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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-28 Daily Xml
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BARTON, DR A.

Ms BREUER (Giles) (15:46): Today I pay tribute to Dr Archie Barton, a very prominent member of the Aboriginal community in South Australia, particularly the Oak Valley/Maralinga community, who sadly passed away on Saturday 18 October. Dr Barton was well known to me. I knew him and considered him a friend for many years. I also admired him for his work in the Oak Valley/Maralinga community over many years. Dr Barton was the South Australian Aboriginal of the Year in 1988, and he was awarded an OAM in 1989.

As a five year old child he was taken from his family, and, for many years, he spoke out about the Stolen Generation and the issues for the children involved. He was a former stockman, shearer and labourer for 25 years in South Australia, but he came to prominence as the administrator of the Oak Valley/Maralinga community with which he worked for many years. He was an outstanding leader for them. Certainly, he worked very hard for his community. Oak Valley is a very dear community to my heart, and I know that I owe a lot of that to Dr Barton.

Of course, he is well known for his work in pushing Britain to accept responsibility for the atomic tests in the Maralinga area. He was able to get Britain to make a staggering £20 million contribution for the clean-up of the Maralinga area. As I said, unfortunately, he passed away, and I am hoping that I will have the honour of being able to go to his funeral. In recent years he was in poor health. I think it is fitting that this place pays tribute to Dr Barton, and I will be passing on my sympathy to the Oak Valley community and to his family.

The second topic I want to talk about today is the situation with respect to fuel prices in Whyalla. I am getting angrier and angrier because the cost of fuel in Whyalla is consistently higher than it is in Port Augusta, Port Lincoln and communities closer to Adelaide. The people of Whyalla consistently pay 20¢ more per litre for fuel; and, despite a very active campaign led by the Whyalla News, as well as our community speaking out constantly about this, we seem unable to shame local retailers. There is absolutely no reason why people in Whyalla should be paying this extra cost in fuel.

Certainly, the transport costs would be no dearer than for Port Augusta, Port Lincoln or Port Pirie—we would be paying the same amount for that. The taxes are the same. It is up to the local retailers. Two major retailers are in Whyalla: Coles and Woolworths. Unfortunately, they have squeezed out all the little operators in Whyalla. I think that only one or two are left. They have squeezed out everyone else by consistently charging lower prices in the past, but now they have jacked them up, and it does not matter what our community says or does, we cannot get them to bring down those prices.

People in Whyalla ask me why; what can the government do about it? I keep saying to them that there is nothing we can do about it: it is the retailers. They charge what they want and they are consistently fleecing our community and forcing us to pay these higher prices. I think the situation is disgraceful. The Premier has undertaken to write to the ACCC about this for me, but until those retailers in Whyalla get the message, we seem to have to suffer this extra cost.

Finally, I thank our Premier for a very successful visit to Whyalla last week. He came to Whyalla and visited my community. He was there for a day and a night as part of his electorate visits. I certainly appreciated the opportunity to be able to show off our hospital (of which I am very proud) and the Edward John Eyre High School. He was able to meet with many community leaders and attend a number of meetings. However, I think the highlight of the day was the delightful lunch we had at Phoenix Industries in Whyalla. Phoenix has been operating in Whyalla for some time and is really a jewel in our crown. It is an excellent organisation. It employs approximately 60 employees and is consistently on the lookout for new employees. It was wonderful to be able to take the Premier there and for him to be able to eat pizza with the workers, and for them to show off their workplace and the happy atmosphere in which they work.

Unfortunately, I spent all of Wednesday fighting a story that appeared in the media on the Friday night claiming that the Premier was there to make an announcement about the jetty in Whyalla. This story was put out by our local television station and was not factual. They had rung me and completely got the wrong end of the story. Consequently, the community thought he was there to announce a jetty in Whyalla. This was absolutely not the case, and I spent the day telling people this, including some protesters. However, it was unfortunate that, on the Friday, an announcement was made about the jetty. I can assure my community that I had absolutely no knowledge of the announcement on Friday and certainly it had nothing to do with the visit on Wednesday.

Time expired.

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