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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-12-04 Daily Xml
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Kangaroo Island

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:29): Kangaroo Island, which I am very fortunate to represent in this place, has long been a Liberal voting part of South Australia. Indeed, this is the first time that a Labor member of parliament has represented the people of Kangaroo Island in either state or federal parliament. But things are changing on Kangaroo Island and there is a lot of disquiet about the way this Liberal government is treating the people of Kangaroo Island.

I have with me two petitions to present to the house, signed in protest, about this Marshall Liberal government's doubling of the registration fees on Kangaroo Island. When we look at people on the island who already struggle with higher freight costs and other costs of doing business and costs of living, because they are in a remote location in South Australia, this is another massive impost on them.

It is not a really big draw on a state budget that is probably worth $23 billion but it is a lot of money for these people. So we have had 1,363 people on Kangaroo Island sign the physical petitions and 336 have signed the online petition, which we cannot present to the house because of the rules of the house. That is 1,600 people out of a population on Kangaroo Island of 4,500. We are talking about a third of the population of Kangaroo Island who have signed this petition, such is the level of angst and anger at the Marshall Liberal government's move to do this.

This will not only affect you if you own the vehicle that you get around in, but a lot of farmers on the island also own a few trucks, tractors, utes and things like that. The bills are going to be dramatically higher than they were when they were getting the 50 per cent reduction through the remote areas concession scheme. One of the freight companies over there says that their registration bill will go up by $50,000 to $60,000 a year. That will be passed on to every person on Kangaroo Island who has something that is not produced on Kangaroo Island and needs to be brought over to the island, so it is a huge impost. I want to thank all those people for their support of this petition.

As I have said before, this is not Labor versus Liberal. This is the Kangaroo Island community against a stupid idea. I really hope that the Marshall Liberal government will listen to the voices of the people who have signed this petition and will reverse those cuts in next year's budget. It went up by 25 per cent in this year's budget, and I think the people of the island would be happy to wear that and not have to get compensated for that and have that paid back because it would probably cost a lot of money and it would be a lot of work for the bureaucracy to do, as long as the full 50 per cent concession is returned in next year's budget.

Again, I want to work with the government on this. We put these petitions out. They were out on the island for roughly five weeks. We started them at the Kingscote Show. I also want to thank those businesses on the island who have had them on their bars and front counters for people to sign. The other petition I have is signed by 943 people. It is about Flinders Chase National Park and the proposal to have accommodation built in very sensitive areas.

When we were in government, we were very much open to the idea of having accommodation in our national parks that fitted in with the environment and, in fact, we invested $5 million to build the Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail, which has been a massive success and has rated highly as one of the great walking trails in Australia. We put out a proposal to get high-end accommodation in there. When the then environment minister, Ian Hunter, and I were taken there, we were shown the locations of where this was going to be and it was near the trail.

Then somewhere between our being in government and our not being in government things changed and two of the sites are now in a place that was not originally proposed, which has angered a lot of people on Kangaroo Island. It has seen volunteers in the parks withdraw their services and go on strike. Again, I would ask the government to please reconsider and put this accommodation back on the track where it was originally proposed to be, because people are angry on Kangaroo Island.

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