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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-11-13 Daily Xml
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RENMARK AIRPORT

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:39): Today I would like to talk a little about the opportunity that the Renmark Airport poses for the region up in the Riverland. Sadly, it is a very, very underutilised facility as it sits today. It is a good facility. It was upgraded in the mid 90s and has been used very little since. It has a runway in good condition and all the facilities, such as the night lighting. It does not have the sonar, but it is an airport begging for ownership and for use.

It was a regular stop for the regional commercial air services in the mid-nineties. It was part of a link between Adelaide to Mildura, so it had two services a day and it gave that vital link to the bigger centres, particularly Adelaide and, if it was a connecting flight, back up to Mildura and then down to Melbourne.

As I said, those commercial services ended in the nineties. It was sad to see that the commercial decision had such a huge impact on the region but, as I speak today, the Renmark Paringa council are now exploring opportunities to increase the use of the airport. They have put out surveys—and I welcome their work in that—to get an understanding of just how much that airport would be used if there was a commercial operator put back in there.

One of the big runway tests is what they call the California Bearing Ratio test, which is a test that will check the condition of the runway but also the subsurface rock that is vital in taking the heavy loads of the larger commercial airlines.

What the current airport facility offers to the region is not only tourism—the day trip market and the wine and food tourism flights that come in and out of the region—it is all about the convention tourism industry that is right on our doorstep. Many, many corporate companies—in this state, nationally and overseas—are always looking for different venues and a unique experience, which the Riverland does offer, particularly with the river, the Chowilla forest, the floodplain and the diversity. The patchwork look from the air is quite amazing with the different horticultural properties and crops that give a unique view.

With the health services, we have a soon-to-be upgraded regional hospital begging for specialist staff. It is begging for more doctors and trained specialists and yet the doctors are not prepared to sit in a vehicle for six hours to come up to the region when they can be sitting in their suites here in Adelaide, having people drive to Adelaide. It is a burden that is something that you would have to experience to understand the hardship that people have to go through to visit a specialist. Again, it has to be endorsed so that we can actually access those better specialist skills and get better health professionals to visit the region and underpin the government's investment of the Berri Regional Hospital that is so vital to the continuing fabric of the region.

Again, it is about reducing travelling time. Many of us here who are travelling know that time is precious. Spending many, many hours on the road—the 2½ to three hours from the Riverland town to Adelaide to have an appointment and then come home—really does take a large chunk out of the day. With business people, their time is valuable, and to be sitting in a car for six hours to get to a half-hour or one-hour appointment is time not well utilised.

Again, I commend the Renmark Paringa council for exploring the opportunities that the airport could bring to the region—not only for tourism, not only for health, but for supporting a business sector and many of the opportunities that the airport once presented that, today, are sadly not being supported. With the Renmark council exploring these opportunities, I hope that people will fill out their survey and just look at how it can better prepare them to do business.

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