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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-24 Daily Xml
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KANGAROO ISLAND, COMMUNITY EVENTS

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:37): Across my electorate we have a number of public events, which are always well organised and pleasurable to attend. Recently on Kangaroo Island we have had two extremely good events for which I would like to pay credit to the organisers and everybody who was involved in them. One of those was the Kangaroo Island Cup Carnival, the annual racing carnival on Kangaroo Island.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Hear, hear!

Mr PENGILLY: I did not see the Attorney there. He can come next year.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: I was at Cheltenham for the last meeting.

Mr PENGILLY: That is right, and the minister was on Kangaroo Island, Attorney. Some 3,500 people attended the Kangaroo Island Cup on Saturday. It was a terrific day, and it was made even better by the fact that Maximum Class, of which I am a very small part owner, won the second race by seven lengths.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Seven lengths!

Mr PENGILLY: Seven lengths, Attorney.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: What were the odds?

Mr PENGILLY: Six to one. I pay tribute to the trainer, Mr James Bates, and the Bates family and his wife Sandra. On the racing carnival itself, I would pay tribute and gratitude to the president of the racing club, Mr Roger Williams, and his committee. They did a marvellous job in organising the carnival on the Thursday and the Saturday, and everything that goes with it.

It is certainly the event of the year for Kangaroo Island, and a small group of people with a small population base of 4,500 on the island certainly do a wonderful job. It brings large numbers of visitors to the island, which I will come back to in a minute, and it is a good time.

The other event that followed that a week or so later was the Kangaroo Island Agricultural Field Day held on the racecourse. They use the same facilities. The marquees are left there and the two organisations work well together.

Mr Rodney Bell, the chairman of the Agricultural Field Day on the island, also deserves special comment for what he has done, as does his hard working committee for its efforts in putting it on. The crowd at that field day I understand was around 1,500, principally local people.

The schools all shut for the day and the children attend. They have fashion parades, sheep catching competitions, sheep races and all sorts of things. It was really a good day and it is a wonderful way to see all the constituents on the island, that is for sure.

However, on a somewhat more tempered note, I do talk about the possibility of the island increasing its numbers of visitors and, more to the point, increasing equity for the agricultural and primary industry sector on the island (and for the tourism sector, as well) with the cost of travel to the island.

I have spoken before in this place about this matter. It is not the fault of the SeaLink company. It offers substantial discounts to islanders and it does the best it can to keep its costs down. However, the absolute inequity of the cost of transport backwards and forwards across to the mainland is totally wrong. This year I understand that the price to move grain from Kangaroo Island to the mainland was around some $70-odd a tonne which makes it totally uncompetitive in the current pricing mechanism, with grain prices down.

The reality is that the island has the ability to provide vast amounts of grain, for example, to the Fleurieu Peninsula for the dairy industry. The island is a food producer, along with the Fleurieu, for the state of South Australia, Australia and the world. Things cannot go on as they are at the moment. The government has failed to come to grips with this. It has been put on notice several times about the inequity that occurs on the freight link and the sea lane to the island. Visitor numbers to the island could be boosted dramatically if it was cheaper to get there.

The member for Goyder knows this only too well. I recently organised for him to come to the island to attend a function and, when I gave him the account for some $304 (for the car, himself and his wife), he nearly fell over. I said, 'Welcome to reality, Steven. I do this trip three or four times a month and I pay full tote odds.'

Time expired.

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