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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-04 Daily Xml
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REGIONAL REPRESENTATION

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:26): I would like to draw the house's attention to a recent edition of The Times Victor Harbor newspaper, with a circulation of 30,000. It has a story in there about a big plan for Victor. It was so important that it commissioned a poll on it, and out of the 30,000 readers they had 13 people comment on the poll: 61 per cent voting yes, 15.4 per cent voting no, and 23 per cent unsure—out of 13 votes.

Now, hold your breath Madam Speaker: this was an announcement by the member for Mawson that he has a plan, a big plan. It is a devious plan, this Bignell plan. The member for Mawson hopes to deliver the government the next election on the back of rural seats. What is the plan? Well may you ask, Madam Speaker. The honourable member wants to appoint 14 more ministers—that's right, 14 more ministers. These ministers would apparently be called 'regional duty ministers', and would have so-called 'regional duties'. These ministers would have a few roles, such as driving themselves to the region, holding five meetings in the region, attending at least two sporting or recreation activities—for example, bowls, tennis, football, netball, cricket, and cycling. In other words, he wants to appoint Labor ministers to do the same jobs as, in the main, Liberal local members do.

He wants to appoint—and therefore provide funding for—members of the government to go into these regional areas, where most of them have never been before, because he knows that Labor is on the nose, and he knows that Labor cannot win these seats. They have tried this before. They wanted the seat of the august former member for Stuart, the Hon. Graham Gunn. In fact, they tried 12 times. They knew they had a dud candidate, and they knew that rural people could not stand Labor, so they sent the candidate up there with a government job to do some undefined and nebulous work while they, basically, provided him with a healthy private income while he contested the seat. They failed on that attempt.

They failed then, so the member for Mawson wants to take this genius plan one step further. The member for Mawson is putting on a show of political genius; he is going to spend thousands of dollars of government money to appoint new ministers to do exactly what local members, who sit in here, currently do. It is a tactic worthy of Machiavelli. He is going to use government money to create an alternative power structure so that his people win some regional seats. If it were not so deeply serious—that he wants to spend government money on 14 more ministers for blatant political purposes—it would be absolutely hilarious.

We are all aware of the political acumen of the member for Mawson, and the person who is most aware of the member for Mawson's political acumen is his close friend and loyal colleague, the former treasurer, who is currently Minister for Police. I have to say—and this is a rare and exciting thing for Mr Foley—that I completely agree with the former treasurer, I completely agree with Kevin. He was absolutely right when he was quoted in The Australian on 21 April this year, a week or two ago, as follows:

'The nervous nellies and the panickers that are the Labor Party in South Australia should take a cold shower,' Mr Foley said from the US. 'Aspiring backbenchers who wish to be ministers, and those aspiring to be MPs, have about as much political genius as I do in my left toe'.

Mr Foley singled out backbencher Leon Bignell for special criticism. 'I wouldn't want to rely on Mr Bignell's judgment on the politics of how you win elections,' Mr Foley said. 'He's an ex-ABC reporter who runs around pretending to be a political genius. What I am seeing now is a bunch of young, inexperienced, immature backbenchers who find it much easier to panic than be strategic, calm and sensible about where we are in the political cycle.'

This shows a few things. It shows the contempt with which the member for Mawson and his ministerial colleagues view this parliament and the regional members within it, including their own single regional member—yourself, Madam Speaker. Contempt they shower on you, Madam Speaker. 'Never consult when you can spend more money' is their motto. Why bother asking the immense knowledge of the regional members in this place when you just appoint another 14 ministers?

Secondly, it just shows how pathetic the regional development minister, the Hon. Gail Gago, is. On a recent visit to my electorate, she did not bother to give me the courtesy of letting me know that she was in that area. The Premier always does—he always does. They know she is hopeless. They know she is completely out of her depth, yet they keep promoting her because they have to. There is no-one else up there in the other place. What a sign is it that, instead of dumping their useless minister, they have to appoint 14 more to help her! It is an absolute joke.

Finally, it just shows how completely out of touch they are. It proves that, for once, Kevin Foley is right: the member for Mawson is running around pretending to be a political genius by hatching this miserable plan to spend money to win rural and regional seats, to force their members to go to rural and regional events and—shock, horror!—to actually drive themselves out there to do it. They think rural and regional people are stupid. Well, the people in my electorate are not. When you poll 30,000 people—

Time expired.

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