OUTBACK COMMUNITIES

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:58): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for State/Local Government Relations a question about outback communities.

Leave granted.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I understand that there are about 5,000 people in outback areas in a number of small communities spread across a wide geographic area of our state. Despite not having a large enough population to form local councils, these communities are full of volunteers who help to run their local areas. Will the minister advise the council about the state government's commitment to these outback communities?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for State/Local Government Relations, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Government Enterprises, Minister Assisting the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Energy) (14:58): I thank the honourable member for his important question. As Minister for State/Local Government Relations I was very happy to release recently a draft bill designed to meet the administrative and management needs of outback communities into the future. The aim of this bill is to provide efficient and accountable administration of outback communities and to repeal the Outback Areas Community Development Act 1978.

Many regional communities contributed to the initial review of that act, which was conducted in 2007 and which looked at the formal capacity of the Outback Areas Community Development Trust to respond adequately to the needs of outback areas now and into the future. The Outback Areas Community Development Trust covers 65 per cent of the state's land mass, Mr President—and I can see that you are astounded by that figure—with less than 1 per cent of the population.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: Here we have an honourable member who is not interested in our rural and outback communities; you can hear by the interjections that the honourable member does not give a flying leap about our outback and rural communities, and that is a real shame.

The Dunstan government first created the trust to support and assist outback communities with their unique needs. The outback areas of our state are facing many challenges with the current growth of some communities, and it is important that communities have up-to-date governance structures in place to manage local affairs for the benefit of communities whilst upholding a strong sense of community spirit.

The bill creates a new Outback Communities Authority to replace the Outback Areas Development Trust. The key elements of the Outback Communities (Administration and Management) Bill include:

increasing the capacity and expertise of the authority by increasing membership of the authority to seven;

increasing community consultation to better inform the authority's future operations through the development of five-yearly strategic management plans, an annual business plan and budget and community resourcing and management agreements;

giving the new authority the ability to raise revenue to assist in the maintenance of whole of outback assets and the ability to raise a community contribution at the request of individual communities to run projects specific to that community; and

strengthening regulatory powers to enable the new authority to better manage issues confronting its communities such as the collection of rubbish, dealing with litter and abandoned vehicles and land hazards such as animals causing a nuisance as well as managing development.

An information package including the draft bill is available on the Outback Areas Community Trust website or through our OACDT services.