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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-05-14 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:06): Today I rise to ask how far this government will go to suffocate adverse comment about either itself or its policies. The clear answer is that it will say and do whatever it takes to crush the voice and to silence the lambs, as they say. I will just give two recent events as an example.

The announcement by the Liberal Party to rebuild the Royal Adelaide Hospital has had howls of disquiet and discontent from the government. Having already abolished the board and the voice for that hospital, we are now informed by the government that media and communications employees of the Department of Health have moved into the Margaret Graham Building at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and that the minister and/or someone in his department has directed that all publications of the Royal Adelaide Hospital (formerly published through the Medical Illustrations Unit) must now go through his communications unit. Talk about silence of the lambs.

Then, of course, we have the situation with volunteers. A letter has been sent to all of us, I think, in the last 24 hours regarding a complaint to the Minister for the City of Adelaide about the Botanic Garden, where volunteers, during Volunteers Week, are protesting staff cuts in the Botanic Garden, and other important gardens in this state. I will quote from that correspondence, as follows:

When we first volunteered to be guides, we were told that we should never criticise government policy while guiding, and we have followed this direction assiduously. We now wish to inform you that we can no longer comply with this instruction.

This government just has no shame. It is now telling volunteers what to do. This week, in the Arc de Triomphe of secrecy of this government, we have a rejection to even show us the design of the approved SA film and sound hub to be built at the Glenside campus of the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The Premier has announced that he is going to purchase all the historic buildings in the middle of the Glenside Hospital site. He has proceeded with a $43 million film and sound hub. As if that is not offensive enough to the people of South Australia—particularly those across all of South Australia who use the important mental health services—children who play on the ovals and have sporting activities have been removed and the opportunity for local people to have access to the property has been cut. Having announced the film hub and having allocated the money in last year's budget to build it, and progressing it as we speak, on 4 March (over two months ago), the Premier announced that he has signed off on the design of this facility. Through his department, he now refuses to let us even have the design documents in relation to this. How secretive can this government get?

This is a project which he proudly stands up to say is going to be important for South Australia. Even if he is right, how dare he—having announced that he has signed off on it—refuse to even let us look at it. We are left with only the opportunity to look at what has happened with other film and screen hubs around Australia. As usual, the Premier has not come up with a smart, new initiative of his own. I do not think he has ever come up with one of his own. The Royal Adelaide Hospital is proposed to be built on a railway site. Tasmania had come up with that idea years before—and it abandoned it, I might add.

His brilliant idea for a film and screen hub is allegedly to bring people across the world to make films here in South Australia, but Melbourne already announced that eight years ago. It has built its hub, and we can see what a disaster that has turned out to be for accessibility for small, new and fledgling filmmakers in that state. However, the buildings on that site, called the Melbourne Central City Studios—and we have seen them on the internet—are over 12 metres high.

So, the government has to be honest with the people of South Australia and tell us what monstrosity of a building it is going to build on that site behind the historic buildings or adjacent to them. We are told that it is behind because the Premier has already said that he is not allowed to have anything to interrupt the panoramic view from the major historic building on the site looking out over Fullarton Road. He has to come clean with what is going to be built there, how high it is going to be and what area it is going to take up.

Time expired.

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