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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-04 Daily Xml
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Kangaroo Island Bushfire Recovery Support

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:13): I rise to warn every South Australian that if something bad happens in their area this Marshall government does not turn up to help. I am getting daily calls from people on Kangaroo Island, and when I am over there, as I was all last week and again on Monday this week, people are outraged by the lack of action from the Premier and all his cabinet.

When a disaster strikes, like the bushfires that burnt for more than 40 days on Kangaroo Island, the people of a state and the people of a nation expect their leaders to turn up and take action. What we have seen from this Premier and this cabinet is a total lack of care for people who have elected them into this place to represent them at government level. It is an absolute disgrace—an absolute disgrace.

The Hon. T.J. Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Minister for Primary Industries, please.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: The people of Kangaroo Island have had enough. They are at the end of their tether with the lack of action. The Premier still has not responded to 16 letters that I wrote to him, the first of them on 23 December, the fourth day of this bushfire emergency. Does any South Australian think that that is acceptable? Does anyone on the Liberal backbench think that that is acceptable, that the Premier of this state refuses to engage with the local member of parliament who is representing people who are hurting? People in this state have seldom hurt more before.

I do not think it is good enough. I have come in here. I have offered in letters to work in a bipartisan way. I have offered in here to work with the Premier and the cabinet in a bipartisan way, and this Premier does not give two hoots about the people of Kangaroo Island. In fact, I am hearing from people in the Hills that he has done no better up there. What this Premier is all about is one square kilometre on North Terrace in Adelaide. Do not worry about the other million square kilometres in the state. It is all about Lot Fourteen and his future space station.

I have to say, there are people in agriculture and tourism over on Kangaroo Island who are going to go out of business. Two hundred people have left the island already because they lost their job. If you lost your job in a suburb of Adelaide, you would go to the next suburb, or you would go into the city and get a job. If you lose your job on Kangaroo Island, you have to leave the island in most cases. What does that do to the five sporting clubs that have netball teams, cricket teams and football teams? What does that do to the three campuses of the schools on Kangaroo Island? What does that do to the small businesses that are struggling to survive as it is?

What did we see from this Premier? This egotistical move to make himself the tourism minister. He flew over to Kangaroo Island and said, 'I am the tourism minister.' He spent an hour and 45 minutes on the ground. He spoke to an invitation-only group of tourism operators, and guess what he told them? 'I don't have a plan, but I am the tourism minister now.' That was six or seven weeks ago and we still do not have a plan from this Premier, this tourism minister.

At Penneshaw, the Kangaroo Island visitor centre has been closed for a year this month. Do you know what the people of Kangaroo Island are really upset about? The Premier and all his ministers keep coming over and making speeches, saying Kangaroo Island is the jewel in the crown of South Australian tourism, yet they will not even put any money in to keep the visitor information centre open. They will not get some of those people who are unemployed now, who have had to leave Kangaroo Island because their tourism job does not exist anymore, and hire them to get into the visitor information centre and run it.

I was talking to a hotel provider on Kangaroo Island yesterday whose bookings in June are usually around 37 per cent occupancy. She has 3 per cent bookings. There are some nights when none of the 84 hotel rooms in her hotel have a booking. What is the Premier, the tourism minister, doing about this? You have to do more than come up with a hashtag: #BookThemOut.

I will tell you what people on Kangaroo Island are doing. They are coming up with a hashtag—#VoteThemOut—because they have had it up to here with the lack of action from the Marshall government. The clean-up has been a disaster because for two months the state government would not come up with some money to match the federal government. They finally have, but still the clean-up is going at a snail's pace and meanwhile the mental health of people on the island is suffering. So wherever you live in South Australia, take a look at what is not happening on Kangaroo Island and take that as a warning of how incompetent and uncaring this government is. They lack empathy, they lack know-how and they lack generosity. It is a disgrace.

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