that I am genuinely worried that all this might be lost. I sincerely hope that it will not be.

The Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, who is also the Minister for the City of Adelaide, is a capable and intelligent young man, and I really hope that he looks at the transformation the City of Adelaide has undergone in the last 16 years and sees its value. If, as the incoming government states, they want to keep young people in this state and they want to keep people here generally, including businesspeople, then the livability agenda developed by the previous government, particularly by the member for Enfield behind me, cannot be thrown away.

I do not know that I am going to get time to expand on all the things I wanted to, but I want to talk a bit about opposition and becoming a shadow minister. I am very grateful to the new Leader of the Opposition to be given this responsibility. I do want to reflect a little on the leader. He is a man I have known for quite a long time now, not as long as some here, but he is a man who, as others have said and as he himself has said, is genuinely values driven. I think he is a fine leader. He is going to lead us to victory in 2022, I have not doubt about it, and it is going to be because of the values he has and the strength of his leadership, and I wish him all the best. I wish his deputy all the best. She is a woman of great intellect, capable of leadership herself, and I wish her all the best.

I think we do have a strong shadow cabinet. We have emerged from the election not decimated, as some oppositions have done. We have remained fairly intact. We have lost some good people, I have to say—the member for Newland springs to mind, the member for Elder, very good people—but we have emerged fairly well intact and, as again the leader has observed, we have a very good mix of experience and new blood in the shadow cabinet and also in the caucus. We are a very united team, a very disciplined team, and we are all looking forward to the next four years. We are all looking forward to presenting alternative agendas and holding the government to account for their many promises.

Of course, we have a lot to learn, and in my particular portfolios I do not shy away from the fact that I have a lot to learn. I have a lot to learn in terms of the emergency services portfolio. I have seen them working at close hand, but to say that I fully understand the culture and the departments behind them would be an overstatement. Similarly, in relation to corrections, although I do concur with the member for West Torrens that this is a sometimes underrated portfolio area, it is such an important area because it is dealing with people who have had their liberty taken away, which is no small thing, and it is preparing those people to re-enter society. That is an enormous responsibility and I am sure that the minister has reflected on this responsibility.

Policing, though, I obviously do have some experience with. I will talk more about this in my contribution to the Supply Bill, but the new Liberal government has very big shoes to fill in the community safety area. Since Mike Rann assumed the leadership some 25 years ago, this side of the parliament really has made law and order its own and stamped its authority on it. We have more police officers per capita than we have ever had before, and we are continuing that process with Recruit 313, or presumably the current government is continuing that process. It is my very strong hope that they will continue to recruit at least to attrition, if not above attrition, so that we can continue to maintain the strongest police force in Australia.

Again, I will reflect more upon this during the Supply Bill. However, I do just want to say that we have achieved this, and previous police ministers in the last government have achieved this, by working closely with the commissioner and by trusting the wisdom and experience of the police commissioner and his senior team, whichever commissioner that has been. We have also introduced a whole lot of legislation, and I will touch upon this in my contribution to the Supply Bill.

The member for Enfield and his predecessors introduced a whole lot of legislation that really tightened the criminal code, introducing aggravated offences and specific aggravated offences for assaults on police officers, transport workers and other classes of people, and also on working animals when they act as agents of police or emergency services. We have equipped the police with the tools they need. There is always more, of course, and we are looking at expanding the vests and other accoutrements they may need. Over the years, we have done a very good job of providing them with the tools they need to do the job—that is, to keep South Australians safe.

Members who have been here a while will know my longstanding interest in police operations in relation to domestic violence and, in particular, the development of a domestic violence disclosure scheme. I followed the development of the scheme in the UK and the trial period in New South Wales, and I have been very keen to see such a thing progressed here. A discussion paper was released last year, or the year before last, and the response to that discussion paper came out last year. There was a whole lot of consultation with departments around the viability of a domestic violence disclosure scheme. It is obviously complicated and obviously touches on people's privacy. These things are not done easily, although the models in the UK and New South Wales, by all accounts and by the government's own admission, are working well.

The previous government also established the Multi-Agency Protection Service (MAPS), which I think forms a good basis for something like a domestic violence disclosure scheme. I note that at the beginning of last month an article in The Advertiser suggested that the police had a workable model for a domestic violence disclosure scheme ready to go and ready to present to the Premier. I do not know whether that briefing has taken place, but I sincerely hope that it has. I hope that they will not stall on the trial any further now that the police have a workable model in consultation with the other affected agencies. I think it is well past time to get something started in this space. Again, I will reflect more on that in my contribution to the Supply Bill.

I want to make the final observation, which is by no means an original observation, that this job is very difficult on the families of those who choose to do it. Election campaigns, in particular, really put a lot of stress on your family. In this case, there was a confluence of events, which meant that it was a particularly trying time. I want to thank my family very much for supporting me through this. My son, Jimmy, who finished high school last year and has now gone on to university, has started his own, independent life elsewhere. He went through that whole process while I was preparing and running an election campaign. Over the last eight years, almost without my noticing, he has turned from a shy little boy into the most beautiful young man, and I am so proud of him.

My wife, Ann, started back at work part time during the election campaign, or in the weeks leading up to the election campaign, so we have been through the process of putting our two beautiful young boys, Felix and Miles, into child care. We have been trying to manage that while running an election campaign. My wife is an amazing woman, scrupulously professional and a woman of enormous intellect, and I am very proud to be with her every day. I thank her from the bottom of my heart for the support she gave me and for the patience she had, in a particularly trying time for herself, in supporting me through the election campaign. With those words, I commend the motion to the house.