Taxi Concierge Service

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (14:28): My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier reverse the $800,000 cut in the 2018-19 state budget to the concierge service at managed taxi ranks? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: The previous Labor government, to ensure that women had a safe place to catch a taxi in the city late at night, introduced a concierge service. However, in the 2018-19 state budget this service was cut by $800,000 and unable to continue.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (14:29): Again, this is a historical matter, but I am happy to inform the house that the—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —issue in relation to service provision and safety around taxi ranks remains a matter for consideration. We have worked with the police and we have worked with the Adelaide City Council to deal with this issue, including lighting and the like, and importantly we have also maintained a commitment to deal with surveillance in other parts of the metropolitan area.

In Hutt Street, for example, I recently found that there was funding needed for the provision of surveillance, again for the protection particularly of people who were patrons of or providing a service to retail outlets, and when the funding was identified as being surplus to requirements an extra $33,000 out of the Justice Rehabilitation Fund was paid to purchase and install safety hardware at Hutt Street.

The direct beneficiaries of that hardware on Hutt Street are BeWon, the Old Croissant Factory, Raj on Taj, Nagomi Japanese, Kin Kin Thai, Coffylosophy, Chicken and Seafood and Karl Chehade Dry Cleaning, and we are awaiting applications from a further nine businesses to be able to provide that service as well. As a government, we have been keen to identify areas of particular need, provide funding to do that and obviously provide it on a tender basis.

I thank the member for Adelaide, my colleague the Minister for Child Protection, who has been a strong advocate for hotspots of concern in relation to advocacy. In the last couple of years and according to recent media reports, there have been some management issues in relation to the people who access the services in Hutt Street, and that has caused some tensions. But she has been a strong advocate for us to consider that. We have worked with police and other health and welfare services. We are very proud of these initiatives and I thank her for her support to those businesses in advocacy and the application of these funds.