Private Members' Statements

Private Members' Statements

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (15:36): Last week, I had the pleasure of having four 5/6 classes from Goodwood Primary School tour Parliament House. One of those students, Sasha, took the opportunity to present to me a letter from her sister and asked me to present it to the Premier, so I will do that in the parliament. It says:

To Premier

Please ban horseracing because people hurt and whip horses. Also people gamble on horses, and gambling is bad. I think that animal cruelty is very bad and hurtful to the animal. If you can't ban horseracing, at least stop using a whip.

From a little kid

—who is Sasha's little sister. Part 2 of the letter says:

To Premier

Please also ban duck shooting because people make killing animals fun, which is bad because killing is very, very bad. I think that because I like animals a lot and I don't think that would be nice for animals and it is animal cruelty.

From the same little kid

—who is Sasha's little sister. The letter finishes with:

Ban horseracing and ban duck shooting.

PS: Please answer. If you don't, I will be sad.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:37): I had the wonderful privilege of being invited by the local media to a photo opportunity at the Bute to Port Broughton road last week to celebrate the announcement of $600,000 for some patchwork along that notoriously poor stretch of road. By all means this is a tremendous announcement, a wonderful initiative, but I think the community would agree with me in saying that we need more. We need to do it once and do it properly: there is no sense in doing a patchwork job and then continuing to lobby for a proper road rebuild to make sure this road is brought up to standard.

While I do not mean to be ungrateful to the minister, and we thank him sincerely for acknowledging that this road is worthy of an upgrade, we do need more funding. We need millions of dollars, not hundreds of thousands, to build this road up to standard and, in an ideal world, not just between Bute and Port Broughton but the entire stretch of the Upper Yorke Road, from Arthurton to Kulpara initially, and then from Bute to Broughton thereafter.

I reiterate that we do not want to be ungrateful, but we would like to see these roads fixed. The Arthurton to Kulpara stretch was featured on the GPSA list of bad grain roads—I think it was number one—highlighting its current state of affairs. It would be well worth and well overdue an upgrade. I know it has been on the cards for quite some time for a number of years. There is no time like the present to make these changes. So thank you, minister, for identifying that this road needs work, but please come to us with a greater amount of money so that we can do it properly.

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (15:39): The opening of two new tobacco and vaping stores in our local community has been of great concern to my constituents. Last year, a new one of these stores opened in Stonyfell, less than 100 metres from St Peter's Girls' School. Just as recently as last week, a similar store opened on Kensington Road in Marryatville, close to both Marryatville Primary School and Marryatville High School.

My community has some significant concerns about these new stores. I wrote to the Minister for Health about the Stonyfell store last year to highlight some of these concerns, including its proximity to a school, whether it is complying with relevant advertising and consumer standards—noting that it is, in fact, undertaking letterbox drops advertising cigarettes and that the store logo is a stylised cigarette—and also whether the store holds appropriate licences to be selling tobacco and e-cigarettes.

I hope the minister can take some fairly urgent action on this issue. We certainly do not want illegal tobacco and vape stores operating in our area, and we do not really want them operating near our local schools at all.

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (15:40): I thought I would take the time today to talk about my two recent successful seniors' forums, which have been really well attended in my community. We had one in November and one on the Friday just gone by. Firstly, I would like to thank the member for Torrens for her assistance in putting those together. She has been running some really successful seniors' forums in her electorate for many years.

In the electorate of Newland, we have the most individuals living in aged and retirement living of any electorate, and roughly a third of our electorate are over the age of 70. We do have an aged electorate and it has become clear to me, in my almost two years as the member, that there is a great need for better access to services in our community for seniors.

I would like to put on the record my thanks to some of the people involved in that set-up: first of all, the Campania Club. John Di Fede, who would be known to many of you here in the chamber, attended our forum on Friday. We had Luisa Greco, the president of the club, who has been of great assistance, as well as Rocco, who organises the set-up and set-down of the club. They have been really helpful, as have the local businesses who have been involved. We cater our event from local businesses. I would particularly like to mention Frankie and the Grocer, the greengrocer at the St Agnes shops, who has been providing us with milk on tap in old-school glass bottles for our forum, which has been a real success in our community as well.