HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-11-23 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

MORIALTA ELECTORATE

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (15:37): Today I want to talk about some of the people in the Morialta community who have assisted me in some campaigns for the benefit of the community which have now thankfully reached some positive resolution. In particular, I am going to be talking briefly about the Athelstone fire siren and the Norwood Morialta High School proposed funding cuts.

Members have heard me go on at some length about both these issues, so I will very briefly recap and then get to my point. Black Hill went up in fire at 2.30am on 29 December 2009. The first that many Athelstone residents found out about this fire (that was 20 metres from many of their houses) was the following morning when they heard about it on the radio. Thankfully, the work of the CFS volunteers—and I pay particular tribute to the Athelstone brigade and group officer Terry Beeston, who was the incident controller that morning—put out the fire.

However, since the Athelstone CFS fire siren was dismantled some years ago there was no warning system that would enable the local residents to find out that there was a problem in the middle of the night. Of course, we no longer need these fire sirens for the volunteers to be called out to duty, but it does have that secondary warning facility, particularly when a fire is in the middle of the night as it was at Black Hill on 29 December 2009.

This was an election issue in Morialta, I can tell you. From my doorknocking, the residents in that area were absolutely insistent that they needed that fire siren. I went to the shadow minister for emergency services (Mark Goldsworthy, the member for Kavel) and the Leader of the Opposition (Isobel Redmond) and, without a shadow, a flicker, of hesitation they both committed the Liberal Party to installing that siren, which was important in that election campaign.

I give credit to Messenger press and the journalist at the time, Jane Whitford, and Brittany Dupree, who has been pushing the matter since. The Messenger press pushed at the Labor candidate (the former member) on the matter and eventually managed to get a commitment from the Labor Party that it would deliver it. So, in mid-March, the ALP promised the community of Morialta that a fire siren would be delivered.

In estimates last year—when we were a month from the 2010-11 fire season and no fire siren had yet been established following significant correspondence with the then minister for emergency services in which he promised an audit of all sirens was being undertaken and maybe the fire station in total needed to be moved—we got no satisfaction.

On 9 June this year, I asked the new minister for emergency services, Kevin Foley, whether he could advise if the government was still demanding that Campbelltown Council pay for Labor's election commitment to construct a fire siren for the residents of Athelstone near Black Hill. The Labor Party, having committed to this in the election, then wanted the council to pay for it. The minister for emergency services, as he was then, the member for Port Adelaide's response in the Hansard was, 'I have absolutely no idea,' and the Hansard goes on with some fairly colourful language that I will not insult the house by repeating.

I can happily inform the house that I have a new statement from the new Minister for Emergency Services dated 26 October. I have not seen this on the minister's website, but somebody was kind enough to pass it on to me. It states:

Funding of $15,000 has been approved through the Natural Disaster Resilience Fund for the installation of the fire sirens. The project will be managed by the Campbelltown Council and I am advised that installation will be completed for the upcoming fire season.

I thank the Campbelltown Council, the mayor, all the councillors, the CEO, those Messenger journalists, the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Kavel, and the Athelstone CFS Brigade Captain, Eero Haatainen, President Wayne Atkins, Brigade Lieutenant Peter Monkhouse and CFS East Torrens Group Officer, Rob Taylor, for helping this to happen.

Norwood Morialta High School has gone on at some length. The government last year was going to cut their funding by $620,000. They got about $300,000 through the new student-based funding system, which was some relief to that community. That should have been $300,000 extra. They were going to lose only $300,000 a year rather than $600,000, so that was an improvement.

We questioned minister Weatherill—as he was then—about it during estimates. We had a community campaign; 2,100 people signed a petition. Christopher Pyne and Jamie Briggs from federal parliament and the member for Norwood also helped. Staff and leadership at the school—who I will not name so that I do not endanger anyone's career—were very active in this campaign. Jeff Eglinton, the Governing Council Chair, and Sue Carr, the Chair of Parents and Friends, were very helpful.

I want to pay particular credit to Gia-Yen Luong, the SRC President, who graduated on Monday night, winning about three quarters of every award at that school. It was incredible to see. Gia-Yen helped in getting hundreds and hundreds of signatures from the students and their parents. Isobel Redmond and David Pisoni—the leader and the shadow minister—came to the school to talk about the issue, and I thank them all for helping get this decision overturned.

Time expired.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT