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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-16 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Downer, Ms G.

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:10): I rise today to talk about an historic period drama. Many people in here would know about Downton Abbey, the story of the aristocratic family and their domestic servants. That has disappeared from the small screen, but now we have Downer Abbey.

We have a family who has been around in South Australian politics for over 100 years who wants to treat the federal division of Mayo something like Buckingham Palace, where it is a birthright that if your surname is Downer you get to come in and have it, even if you are living in Melbourne, in a nice big house in Prahran, a very posh Melbourne suburb, apparently. It works out alright if your family owns a summer palace at Carrickalinga, Adelaide's equivalent to the Hamptons of New York. It is where all the people from the eastern suburbs hang out over the summer. They do not mix with any people from Mayo. They just mix with their friends from the eastern suburbs, play a bit of golf and things like that.

Last Friday, I was in the Normanville Foodland in one of the shopping centres and I ran into an Advertiser photographer, Matty Turner, a good mate of mine. We worked together at the News back in the early 1980s. I asked, 'What are you up to down here in Normanville?' He said, 'I'm waiting for Georgina Downer. She said to meet me here at 3.30.' So he gets down there at 3.30 and then she rings and says, 'I will be there at five.' That is just the sort of disrespect that you show people, that time does not matter for the people you have to meet.

As a voter in the federal electorate of Mayo, like so many people down there I am absolutely offended at the Liberal Party's preselection of someone who could not wait to get out of South Australia. As soon as they finished high school, they scampered across the border to Victoria. They have been asked time and time again, 'Are you going to come back?' 'No, I'm not going to come back.' Georgina Downer has run twice for preselection in Victoria. Twice she has been rejected. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Liberal Party state division in Victoria.

One thing that is on the record in TheAustralian Financial Review that really concerns me are the words that have been attributed to Georgina Downer, and she needs to come out and say whether or not she said these words. In 2016, when there was speculation that Georgina Downer might move back to Adelaide and run for the seat of Mayo, the Rear Window section in the Financial Review did a piece, entitled, 'A Downer to rise again in Mayo?' The authors said:

We asked the woman herself and she laughed it off, reminding us that she hadn't lived in the serial killing capital of the world since before Snowtown was on the map, and is comfortably ensconced with her family in Melbourne. Still, we bet it crossed her mind…

We have looked through the Financial Review and we cannot find any retraction. If someone attributed those sorts of quotes to me, I would be pretty upset and I would be trying to get a retraction. We need to find out from Georgina Downer whether she said those words. I have just spent the past five years as tourism minister promoting this wonderful state, and there are so many fantastic attributes that we can talk about here in South Australia, and to talk about Adelaide being the serial killing capital of the world is an absolute disgrace.

Do you know who says those sorts of things? Victorians say those sorts of things—and where is Georgina Downer from? Victoria. She has lived in Victoria for the best part of the past 20 years. She has come down to Carrickalinga now, moved into the family's summer palace and is trying to pass herself off as a local. She is not even on the electoral roll yet. The people of Mayo I have been speaking to over the past few weeks, as speculation swirled around that someone was coming from Victoria to try to represent them, are absolutely outraged at this.

They remember the last time that they voted for a Downer: he quit within six months. He had the sulks because he was not in government any more, and he thrust upon them one of the most unpopular politicians in South Australian history, Jamie Briggs, who was an absolute disgrace to the people he went out and met in the area. People still talk about how rude Jamie Briggs was and how little he did for the area.

I want to say well done to Rebekha Sharkie, who has done an amazing job up there. I have worked with her to get millions of dollars for Mount Barker. We got a new playground for Myponga.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER Order!

Mr BIGNELL: What the people of Mayo need is someone who is a local from up in that area. Rebekha Sharkie has done an amazing job and she will be getting my second preference vote after the Labor candidate gets my first preference, but I will be putting this Victorian interloper last.

Time expired.

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