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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-27 Daily Xml
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APY LANDS

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (16:47): I rise today to talk about football, but before I get to that I want to talk about the APY lands, because the member for Norwood brought it up. He was talking about a facility at Amata. I was with the Minister for Health last week on the APY lands as we toured around, and the facility he talks about was built at the insistence of then federal health minister Tony Abbott. It has been no secret that it was built in a place on the outskirts of the town of Amata, and it was something the local community never ever wanted. It is pretty hard to force people to go somewhere if it does not actually fit with their beliefs and it is not somewhere they want to go.

Right from the start, this building has been something that has not been welcomed by the community. I saw the health minister sit down with several members of the community and bureaucrats to try to work out what this facility can be used for. This has been part of the ongoing quest by the health minister to find a good use for something that has been under-used. There are several reason it has been under-used, and one of then is that it was built to deal with substance abuse, one of which was petrol sniffing.

With the introduction of Opal fuel, we now, thankfully, do not see petrol sniffing on the scale that I saw on my first trip up to the lands, which was back in 2003. I was very pleased to see a lot of great advancements since my last visit in 2003. It is interesting to contrast what has been said in the newspapers and what is actually there on the ground. Sure, there are problems, but I am not sure that the media has its descriptions exactly right on this one.

We did have the good fortune of crossing paths with Darren Jarman, Graham Johncock and a few other people from the Crows Football Club and from the SANFL. It was very pleasing to see them out there not only doing football clinics for the kids at Fregon and then moving on to the other communities across the lands but also being involved in educating the children in how to blow their noses, clean their eyes and clean their ears.

That is a very important thing for the children on the APY lands. A lot of these children have chronic hearing problems, and it gets down to some things that we would think are pretty basic, but part of the education process involves getting role models up there. I really do want to congratulate the Crows. They were pretty unsung sorts of things they were doing out there, but it was tremendous work, so I thank Darren Jarman, Graham Johncock and all the other players and former players who were in the APY lands last week.

On Sunday, it looked a little bit like this bench here, actually, with the member for Croydon, the member for Lee and me sitting alongside each other at Football Park as we cheered on our respective teams. Obviously, I gave the member for Croydon a ride down there. I was not so keen to give him a ride back when his Eagles beat my Panthers and knocked them out of the finals. It was a great achievement for the Panthers to get there. It was the first time they had made the finals since 2006.

I also want to congratulate them on a very successful Magarey Medal night. Not only did they finish up with the runner-up in the Magarey Medal but they also won the Ken Farmer Medal for the highest goal kicker for the year, Mick Wundke; and the Reserves Magarey Medallist also came from South Adelaide. Congratulations once again to Ron Fuller on a fantastic season as the coach of the Panthers, and I wish them all the best for next season.

While on the subject of the SANFL, I would like to add my weight to those who have already called for the ABC to make sure that it continues to telecast the SANFL. I know that it is a very important part of the weekend for viewers, particularly in regional South Australia. As a former ABC employee, I know that Sydney—and to a large extent Melbourne—just ignores the rest of the Australian states. In fact, they call us the BAPH states—Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. To the ABC we are just an acronym. We are somewhere out in the desert. The ABC needs to lift its game and stop being so Sydney centric.

One more thing on footy, the Morphett Vale Emus, my team, in the southern league, unfortunately went down to the Deputy Speaker's Brighton Bombers, and the member for Bright was very pleased with that big win on Saturday. I was there at the game. Unfortunately, the member for Bright was here hosting a debating championship, but I was keeping her informed with updates on her text messages, and she was very happy with the win by the Brighton Bombers.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Go Bombers! Thank you, member for Mawson.

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