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

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:57): I preface my comments today by paying tribute to Alan Scott, a great South Australian businessman, who has sadly passed away and to pass on my condolences to Mr Scott's family and those who work in the Scott group of companies, at what must be a very difficult time. I grew up in the South-East, at Glencoe, and I know from playing junior footy down there that Mr Scott was a very keen promoter and supporter of country sport in those days and that, as his business grew, so did his generosity to sport throughout the state. It went on to reach levels where he not only supported the Mount Gambier and Penola racing clubs, but also the wider SAJC and, in fact, the Morphettville Racecourse how carries Mr Scott's name. Mr Scott also, of course, was a sponsor of the Port Adelaide Football Club. Mr Scott was a man who did much for businesses in South Australia and kept those profits in South Australia and reinvested them through his media holdings and also his widespread trucking interests.

Today I also talk about a visit by the Premier and the cabinet to the southern suburbs last week for community cabinet. It was a very successful couple of days down in the seats of Mawson, Kaurna, Reynell, Bright, Mitchell and Fisher. We quite often have the Premier down at Willunga and Woodcroft and in the seat of Mawson, and we also see a fair bit of the ministers down there, but to get them all in the one place at the one time was a great opportunity for locals to come along to the community barbecues and fora.

This is something that the Rann government has been doing for the past 6½ years. It is about making our government accessible to the people of South Australia, whether they live in Millicent, Ceduna or Port Augusta, or within suburban Adelaide. The Premier and the cabinet and, most importantly, the chief executives and departmental bureaucrats, come out to the regions and to the suburbs to visit people, so that they can hear first-hand the concerns of local people.

We had several hundred people at the South Adelaide Football Club, the home of the Premier's beloved Panthers, and it was a very good evening. People had something to eat and drink and then they could ask questions, and the Premier emceed the night. He took many of the questions, but also people such as the transport minister had plenty of questions and also plenty of answers about the $2 billion Rann government transport revolution. Everyone was very pleased to hear that the Noarlunga line will be electrified first under these great changes to our transport system; changes for which the people of South Australia have been waiting a generation. It is this Rann government that has taken on board the need to improve things, and we are in fact doing it.

I think the Minister for Transport's greatest round of applause came when he told people that he was replacing the windows in the trains. For a couple of years now people have not been able to see out of train windows because of a well intended move to put perspex windows in the trains to stop graffiti vandalism. Unfortunately, the perspex was vandalised even worse than the glass had been, and people could not see out of them. There is now a program underway to fix that and people will be able to see out of the windows. And, of course, the line will be resleepered and then electrified, and we will have rolling stock in place on the Noarlunga line.

I thank the Attorney-General, who is here, and several other ministers who had one-on-one meetings with people from the electorate of Mawson, who had concerns and who contacted my office and said, 'Look, can we get together with the various ministers?' We arranged several of those meetings.

We also have morning and afternoon tea where local volunteers and community members can come along as well. It is always great to see schoolchildren, who come along in their uniform and get to have their photo taken with the Premier and other ministers. There are also school visits. The Premier, the education minister and I went to Willunga High School which is about to undergo a $7.7 million transformation, thanks to the great budget that is aimed at fixing so many of our schools in South Australia.

We also went to Reynella East High School where we had a fantastic response from the students. In fact, the Premier said that the questions he received from the year 12 students at Reynella East High were among the best questions he had received in 6½ years in parliament. He said he counted the questions that he received in parliament among those that he was talking about. Once again, to the Premier, all the cabinet ministers and the bureaucrats, I pass on my thanks on behalf of the people of the southern suburbs.

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