Light Electorate

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:48): Today, I would like to talk about a couple of the projects in my electorate and some activities undertaken by volunteers across our state. I was recently invited to officially launch the Fund My Neighbourhood project undertaken by the Gawler Uniting Church. They were successful in getting funds through the Fund My Neighbourhood program under the previous state Labor government, and they have built a community garden and a children's playground.

I would like to commend the people involved in the church who have brought this project to fruition. As I said at the official launch of the project, it is good to see that some of our churches are now back at the centre of community life. For some time now a lot of people have not seen churches as part of community life, and these activities that provide a range of facilities and services around the faith organisations certainly are to be supported. A lot of people worked very hard to bring this project to fruition, all being volunteers, and they have been very successful in doing so.

Another Fund My Neighbourhood project I would also like to commend, amongst many others in the community, is the one undertaken by the Gawler Apex club. They applied for a grant through the Fund My Neighbourhood program to upgrade the furniture at Apex Park in Gawler. The club received high-level support from the community and were successful in obtaining a grant for the requested amount of $20,000.

With the funds available and support from the Gawler council, they replaced all the older furniture with modern, eco-plastic and recycled plastic furniture. They also installed additional park benches and a special table and chairs that had wheelchair access. The key part of this project was to ensure that our parks are much more inclusive, particularly for people with disabilities. I commend Apex Park for taking that initiative. Apex Park is very happy with how the furniture looks and the way it works. One thing they did say is that without programs like Fund My Neighbourhood this project simply would not have occurred.

Mr Speaker, as you know, the incoming Marshall Liberal government decided to axe this very successful program. I say 'successful' because it did something that a lot of other grant programs did not do: it empowered local communities to do something themselves. The communities themselves had to find a project and, importantly, the communities had to then convince other members of the communities that this project should take priority over others.

That was something new and novel. I must confess that when I first heard about the program I was a bit sceptical, but I am a convert. I was a convert as soon as I heard how it could work. What it does is activate those volunteer groups in our community to go out and fight for those projects, whereas in the past it has been a very passive process, where people put in applications and some public servant, a bureaucrat in the city, decides whether you get a yes or a no. In this case, it was actually the community voting for priorities in the community.

I must say that our community of Gawler was very successful. We attracted about $1 million worth of funding from Fund My Neighbourhood and 15 projects got up in my town. That is an indication of how strong the volunteer sector is in my town. That is the simple truth. These people worked hard, they worked together, they supported their own community and we got 15 projects and a $1 million worth of investment in our community. We improved a range of local projects as a result of that. As I said, it is a great program. It is unfortunate that it was axed by the incoming Marshall Liberal government. When I talk to various community groups, they are still aggrieved by that budget decision.

In the time I have left I would like to talk about another project. This one is not in my electorate, but it has a history in my electorate, and that is the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society project. On the weekend, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the official relaunch or welcome back of the Pichi Richi Railway Yx141 locomotive, which is now the oldest working steam locomotive in South Australia. It was originally built 127 years ago in 1892 as the Y141 in the James Martin and Co. foundry in Gawler.

It was modified in 1911 to produce more power and then it was renumbered the Yx141. After that, it spent most of its working life at the South Australian Railways Port Lincoln division until being retired in 1959. It was stored there for four years until it found its way into the playground in Port Lincoln in 1963. It was then rescued by the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society, renovated and put back on track.