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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-27 Daily Xml
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Schoolies

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (15:30): I rise to talk about a very successful schoolies held in Victor Harbor over the last weekend. It was fabulous to see the young school leavers come to town and enjoy themselves in the three-day festival that was run in Warland Reserve. The event evolved about 21 years ago following school leavers coming to Victor Harbor for many years. It started in the mid-eighties when I was a school leaver, when we would head down to Victor Harbor as school leavers, rent some holiday houses and have a very quiet, relaxing time. Over time, through the nineties in particular, those quite holiday houses ended up hosting really big parties, and some of those parties caused enormous damage.

Towards the end of the nineties, local police officer Trevor Nitschke decided something needed to be done. He spoke to a group of people, who later became Encounter Youth, about whether they would be prepared to help in setting up a very structured event in Victor Harbor. They accepted the challenge, and it has been a fabulous success story. We have seen a wonderful event created that is very much about not only minimising the risk to those attending, reducing the harm, but also making the town able to cope with that sort of event by making it very structured.

In recent years, Encounter Youth have actually run a tour each year on the Friday night, and members of parliament and others have done that tour. Last year, we had several members from both sides; this year, the member for King happened to be in Victor Harbor that night and I said, 'Why don't you come on the tour?' and she was very much enlightened by what she saw, including the organisation, right down to the accommodation in the caravan parks.

Large numbers of former students stay in the caravan parks, and there are two in Victor Harbor: one has about a thousand students and the other has 1,700. They set up double fencing around both caravan parks to make sure that they are able to manage the people in the parks and that the only ones there are those who have actually paid to stay there. It is very structured and very managed. Yes, there is still the occasional disturbance, but when you think there are somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 students in the town half a dozen to a dozen arrests for issues is fairly minor.

It was also my privilege to host the Premier down there on Saturday afternoon and take him to meet the Green Team, which is a team of volunteers who come down and support the event. This year, there were about 500 of them. Interestingly, as volunteers they actually pay $50 to volunteer, and on top that they then pay another $30 to buy a jumper to be a volunteer. They are really committed to being there; they enjoy being there. On the Saturday afternoon, the Premier spoke to the group of volunteers, and they were thrilled to have the Premier come down in their 21st year, address them and thank them for the work they have done in the Victor Harbor community.

Encounter Youth has also taken up the challenge of helping in Hindley Street on Saturday nights, and yesterday in Canberra they were lucky enough to receive a gold award, the Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Award, which was presented by the Hon. Peter Dutton. I would very much like to congratulate them on receiving that award for the wonderful work they do in protecting people in Hindley Street on a Saturday night.

This is a group of people who are just out there wanting to help, and they do a fantastic job of it. Thank you very much from the people of Victor Harbor for what you have done. You have certainly improved the way that schoolies has operated over the years, so thank you.

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