King Electorate

Ms LUETHEN (King) (15:32): Thank you for the opportunity to speak about my community letter and survey, which are going out to my King electorate this week, and the budget handed down by our Treasurer. This week, everyone in King should receive a letter and a survey from me in their letterbox. The timing is really important because it is time to check on our first six months in government.

I want to hear from the King electorate in terms of their issues, their hopes, their ideas and any feedback they have on this week's budget. I am sending out this letter so that they come directly to me to ask any questions they have and not listen to the spin from the former government. I encourage all my community to take a moment to contribute their feedback and continue their conversations with me, conversations I have been so grateful to have with them in the last few years. I am listening, I am acting and I am certainly committed to serving them to the best of my ability.

King does matter. Their views matter. I live in King and I care about that community. Every day, I am focused on helping people to improve our local King community, and I steadfastly continue to be focused, along with my colleagues, on more jobs, lower costs and better services. I know there are some questions right now about services, and I will fight for our community services. They do matter to me, and what my community wants to see matters to me even more.

I want all members of our community to know that I truly care about our local region and all the northern suburbs, and I want to do everything I can to win the trust of our community to make it the best area to live in South Australia. Our new government has committed to many exciting promises through the King electorate, and I look forward to delivering on each of these promises for our community. So far, we have already delivered for our local community.

We have delivered $320,000 in funding to the South Australian District Netball Association (SADNA) to improve the SADNA car parking facilities at the courts in Golden Grove. This was a promise we made and it is already being delivered. Nearly 400,000 people who visit these courts will benefit, not to mention the residents in surrounding streets. We have put back the first $90 million into the economy as a reduction on emergency services levy bills. This was a promise we made and it has been delivered.

We are ahead of schedule to fix Golden Grove Road. The project is scheduled to finish in 2020 instead of 2021. This is a promise we made and it is currently being delivered. Both the Premier and the minister have been down since we were elected to have a close-up look of what the issues are and what the solutions should look like. We currently have a bill to cap council rates to put money back into ratepayers' pockets and drive better spending decisions in councils. This bill has passed the House of Assembly and is currently being debated in the Legislative Council. In this budget, we have just announced funding for:

the upgrade of the Golden Grove park-and-ride. This project will see the car park increase to 400 spaces, which will ease congestion and stop the overflow clogging our nearby streets. This is something that has been raised with me time and time again. This was a promise we made and it is currently being delivered;

$150,000 for the upgrade to the Skyline Drive turn-off from Black Top Road at Hillbank to add a slip lane. This was a promise we made and it has been budgeted to be delivered;

$110 million towards the upgrade of the Modbury Hospital. This was a promise we made and it is being delivered;

$45 million to reduce elective surgery waiting times so that patients can get the care they need sooner. This was a promise we made and it is being delivered; and

removing payroll tax for small businesses. This was a promise we made and it will be delivered.

In addition, a $100 million fund over the next four years to promote economic and jobs growth in South Australia is a key part of the $738 million jobs and industry package in our new state budget. Once again, these are many examples of how this government cares, has listened and will deliver. People can return the survey to me by email, phone, postage and by dropping it off to our King electorate office. Please send me feedback.