Ministerial Electorate Visits

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:32): I rise today to point out to people in regional South Australia that this government, since it came to power in March, has thrown out a decades-old tradition of the Premier and ministers notifying local MPs when ministers are coming into their area. It is a courtesy that I know I extended for the entire five years that I was the minister for agriculture, food, fisheries, forestry, tourism, recreation, sport and racing, and I think we all benefited from having local members come to events that we attended.

I remember being in a woolshed up in the Flinders Ranges with the now Minister for Energy, the member for Stuart, and over on the West Coast with the member for Flinders. In fact, he was the first person I rang when the oyster disease, POMS, broke out in Tasmania—to make sure that he was in the room when we got all the oyster growers together so that he could hear firsthand what was happening and feed in his background. Traditionally, the person who knows the local area the best is the local MP, and it is all part of our democratic process.

I am not here to have blues with people on the other side. If you look at my newsletter, which went out last week, I have a picture of the Minister for Transport and me on the front page, stating, 'Great to have the Minister for Transport down here. The government is continuing a promise that we made to duplicate Main South Road from Seaford to Sellicks.' I am not here to have blues just for the sake of having a fight. In fact, most people in our areas, no matter where they are in Australia, are sick and tired of the fighting and nitpicking that go on between both sides of politics.

I am all for getting on with people, and I find it astounding that minister after minister has come into the electorate of Mawson but not had the decency or the courtesy to give us a heads up. Last Friday, I was on the ferry to Kangaroo Island and ran into the Hon. David Ridgway, the Minister for Tourism. He had not invited me to a function he was going to, and the public servant who was running it had not invited me to a function they were going to, but people on the island had asked me to be there. It was a seminar about the economic future of Kangaroo Island. Why would you not invite the local MP to come along and listen to Darryl Gobbett, the nationally recognised economist, talking about the state of the nation, the state of Kangaroo Island and the economy?

We had people there from all sectors of Kangaroo Island industry. We also had people representing the sector bodies—Primary Producers SA, the South Australian Wine Industry Association and representatives from the South Australian Tourism Commission—and we had Food SA giving an overview. Plus, sitting around all the tables were the people who actually go out and do the work, day in, day out, the people who have put their financial future on the line and who are working seven days a week. They wanted me there to hear what was going on.

Was I going to sit there and make a nuisance of myself or have a crack at anyone? No, I was there so that I heard the story at the same time that these other people around the table heard the story. Other people were there from interstate, people who are going to build an international-class golf course on Kangaroo Island. When you are in government, it does not matter whether you are the Minister for Planning or the Minister for Environment, these sorts of projects can get a little tricky and you need to have the local member on board and across what is happening. Was I invited? No.

The public servant who was running this, and who reports to the Minister for Planning, asked me what I was doing there. I said, 'I wasn't invited by you, but I was invited by a lot of business people and a lot of other people who are here today at the seminar. They wanted me to be here.' She said, 'Why would I invite you?' Democracy has gone wrong when the local member of parliament is not invited along to something as important as this planning day.

Getting back to David Ridgway, he looked at me and I could see the look of horror as he recognised that his office had probably not given me a heads up. The first thing he did was ask me whether I had been given a heads up. I said, 'No. I'm filthy. I'm really dirty on the fact that you are coming over here and you haven't given me a heads up.' To his credit, when he gave his address at the seminar he welcomed me along. David and I get on really well. He has some of the portfolios I used to have responsibility for. We want to see them grow. The first thing he did when he got up was acknowledge that I was there and say that he had given someone in his office a rocket because I had not been informed.

I wrote to the Premier about this back in September, but I still have not received a response. We need ministers and the Premier to tell us when they are coming to our area. We can actually help you.