Yorke Peninsula Field Days

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:56): I rise today in celebration of the Yorke Peninsula Field Days, which were held just recently at the field day site near Paskeville. As you would be well aware, Mr Speaker, the field days are a biennial event, held every second year, so they did not have to confront the difficult decision last year, with COVID running rampant in our community, of whether or not it was possible to host that event. Unfortunately, this year they were faced with the rather difficult decision of whether they could manage the at times onerous restrictions that would be placed upon them in holding such a big event.

As this house may well be aware, the field days over the three days can often attract in excess of 15,000 people to quite a large outdoor space, so it was necessary for that committee to secure a COVID-safe management plan. They found it quite difficult to negotiate the terms of that COVID-safe management plan. As such, I was pleased to host them here in Parliament House so they could have a face-to-face meeting with the Premier and negotiate the conditions on which they might be able to host the event.

It was pleasing that as a result of that meeting they were able to have 5,000 people per day, in addition to a certain number of exhibitors, which made the event feasible and made it possible for it to go ahead. It was a wonderful effort by the committee to confront those difficult circumstances, come out the other side and put on such a wonderful event.

I have to say that one of the unfortunate side effects of the necessary restrictions that we have been faced with in South Australia has been the impost on volunteers in running their community events and the extra onus it has placed on them in order to manage those restrictions and put in place the proper processes to avoid the community transmission of COVID.

It was wonderful to see this event go ahead, such an important event on our calendar on Yorke Peninsula, despite those restrictions that are in place. Full credit must go to Martin Kenny, the president of that wonderful committee, and Peter Anderson, who is the CEO and also whose birthday it is on this very day. Happy birthday to Peter. I am sure he is resting up after what has been an extremely busy time organising the field days.

I ordinarily would have closed my office for the three days and shifted it out to the field days and invited people to come and visit me there on the site. Unfortunately, with the restriction on the number of people who could visit and the restriction on the number of exhibitors, I decided to only take one staff member with me and leave the office open and running. We were pleased there were a large number of people willing to pop by and share their thoughts on the state of play in South Australia at the moment. I thank them all very much for taking the time to do so.

It was also pleasing to note at this juncture that I had a site adjacent to the federal member for Grey, Rowan Ramsey, who was also in receipt of a large number of visitors keen to weigh in on the current state of the federal government as well. It was a wonderful and worthwhile experience for the two of us to have our sites next to each other and to welcome so many people to have a chat.

I also have to note that we were visited by two members from the other place: the Hon. Nicola Centofanti and the Hon. Heidi Girolamo visited the field days on the Wednesday. By way of evidence of how small a world this is, the Hon. Nicola Centofanti's parents-in-law ran the coffee van immediately around the corner from my stand. Without knowing it, for the past few field days I had been buying coffee from the Hon. Nicola Centofanti's father-in-law—and what wonderful coffee it is as well.

We were down on exhibitors a bit this year. There were not quite as many as there normally would be because of border restrictions and various other things, but it was pleasing to see that there were still a large number of exhibitors and that those exhibitors did have what I believe was a successful time at the field days. From those I talked to, which was as many as I could possibly get around to, they were mostly happy with how they were able to sell their wares and promote their products. So it would seem like a worthwhile endeavour for those exhibitors to get out there to the field days, despite the reduced crowds.

I also know from talking to the large number of visitors that they, too, enjoyed it. There were a number of sceptics within our community who thought that the field days might be too dangerous an event to host, but I have to report that even those sceptics I talked to over the course of the three days were pleased that it went ahead. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to get out and run into some people we had not seen for a while and enjoy some comradeship with them. Full credit goes to the committee, as it is a huge and daunting task put on the head of the committee and those volunteers who help them out. Congratulations to Martin Kenny.

It was wonderful to have a stall there again and for so many local businesses and local community groups to have stalls there to promote their business and their wares. I really enjoyed it. I am looking forward to the event in two years' time. Hopefully, by then we are back at full rat power, there is no capacity on the number of people who can visit and we can get back to that 15,000 to 20,000 people visiting and the full number of exhibitors. For the time being, it was just wonderful to see such an important community event go ahead again to give us the opportunity to get out and about and meet with people.