Mount Barker Country Cabinet

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (14:17): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier please update the house on the recent country cabinet held in Mount Barker?

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members on my left! I call the Premier.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:18): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Hartley, you are warned, and you are warned for the first time.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to thank the member for Newland for her question because this government has reinstated country cabinets. After a bunch of hashtags and a few little slogans, now we've got a government—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Chaffey—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am on my feet. The member for Morialta will leave the chamber.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: For how long, sir?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: For 15 minutes. And the next member on the left to speak out will follow him.

The honourable member for Morialta having withdrawn from the chamber:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Premier.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. This government has reinstated country cabinets; they were abolished by the former government. We are very serious about getting out there and engaging with people.

As I have said on other occasions, you can read all the briefs in the world, and many of us are lucky enough to get a lot of them, but nothing replicates stories that you can hear from people on the ground—whether they be small business owners or people in any number of different circumstances. There is a power by ensuring we are getting out there and talking to people firsthand by not just members of the executive of the government in terms of the cabinet but also senior executive members of the public sector more broadly.

I am very grateful that, only last week, we were at Mount Barker talking to people in and around that community. We had a very substantial community forum in Mount Barker in a school gymnasium that had somewhere between 600 and 700 people attend—600 to 700 constituents from the electorate of Kavel and also the electorate of Heysen. The member for Heysen wasn't there but the member for Kavel was.

There were a lot of thoughtful questions from constituents there: everything from planning issues to health-related questions. There was a lot of interest in the massive expansion of the Mount Barker hospital that this government is undertaking. There were questions and welcome feedback in respect to the installation of more ambulance officers and more crews in Mount Barker and also Strathalbyn, and interest in a lot of work the government is doing in schools. There were questions around infrastructure, particularly around Hahndorf, and also questions around Mount Barker traffic.

The government was very excited to be able to make a number of announcements in regard to traffic, banning trucks from the main street of Hahndorf, but also addressing Heysen Boulevard. There were a whole range of issues that were addressed over the course of the week; indeed, there were even examples of other inquiries that the government will follow up on following the success of the event.

I do want to take the opportunity, and it is probably almost fortuitous that we are doing this in the Speaker's absence, because otherwise my praise would be seen to be too gushing, but the member for Kavel provided a particularly substantial degree of assistance to the government in facilitating a lot of meetings with a lot of people in the community that I am very grateful for. I do want to take the time to acknowledge staff of the member for Kavel, the Speaker: Kayla, Nicole, Lukas and Airlie for their assistance in putting their program together. The member made sure that each and every one of us from the cabinet were flat out with a pretty comprehensive program in our own right, and it made for an incredibly productive couple of days.

We are going to continue the country cabinet program. I am very excited to announce to the parliament that the next country cabinet is going to be in the seat of MacKillop where there is a good local MP who wants to make sure that the government is working hard for his local community.

Members interjecting:

Mr Cowdrey: You're losing control, sir.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no. If you want to waste your question time, that's fine by me. I will give the call when members on my left stop interjecting, okay?