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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-11-24 Daily Xml
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FARMERS

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:19): I rise today to wish our farmers all the very best for harvest, a harvest that I hope is an absolute bumper. It is a pity the rain is coming through today. I am looking at the radar here, and it is going to upset a few people out there. The member for MacKillop said that people on this side do not get out to the regions. I just got back from a seven-day trip, which started in Tanunda last Tuesday. I went to—

Mr Venning interjecting:

Mr BIGNELL: It's a great place to stay, you're right, member for Schubert. I went to Mallala, Balaklava, Port Hughes and Wallaroo, where I caught up with the member for Goyder at the very good Advantage SA Regional Awards. It was great to honour the people of the Yorke Peninsula and the Mid-North that night. From Wallaroo I went up to Port Pirie the next day and then Port Augusta, down around Quorn and Wilmington, and then over to Wudinna. I had a great time at Wudinna with the mayor over there, Tim Scholz, and a couple of the councillors.

They have done a fantastic job and have largely done a lot of it on their own, with a bit of help from federal and state governments. It shows that, even though they are a long way away and isolated, in terms of what they have done with recycled water and managing stormwater and also the building of their medical centre, communities like that do a fantastic job. I caught up with the member for Stuart in Port Augusta and it was great to sit down and discuss with him some of the issues that face his community. Like the member for Giles' electorate, it is a vast community with great distances between areas.

I was there in my role as parliamentary secretary to the minister for transport, energy and infrastructure carrying out regional consultation with Regional Development Australia members and also local councils to work out what it is that they would like to see in the State Infrastructure Plan over the next five to 15 years. Along the way I saw fantastic crops everywhere, and the people I talked to, particularly around Wudinna and Cleve, were really excited about not just the quantity of grain but also the quality.

Let us hope that the rain holds off and the locusts stay away and that this can be a fantastic harvest for the people in those regions, because when they do well the whole state does well. It really is the engine room and the economic underpinner of our economy. They have had a few poor seasons of late and I know we have prayed for rain for most of the past five or six years but now can we say a few prayers perhaps over the next few weeks that the rain stays away until all the grain is in and on ships and overseas. I know a lot of other countries have had bad crops, so it is a real opportunity for us here in South Australia to make the most of this great commodity that we have.

I want to thank a few people whom I met along the way. While there are the formal meetings that you have with councillors and RDA representatives, there are also the informal meetings. I was in the roadhouse at Wudinna on Saturday afternoon having a great schnitzel burger and there were a couple of tables full of truckies—fairly big blokes, with their blue singlets on. I could have quite easily sneaked out but, when you go out and connect with people in the regions, it is important to put your hand up and ask how you can help them.

So, I went over to this couple of tables and told them I was the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Transport and asked how we can make their job a bit easier. An hour later, after having my ears ripped off and some pretty frank language, I got out of there, but I got the message pretty loudly and clearly on how we can help the trucking industry. I will bring that back and pass it on to the Minister for Transport.

On the way to Whyalla I went the long way through Cleve from Wudinna just so that I could have a look at the roads and some of the crops along the way too. I called into the bowls club at Cleve and they were playing Port Neill. I spent a fantastic hour or so just talking to people at the bowls club about how infrastructure affects them and how they are getting on. We talked about the great crops.

I met a guy, Bevan Pfitzner, who invited me to his place which is eight or nine kilometres south of Port Neill. It is the place with the big blue pig post box out the front, if anyone is driving that way and sees the big blue pig. I spent some time with him and his wife, Leonie, and it was very nice of them to have me in their house. They took me around and showed me Sheep Hill, along with Gary Carr (one of their neighbours) so I could have a look at where the proposed port will be to get commodities onto big ships and overseas.

I finished in Port Lincoln on Monday and attended a meeting there. On the drive home, at about 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night, I passed Crystal Brook and Snowtown and saw the harvesters out there doing a great job. I want to wish all the farmers all the very best for the harvest.

Time expired.

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