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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-31 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

BARBEQUE REGULATION

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:12): I want to raise an issue in the house this afternoon in relation to volunteers and barbeques, of all things. You are aware many volunteer organisations in South Australia service clubs and sports clubs have their own barbeques and barbeque trailers. Many groups have built these on their own. Many probably perform very well. I have been contacted by one club in my electorate who has been contacted by the Office of the Technical Regulator and said that their barbeque is not compliant.

Though it may seem a trivial matter, it is not. One of the members of this particular organisation built the appliance, put it on a registered trailer and had a licensed gasfitter do all the fitting, but unbeknown to them, and I would suggest many others around South Australia, they should have had the appliance inspected and received a compliance plate from the above office. I very rarely hear of barbeques blowing up, I might add. They are now in the process of going through that registration.

The inspection process will be $600 to any volunteer organisation if they take the barbeque to Adelaide, to Kidman Park. If the thing was to be inspected at Victor Harbor, it would have had travelling costs on top of that, and I would suggest from Ceduna to Penong to Mount Gambier to wherever in the Riverland, this all would be the same.

I think there would be many volunteer groups in that situation, and it has been suggested to me and I make the suggestion to the house that the SA government or their agencies write to all volunteer groups in South Australia and ask their groups to register barbeques they operate with the technical regulator. Any barbecues which do not have a compliance plate and that have been built by reputable operators should then be inspected by a contractor and the volunteers advised how to make the appliance compliant. This should be at no cost to the volunteer group, the sports club, service club, or whatever. I think it is nanny state gone mad.

We would be in a mess in South Australia if we did not have volunteer groups. The fundraising they do in the best interests of the community is huge. The red tape that has been put in front of volunteer organisations in South Australia on this particular matter is crazy. I ask the government, or the relevant minister, to look into this—the Minister for Volunteers may care to—but volunteers, simply, should not have to pay $600 to have a barbecue registered and made compliant when they are doing their best for the interests of the community.

It may be different for professional organisations or businesses that are using it for various reasons, but with volunteers I would have thought that the $600 going into this greedy government's coffers would be far better put to use in the local communities that they serve: $600 per service club or sporting group in South Australia would be an enormous amount of money and it is all going to disappear into this greedy, hungry government's coffers. I think it is outrageous. This government is beneath contempt for the way it inflicts bureaucracy on volunteers and people who work in the community.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: As the member for Chaffey said, they are the heart and soul of their communities and they do invaluable work. We would be in deep trouble without them. Only this morning we have been talking about CFS volunteers and the job they do. Well, they run barbecues as well. I am not sure whether the government forces them to pay $600 to become compliant.

I was at the Port Elliott show recently and one of the service clubs there had to bring in a heap of private barbecues because some damn fool in the government bureaucracy told them they had to spend $600 just to make their very good trailer, which has everything on it, compliant and they couldn't use it. It is absolutely stupid stuff. I would hope, from the howls of support I am getting from my side of the house, that someone on the other side might pick up on it. If there are 1,000 organisations in South Australia that have these things, it is going to cost $600,000 to fix it. Wouldn't that be better going back into the community? I rest my case.

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