HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-18 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Address in Reply

Address in Reply

Adjourned debate for adoption (resumed on motion).

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (15:44): I continue my remarks with some very important thankyous. Each of us would not be here without the hardworking commitment of our volunteers who supported us through our campaigns, and I did not want to miss the opportunity to publicly acknowledge and thank my small and dedicated, hardworking volunteer team who gave up their time to ensure that I was in this privileged position.

I would like to thank the Enfield sub-branch of the South Australian Labor Party. These are Labor's true believers. They are the people I can call on time and time again to do the heavy lifting, the people who say yes before they have even heard what my question is. These are the volunteers who made the phone calls, who stuffed envelopes, who put up corflutes, who knocked on doors and stuffed more envelopes and knocked on more doors. I want to thank them all.

I cannot name them all, but there are a few special people I do want to name. Mr Campbell Menzies, thank you for your steps—many, many of them, as you traversed the streets of Enfield, ensuring that every household received my campaign materials. I am very grateful for his efforts. I want to thank Jack Eaton for joining me in his first substantive role in an election campaign and for the many, many calls that he made and for manning his first polling booth. I want to thank Zahra Bayani for liaising with my volunteers and making sure we had people on every polling booth through the Enfield electorate and for being able to manage the last-minute people pulling out due to COVID in the lead-up to the election. She showed great flexibility.

I want to thank my staff who helped me during my first term as an MP in my electorate office: my trainees Lucy Nguyen, Christina Christou, Chloe Fern-Pring and Christian Lippis, and my electorate officers, Josh Harmer, Gemma Coward and, in particular, Joel Wemmer and Akram Arifi. We now have the pleasure of having Chloe back in a permanent role in the electorate office. I want to thank all of them. Each of them has played a vital role in engaging with our community and in advocating for the needs of the residents of Enfield.

I also want to thank my newest staff members, members in my ministerial office for their support and their patience through the last few weeks. All those people have made my job significantly easier by making sure my various offices are running like a well-oiled machine. I also want to give a very special thankyou to my husband, Josh, and my children, Sebastian and Charlie, for their love and support and particularly their resilience over the last couple of months in the election campaign and in the first couple of months in this new job.

It is an honour to have been the member for Enfield in this house for the past three years and for another four. I am truly grateful to be able to represent my community in this place. My very final thankyou is to the people of Enfield who put their faith in me. I am eternally grateful for that.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (15:47): I rise in reply to the Governor's speech and, in so doing, thank the Governor for her role in opening parliament this year, and I congratulate her on her appointment and on the distinction with which she has served South Australia thus far.

Having heard the magnificent first speeches of so many new members, it is in some ways intimidating to rise to make my own contribution. I already knew the quality of the seven women we have introduced to this parliament on this side, but even so I was impressed by their ease in bringing together their personal stories with the values that inspired them to be active in politics along with their ambition for this state.

I have been a loyal member of the Labor Party for very many years, yet I have rarely felt so proud of my party. To create the culture, to offer the shared values and to have the sheer political capacity to mean that we were the party they chose to join and chose to stand for and now to join with in our team in parliament is the ultimate compliment to the oldest and greatest political party in Australia.

The volunteers who worked so tirelessly on the campaigns themselves reflect the values of a party that represents all South Australians, and many of them will in due course make significant contributions to political life, and I look forward to watching that. I also note that these seven women join a team in this place which already has seven women, making this side of the chamber now for the first time truly gender representative.

While we have some more work to do to make the Labor parliamentary party more fully representative of the South Australian public, this is a moment that the women who adorn these tapestries could scarcely have dreamed we would ever achieve, given how hard they had to fight simply to grant women the vote.

What is so important about this group of seven is that they are a group. While each is individually worthy of being in this place and will make their mark on it and South Australia, collectively they are a force to be reckoned with, a team that will look after each other when times get hard and a symbol of the winds of progress blowing in this state of ours.

Intelligence, empathy and a ferocious work ethic are the characteristics of each of them and make their election such a sign of hope. Those are the qualities that should be rewarded and the people in their seats did exactly that. Their mutual support of each other and celebration of each other's achievements is exactly what politics needs to see more of: less destructive competitiveness and more constructive solidarity.

Of course, much as each of these women is an outstanding campaigner, there were other forces at play which saw Labor returned to office in March. The decision by so many South Australians to vote Labor, many for the first time, or the first time in a long time, will be the subject of much analysis, no doubt. My view from having been on the ground knocking on doors, meeting people in parks and shopping centres, and speaking to people at polling booths, is that they wanted a more optimistic and caring South Australia.

They saw a government that was not dreadful, but nor was it inspiring. They saw a middle-of-the-road government with little vision and almost no sense of the common experience of the people. That is what is needed in politics—understanding and planning at the macro level to meet the big challenges like climate change, automation and complex geopolitical shifts, while also recognising that how people's day-to-day lives are affected by government matters.

Fortunately, we have a Premier now who has a rare capacity to operate simultaneously at both levels, and I believe what happened at the election is that people saw that and knew that they would be well served by him. The Premier has a sophisticated understanding of the need to modernise, decarbonise, diversify our economy and concurrently ensure that people are able to raise families, work in decent jobs and be confident that their healthcare system will look after them when they need it. He is, on a personal note, also a good friend and a loyal team member who is invariably the first to find a solution to a dilemma and see the funny side of a difficult situation—the perfect leader through an election campaign, and it was and is an honour to serve as his deputy.

The task before us is substantial. While many South Australians live full, prosperous and secure lives, we know that there are far too many living in poverty, whose children face lives of hardship from the outset based on the income of their parents rather than a fair chance to fulfil the potential with which they are born. Indeed, it is the incapacity of Australia to facilitate children taking their place in society as productive and independent adults regardless of socio-economic status that is the biggest risk we collectively face in our task to modernise our economy.

Make no mistake, failing to educate all children well affects all of us. While we are stuck at 75 per cent of young people finishing school (and we know that the missing 5,000 children a year in South Australia are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds), we will not have the bright future we all hope for. To change this, and to reach the levels of some 90 per cent many OECD nations have achieved, we will need to get serious about early childhood education and we will need to make sure that every school is responsive to the needs of their students.

The policies the Minister for Education will carry out in this term of government—preparing for universal three-year-old preschool, increasing mental health and learning support services, and building five technical colleges most significantly—will make a lasting difference to young people at school today and to the next generation of South Australians.

The present and looming shortage in workers with skills, qualifications and experience is a challenge for many parts of the world, and Australia and South Australia are not immune. Workforce planning to build the workforce that will be able to ensure ongoing growth is an essential task of state governments. VET is an important part of this, but it is by no means the complete answer to the needs of our businesses for workers, and simply counting the number of people in training tells us little about how workforce shortages are being addressed.

True workforce planning requires a combination of vocational training, university training, reskilling or reorienting the careers of the existing workforce as industries change, and skilled migration. This government will work on all these pathways for the industry sectors that South Australia can and will grow and excel in. We will do that with industry and with education partners from schools to vocational training to universities.

It is worth noting, particularly in the context of our celebration of the nine women who have come into this chamber at this election, joining the eight returned female members, that female participation in the workforce is a significant part of the answer to addressing the skills shortage. Australia has one of the least generous childcare systems in the OECD, and the highest proportion of women working part time. Women’s participation in the workforce in Australia has hardly changed in the last 40 years, while education rates have soared.

At a time when we are looking desperately for a skilled workforce, we risk overlooking those skilled workers who are in the workforce but part time because they cannot afford or do not have access to decent quality care for children. As a recent report from the chief executive of Women's Network found, halving the workforce participation gap between men and women would represent an additional 500,000 full-time skilled workers with post-school qualifications. Engaging women in paid work at the same rate as men could unlock an additional one million full-time skilled workers in Australia. The National Skills Commission estimates the need for 1.2 million additional workers across the economy by 2026.

We desperately need a federal government that is prepared to do serious reform in early childhood education and care, and I hope and expect our royal commission to drive the discussion here about what we can and should expect from our preschool and early years services. Not only is the future of our children's education at stake but so, too, is the capacity to assist women to fully participate in the economy for their individual benefit and our collective prosperity, a prosperity that is by no means assured.

Australia has a relatively unsophisticated economy. Our exports rank as 86th in the world in complexity. That means we rely more heavily than most advanced nations on low value-added products, raw materials often, and capitalise too rarely on the brainpower of our people and the creative capacity of our institutions. While low complexity commodities can sustain a wealthy nation, over-reliance on them makes us vulnerable to fluctuating global demand and our lack of sovereign capability to make products we depend on is risked when the global supply chains are disrupted. It also means much lower productivity increases than in nations that can harness the power of technology and increases in skill levels. What comes from low productivity increases in a low complexity economy is stagnant wages, which is exactly what has plagued Australia for a decade.

South Australia has the additional challenge that the vast majority of our businesses are small to medium, with the emphasis on small. Indeed, 98 per cent of our businesses are classified as small. While that shows great enterprise, creativity and hard work in the South Australian community, what comes with the absence of a concentration of large corporations is a comparative lack of private investment in research and development, in employee skills training and in capital upgrades required to keep businesses modern and competitive.

That requires government in South Australia to be more active and more thoughtful about the future of our economy. It requires industry policy and workforce planning to ensure that when South Australia goes after shaping the economy it will happen—not talk, action. We know we need to decarbonise our economy not just to make our contribution to staving off the worst of climate change but, crucially, to ensure that we are strongly positioned as the rest of the world chases a zero carbon future.

We have great advantages here already, in very low carbon intensity in our electricity generation and in our natural solar and wind resources being able to produce so much more. But we do not have an industry that is taking full advantage yet of being able to manufacture the components required for renewable energy production, nor do we yet have a sufficiently low profile energy production to be the beacon for zero carbon manufacturing, which we should be aiming to be. Having the Hydrogen Jobs Plan work is not just the production of truly green hydrogen but pivoting and expanding our manufacturing sector, which will take deliberate effort. It will take an industry policy that is designed to work with small to medium businesses to engage fully in this shift.

As a state, we have a reasonable expectation of significant work associated with the defence sector, not least contributing to the new submarine build when the uncertainty about that is finally resolved. To realise the full potential in that sector, not only in direct work at Osborne and Edinburgh Park, but also and crucially in the supply chain companies, we need to do workforce planning and we need to work with companies so that they are able to participate in that supply chain. This requires concentrated effort from government, not just hoping that things will fall into place.

We also need to take better advantage of the huge economic powerhouses of our state: the three public universities. Usually thought of as educators of our young people—and they do this well and in a way that makes a difference to their lives and the future of the state—the universities are so much more. They are the beacon for intellectual research activity, and we should all be proud of their quality and the rate at which they are expanding their research effort.

However, we can have a greater ambition to see that research generate manufacturing and service industries to a far greater extent than they currently do. Australian R&D is lower than our competitors. Some nations are spending 2 per cent of GDP on R&D. Australia is just under 1 per cent and South Australia is well below that, at 0.74 per cent as opposed to 0.9 per cent. We are also well below our population share of federal R&D tax incentive claims, which is unsurprising for a nation of small business.

South Australia is also behind the Australian average in university qualifications, and this gap will be increasingly to our disadvantage in a global economy that rewards high value, knowledge-intensive industries. In 2021, for example, just under 60 per cent of South Australians aged 20 to 64 years had a non-school qualification at certificate III or above. That is below the national average of 65.4 per cent and ranked lowest in the nation. Supporting our universities to fill some of that gap in educating our people and in driving research and commercialisation to ensure that South Australia has a bright future, particularly in advanced and low-carbon manufacturing, is one of the priorities of this government.

As I alluded to earlier, all sectors of the economy need to be more responsive to climate change. That means being low to zero carbon as rapidly as is feasible, but it also means embracing a circular economy, being water and biodiversity sensitive, and generally becoming fit for a sustainable 21st century. We are in tough times for the planet. It is easy, with the challenges essentially between humans, such as current geopolitical unrest, the impacts of poverty on families and the crisis in housing affordability, to keep from front of mind that there is a slow, grinding crisis that must not be ignored, which is that we have asked too much of the planet and must learn to live more within the capacity of the natural world.

Australia has the world's highest mammal extinction rate. In South Australia, 12 per cent of our native species are threatened and 70 per cent of South Australia's wetlands have gone. Allow me to paint this picture: 10,000 years ago, there were some 15 million tonnes of biomass in the form of wild animals. Today, there are 160 million tonnes of mammals, 60 million tonnes of humans, 100 million tonnes of livestock and just three million tonnes of wild mammals. That is literally the weight of the demands that humans have placed on wildlife.

The work done by the environment departments—the Department for Environment and Water, the EPA and Green Industries—should all be aimed at sustaining our natural environment and guiding how we affect it in the choices that we make. The people in those departments, and those who volunteer or work in the community to strengthen our environment, are true heroes dedicated to our collective future. The people who stand up for nature in their local parks, such as Flinders Chase or Belair National Park, are standing up for our future. They are passionate, knowledgeable and hardworking. They deserve respect and gratitude. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with them again.

In closing, I want to thank the people of Port Adelaide for again giving me the honour of representing them in parliament. It is now 10 years since I first stood as a candidate, and I struggle to find the words for the gratitude I feel towards those thousands of people who allow me to do this job on their behalf. The words 'honour' and 'privilege' can be overused, but no others fit so well. It is a pleasure to live and work in that community.

I am also endlessly grateful to the members of the Port Adelaide Labor sub-branch who work so hard each election to get the messages out to our people, be that through putting up corflutes, letterboxing or standing for hours at polling booths, and I thank you. The people who staff my electorate office, Samantha and Cameron—who I have hardly seen during this whirlwind start to the new government and further complicated by COVID—are the mainstay of the service we provide to our constituents, and I am so grateful for their work and their compassion for our constituents.

To my new team: Josh, without whom I simply could not do this job, Jason, Emily, James and Caitlin and the Public Service staff, we will do interesting, important and challenging things this term of government, and we will do them to the best of our ability in the service of the people of South Australia. To my colleagues, you make this job a joy. The humour, solidarity and conviction that we can make a difference sustain me.

Finally, to my family—I love you. You give me the strength to do this job, the comfort when it gets hard and the confidence that it is all worthwhile. Thank you.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The new member for Stuart.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Regional Roads, Minister for Veterans Affairs) (16:04): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I cannot get used to the terminology, and every time the member for Frome gets up I feel as if I want to get up myself. Mr Deputy Speaker, congratulations on your appointment. I have not had the chance to officially do that in this chamber.

To you, Mr Deputy Speaker, fellow members, colleagues, family and friends, it is my privilege today to deliver this Address in Reply to Her Excellency the Governor's speech opening the Fifty-Fifth Parliament of South Australia. Again, Mr Deputy Speaker, I congratulate you on your appointment and all other new members in this house and also my congratulations to the unsuccessful candidates who stood in the last state election. It is absolute fantastic.

I am very proud and privileged to be delivering this address as the recently elected member for Stuart. Of course, as members will know that, whilst this is my first election as member for Stuart, I spent the past 13 years representing the great electorate of Frome. However, the significant boundary changes implemented by the Electoral District Boundaries Commission to the electorates of Frome and Stuart forced me to make a difficult choice prior to the recent election.

It possibly came as no surprise to anybody that I decided to run for Stuart, given that Port Pirie and its surrounding townships were moved into the electorate of Stuart. I have spent most of half of my working life working for a better future for the residents of Port Pirie, first as an active community member, then a member of the Port Pirie Regional Council, then as mayor, then as the member for Frome and now as the member for Stuart.

I have seen Port Pirie grow, not only as the first provincial city in South Australia but to where the city is at the moment, with its great progress and opportunities. There is the security of the Port Pirie smelter, a multimetal processing facility, with funding secured during the 2014 state election to where the plant is currently. Large amounts of capital have been expended by the new owners, Trafigura, which has majority ownership of the facility. They have their own reverse osmosis plant for water not only for their own consumption but, very importantly, non-potable water is being made available through a partnership with the Port Pirie Regional Council to green the city of Port Pirie.

The latest proposal from the company is to establish a hydrogen plant, providing the success of the business plan, not only for their own transformation to a greener and more sustainable facility but also to look at exporting this product to customers overseas.

While my focus may originally have been on the city of Port Pirie, my 13 years spent representing the wider electorate of Frome have allowed me the great privilege to serve and advocate for a much larger area of regional South Australia. This will continue as I take on the task to represent the electorate of Stuart going forward. My new electorate, in fact, relates directly to my past experiences and parts of my own life that I look back on with very fond memories.

As I noted in my maiden speech in this place, I was an owner-operator of a roadhouse at Port Augusta, where I initially employed 15 people, which then grew to 45 people after three years. Prior to that, I was a manager for BP Australia at Port Augusta, covering nearly 80 per cent of the northern areas of this great state, managing at that time the largest BP territory in the world and being able to be at that particular point the top manager with performance at each state conference.

These areas are mostly in the Stuart electorate, which covers an enormous area of over more than 300,000 square kilometres, from the Spencer Gulf to the Northern Territory border in the north. The electorate includes pastoral leases and unincorporated Crown lands, Lake Eyre and parts of the Simpson Desert. Its main population centres are the Upper Spencer Gulf cities of Port Pirie and also the eastern part of Port Augusta. It also has the townships of Peterborough and Laura—which, as we all know, is the home of the great Golden North Ice Cream—plus several other communities spread across the new electorate of Stuart.

Stuart incorporates the district councils of Mount Remarkable, Orroroo Carrieton and Peterborough, as well as portions of the Northern Areas Council. This diverse region includes wonderful places, such as Booleroo Centre, Carrieton, Leigh Creek, Maree, Innamincka, Flinders Ranges and other locations. I cannot wait to get out there and visit these people and support them in their journeys forward. As the Minister for Local Government and Regional Development in the previous term I served in 2014 to 2018, I travelled nearly 700,000 kilometres across regional South Australia, hearing people's ambitions—

Mr Ellis: Four years?

The Hon. G.G. BROCK: Yes, four years. I will start again because the member for Narungga interrupted me.

As Minister for Local Government and Regional Development in a previous term, I travelled nearly 700,000 kilometres across regional South Australia hearing people's ambitions, their frustrations and, more importantly, their desire just to get on with it. That was a clear message I brought back to the cabinet.

I welcome the Premier's announcement of the return of community cabinet or country cabinet, which is such an important message and opportunity for regional South Australians who have felt and have been forgotten. Having been unheard for many years, they find it very refreshing to see ministers actually drive in—not fly in—and partake in social events, stay the night and mix with their communities.

I have very much enjoyed reforging my connections to some of the most remote, most beautiful and most iconic locations in the north-eastern areas of our state. The sheer size of the Stuart electorate probably accounts for the fact that it represents so many elements of our state's regional economy: farming communities, pastoral properties, mining and resources, fantastic tourism experiences, the service and industrial centres of our regional cities and the vital community centres of our country and outback towns.

I look forward to advocating for the seat of Stuart, as I have always done for Frome and for all other regional parts of South Australia. The electorate is named after John McDouall Stuart, who pioneered a route from Adelaide to Darwin. Ten years later, this paved the way for the construction of the overland telegraph line from Adelaide to Port Darwin and then the Ghan railway.

I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the former member for Stuart, the Hon. Dan van Holst Pellekaan, for his outstanding service to the electorate of Stuart, regional and outback South Australia and the whole of the state. Dan originally worked with BP Australia in a different role from mine and during a different period. However, we share a number of similarities in that he also operated several roadhouses, but I only had the one in Port Augusta. Like me, Dan was committed to his task of representing the people of his electorate, and I wish Dan and his wife the very best in their future endeavours, whatever they may be.

I also congratulate Ms Penny Pratt MP, the new member for Frome. She will be working just as hard for many of the communities that I have had the privilege to represent for 13 years.

During my period as the Independent member for Frome, I learnt a tremendous amount about other activities in our great state that I had not been aware of. At the same time, I became deeply involved with several community groups across the electorate of Frome over the last 13 years. Those 13 years were a very enjoyable period, and it was very interesting that at every state election I had different boundaries, and even at this time I still get calls from people in the original boundary areas. I will always have great memories of these people for the rest of my life.

It is interesting to look back. In 2009, I had one boundary; in 2010, I had the same boundary; in 2014, I had different boundaries; in 2018, I had different boundaries; and in 2022 I had different boundaries again. My children ask, 'What is going on?' I just say that is the way that democracy works. It is about the population growth and things like that. It also gives the other members in this house the opportunity to see some of the great areas in our state. The member for Narungga is one of those. He is sharing some of my original area and also some of my previous area, in Brinkworth and Blyth.

I would also like to acknowledge that for the first time in the state's history the city of Port Augusta is split between two electorates: my own seat of Stuart and the seat of Giles, held by Eddie Hughes MP. While I do not think any representations to the boundaries commission advocated for this result, the commission felt it necessary to ensure equal representation across the whole state more widely. That is one of the reasons why we in this house need to make certain we get more population in our regional areas to ensure that this goes back to the way it was originally. We have another state member, whoever it may be, in this house representing regional South Australia.

Noting this, I would also like to assure all residents of Port Augusta that the member for Giles and I will work very well together to represent the great regional city as a whole. With changing boundaries, I intend to establish an office in Port Augusta not only to serve the people of Port Augusta but also to allow the people residing further north of Port Augusta access to their local member.

The challenge will be to manage the allocation of staff allowable for an Independent in an electorate office to be able to service both electorate offices adequately and safely. However, I am very sure that once staff are in place we will be able to achieve a great outcome for both offices. I look forward to discussing any state issues in the Port Augusta office as soon as we can facilitate these arrangements.

My time in parliament has always been marked by my willingness to work across both sides of politics with whoever sits in this place on behalf of regional South Australia. In this spirit, I look forward to working with Mr Hughes to ensure that Port Augusta is represented and served by government in a properly co-ordinated fashion. I also note that, between us, Mr Hughes and I represent a very large part of what is generally considered to be outback South Australia. While these communities can be very far apart in distance, they often share the same outlook, the same issues and the same opportunities. So I think that if we work together, along with Sam Telfer, the new member for Flinders, the newly elected representative, it will be critical for the long-term health and prosperity of our most isolated communities.

It is a great honour to have been appointed as the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. I would like to also acknowledge the former Minister for Veterans' Affairs, the member for Dunstan, for his great dedication and work with regard to this very important portfolio. This is a very passionate topic for me, my father having served in the Australian Regular Army, having fought in New Guinea and on the Kokoda Trail, and my brother having served in Vietnam. He enlisted at the age of 17 and served two terms. I was a reservist for approximately 10 years in not only Port Pirie but also Port Adelaide.

I will be giving consideration to the final report of the Torrens Training Depot/Torrens Parade Ground Steering Committee, chaired by our former Governor, Rear Admiral the Hon. Kevin Scarce. I also acknowledge the member for Hammond, the shadow minister for veterans' affairs. I reassure him and others in this place that I will work collaboratively and openly with him and others—him in particular, as shadow minister—to ensure both older and younger veterans receive the acknowledgement, attention and assistance that they deserve.

I look forward to working with the veterans community over the next four years. Australian service personnel have been deployed on operations to every major conflict since Federation. In World Wars I and II, more than 1.3 million service personnel—nearly 90,000 of them South Australians—enlisted. In over a century, more than 102,000 were killed, including the 41 soldiers who died in Afghanistan.

I have attended several events since being appointed minister and I have not only enjoyed these activities but, more importantly, they have given me a far deeper understanding of the issues and challenges that these veterans and their families are enduring. I look forward to working with everyone in the future. We have the 80th anniversary of significant campaigns of World War II, which will be held in the coming years, such as the Kokoda Trail campaign, Bomber Command over Europe and the war in the Pacific. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. There is also the importance of commemoration of regional towns, such as the RSL in Port Pirie and Port Augusta and across all regional South Australia.

The changing nature of military service and conflict means that the needs of veterans are ever changing. It requires a balance of veterans' needs from different generations, their employment and education, incarceration, family and domestic violence, homelessness and suicide. Each year, approximately 300 Defence Force personnel leave service. Most of these people settle into civilian life in South Australia. It is during this transition period that we must ensure that our veterans are set up for life as they change careers or get more involved in the wider community.

We must remember that a lot of these people went into the Defence Force very young. They are trained differently from the way normal civilians are throughout their working life. When they come out into civilian life, there is great change, and they need to be able to adjust to that. The biggest issue that I see—and I have learnt from this in the short period I have been the minister—is that there are different requirements. We have the older generation and we have the younger generation. The younger generation has different needs from those of the older people, who are more settled in life and who have encountered lots of issues. Younger people have different needs. There is domestic violence, there is PTSD and there are all the conflicts—the memories, the trauma. They still have that going on, including homelessness and things like that.

We, as a house, as a society, need to work with those people. We need to make certain that we look after them because they are the people who fought and fought hard, and some of them gave their lives for us so that we are here today in a free democracy. We may disagree on lots of things, but we are a free democracy, and we have to say thanks to those people. I know quite a few of them, and they are my friends. They have come back and have all these everlasting issues. They are enjoying life the best they can, but sometimes they feel left out, and what we have to do as a government, as a state, as communities, is recognise and help those people through that.

We need to have data on the veterans community. The 2021 census results available later this year will give us a greater opportunity to improve our understanding of the total veteran population in South Australia, and that is something I have been asking for. I have been asking these questions and we do not have this information at the moment. We need to understand specifically smaller regional areas, smaller communities, and what services those people need.

We have to provide those services for those people where they want them, with their not having to come into Adelaide, not having to come into the capital cities, because that is the last thing some of these people can do. They cannot afford it, and they do not have the ability to do it mentally and physically. What we have to do is identify where those people are, locate them, and then do the best that we can to make certain that those services go to those people, instead of them having to come to the services.

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide is underway. It is expected that the commission will be in Adelaide to conduct its hearings in the early part of 2023. I look forward to working with the Veterans' Advisory Council (VAC), currently chaired by Colonel Susan Neuhaus CSC (retired). That advisory council was established by a previous minister to provide advice to the minister, and we have to look at the membership of that in the next month or so.

I intend to continue working with those people, but I will also continue to ask questions and to ensure that we get the best opportunities and the most information so that this house, working together, can facilitate and formulate some direction going forward to make certain that we look after those people and have the best things available.

The service and sacrifice of the brave men and women who have worn our nation's uniform to preserve our democratic way of life is the reason we are able to stand here today before each other in what I believe is the best country in the world. I have said this earlier and at other locations: we look at what is happening in Ukraine at the moment, all the issues over there and we only have to look at it on TV. Sometimes it is hard to know whether that is reality, fiction or a movie.

Certainly, we have a great democracy and we have freedom. We may disagree on lots of things, we may support different football clubs or political sides or whatever it may be, but at least we can walk the streets safely. We do have lots of issues here, but we can get on top of those. The debt that we collectively owe to these men and women can never be repaid, and I look forward very passionately to serving as the Minister for Veterans Affairs.

I am not looking in my rear-vision mirror. One of the things I do not do is look behind me because what I did yesterday, and what we did yesterday, no-one can change. All we can do is look at what we achieved yesterday, look at some of the things we may have done, may have considered, and then analyse them today and look forward to changing and hopefully going forward with that.

I am looking forward with all the opportunities that our state has, and I will cite my area as an example of where we have so many natural resources: an abundance of gas, multiple renewable energy projects and economic infrastructure in ports, rail and roads. We have great opportunities even on Eyre Peninsula, and we have great opportunities in the South-East, Upper Spencer Gulf, the north, but the challenge is to get that product out of there.

There is also Yorke Peninsula. with the grain and the opportunities there. It is absolutely fantastic, and I have been there many times, as my stepdaughter lives over there. Whilst I love Port Pirie, she loves it down that way and it is absolutely fantastic. What we have to do as a state is to ensure that we get those products out, and we also need to have trained people working there as well as accommodation—and that is the biggest issue. We may have people, we may be able to get skilled migrants coming in, but we need houses and we need places for them to be able to reside in.

I will also be making a statement soon in this place about my plans for the three portfolios I have: local government, veterans affairs and regional roads. I am keen to work together with everyone and with all levels of government—local, state and federal—and both sides of politics in this house to build this state and to achieve its best potential.

Before closing I want also to thank some people. I have been a fortunate person to be able to do things I get great joy out of. I came back to Port Pirie from Port Augusta in 1978. I got on council because the council was not doing the roads, and that led me on a journey to where I am today. I have been able to do stuff that as a child, as a schoolkid, I never thought I would do in my life, but I have to honestly say that I have been very blessed with opportunities to achieve things that I consider some people could never do in their lifetime.

I want to thank my family in particular, but I also want to thank the people of Port Pirie and the surrounding areas for their belief and trust in me over the last 13 years, not only as a local member of parliament but also my 20 years on council. I want to thank my family. I want also to thank my late wife, Arlene. She was there from the start when I was a councillor, and then this opportunity came after she was involved in that road crash. The community of Port Pirie supported me and my family for many years. I will be forever grateful for that, and I have indicated that in other locations.

To be a member of parliament is a great privilege, as well as being a member of council. The member for Flinders was the President of the Local Government Association. It is a great privilege, but it comes with challenges. It comes with challenges for your family. They have to face those challenges. Your family has to give things up, and the member, whoever it may be, has to give things up too. They have to give up some of their family life. It is a challenge, but there is fulfilment at the end.

As the mayor, people said to me, 'Mr Mayor, this is an issue. What are you going to do about it?' My thought was, 'Well, what do you think?' They would say, 'It's not my problem. You're the mayor.' Well, I say to these people, 'It's not only my problem. It's not only my issue. It's our issue, and what we've got to do is work together and make certain that we get the right direction and analyse everything and make certain that we do the right thing.’

I want to thank my current partner, Lyn. She took on a mixed family for many years after the accident. We have now a Brady-blended family in Port Pirie. We have had the opportunity to learn. Our family has now expanded. We now have 14 grandchildren between us, and it is a privilege to have that when I go home. Other members in this house are able to do what they do because they have family at home. If they do not have a stable home life, then in actual fact they cannot do their job properly.

To my two children, Hayley and Marisa, I want to thank them very sincerely for all they have put up with for the last 44 years and since I came back. They have said a lot of things and they have been left out of a lot of things. After the boundaries changed I thought about whether I would renominate. The first thing I did was to talk to the previous member, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, because we are friends. It was a very quiet election. I then asked my girls. They said, 'Whatever you want to do, dad, do it.’ That is what I am going to do now.

I am putting the challenge to everybody here. Let's do it together. Let's make certain that we get the best opportunities for our great state. I am looking forward to working with this government in this parliament over the next four years.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Brown): The member for Narungga.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (16:28): Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker, and a sterling job you are doing indeed. I think you would quite convincingly be in the top three people to have occupied that chair today.

I rise to make my contribution in reply to the Governor's speech, and in so doing I would like to commence with the most important thing, which is to say thank you to the people of Narungga. It is a tremendous honour to be returned to this place and one which I will never take for granted. To each and every person who supported me in any possible, conceivable way a sincere and heartfelt thank you.

When I was giving my maiden speech, just over four years ago and after a long, hard campaign in the lead-up to that 2018 election, I referenced that I thought Narungga was the most beautiful electorate in the entire state; that view remains and, if anything, has strengthened over the past four years. It has been a wonderfully pleasurable experience getting to know so many different people and so many different communities across the 10,000 square kilometres that Narungga occupies.

In referencing that, I should pay homage to the people of the Adelaide Plains, Mallala, Dublin and surrounds who have unfortunately been moved out of the seat of Narungga as a result of the boundary redistribution, but it was no less pleasurable getting to know those wonderful people on the other side of the gulf. In truthfulness, it was part of the electorate that was perhaps a bit foreign to me upon my election, but it was wonderful to try to wrap my head around the issues, which were remarkably similar to those on the peninsula, over the past four years.

To each and every one of those people who have reached out to my office or seen me in the street or bailed me up in any possible way and whom I no longer have the pleasure of representing, thank you sincerely as well for the honour it was over the past four years.

I should also welcome the new parts of the electorate, those being, as aforementioned by the member for Stuart, the regions that were in Frome and that I have had the great pleasure of welcoming into the new seat of Narungga around Brinkworth, Blyth, Redhill and those sorts of parts. I have had a couple of trips up there already, and I am looking forward to spending a great deal more time there and getting to know the different communities and the people who occupy those wonderful towns. It is one of the really pleasurable parts about being the local MP.

On Yorke Peninsula, to the parts of the seat that have remained the same, at the risk of repeating myself I say a sincere thankyou to all those wonderful communities. There are something like 70 different communities on the peninsula, and each of them has their own different localised issues: their roads, their kerbs, their footpaths, all those sorts of really local issues you have to try and wrap your head around.

Then there is the next step up, those issues that are multicommunity, those little ones that join the communities that might have issues in common. Then we go right up to the regionalised ones and the statewide issues. It was a lot to wrap my head around in four years, and it was a big workload, but it has been really, really enjoyable, getting around and meeting all the progress associations, sporting clubs, community groups, all those different people, and getting to know the wonderful work they do.

As a result, after all of that work and all of those experiences, it was a really humbling experience to have had such support at the recent election, despite a difficult couple of years personally. So thank you sincerely to all those people who demonstrated that support through helping to volunteer, handing out how-to-vote cards, spreading the good word or even just voting in my favour. That was, as I said, a tremendously humbling experience and an honour and privilege that I will never, ever take for granted.

I would like to single out a few different groups of people, though, as cause for special thanks. First and foremost, to the wonderful people who have occupied the Narungga electorate office over the past four years, we have had Rosemary and Sarah, who have been with me for the entirety of that time, bar one small break for maternity leave; Georgia, who joined us more recently and who unfortunately has found alternate employment and will be leaving us quite soon—all the best to her in her new endeavours; and then the trainees we have had along the way: Sophie, Nikki and Chelsea.

I have absolutely no doubt—there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind—that without the wonderful interactions those wonderful ladies had with the community that approached them for different issues re-election for me would not have been the faintest of possibilities. Without the work they did in serving our community so well and so brilliantly, there is absolutely no chance that I would be back here after the most recent election. For that and everything else they do to keep me on track and keep our office on track, I say a sincere thankyou. Hopefully, it can continue for the next four years, and we will have another uninterrupted run of success. So thank you to all those people. It is much appreciated.

Secondly, a quick thankyou to my partner, Courtney, who has been a wonderful rock of support—she is flat out at the moment with the federal election—and to my family, who had dropped everything at any time to help me in any possible way and did a power of work across the campaign and on polling day. For them I am especially thankful: my parents and my brothers, my nanna and anyone else who helped.

I have already referenced them quickly, but to everyone who helped on my campaign throughout the course of it, thank you. I ordered what I thought was an ambitious 100 shirts with 'Vote 1 Fraser Ellis' on them for election day, for the 30 booths scattered around the peninsula, and we ran out of them quite quickly. At the end of the day, we had people asking for them to help out, and we did not have any left to give out.

We managed to spread those 100 people out evenly across the 30 booths, which is an extraordinary number. It may be not the biggest, but it felt like an extraordinary number when it came to doing the rosters. It was a really humbling experience to have such demand for those shirts and such assistance on the day, so thank you to all those people.

There are a few who are worthy of special thanks. Jamie Smith, who I referenced in my maiden speech four years ago, has been a long-time mentor and terrific bloke and a tower of strength throughout everything we had to deal with over the past two years. It has been an absolute pleasure to get to know him over the course of my political career, and it is a friendship for which I will be forever grateful, and I hope it continues for as long as it possibly can.

Malcolm Eglinton and Graham Mattschoss have again been wonderful supports over the past five years, and I hope that continues. Neil and Dale Sawley did a mountain of work and again were put in an awkward spot, but offered their unconditional support, which was much appreciated. The Hon. Senator Alan Ferguson has been a tremendous support and a sounding board over the past five years, and I really appreciate the access that he gives me for advice on a whole range of fronts in his term as a senator.

Then one other one, which I would like to spread out over the past five years because I rewatched my maiden speech upon hearing a lot of the wonderful ones that have been delivered in this chamber over the past couple of weeks. I took the time to rewatch mine to see if there was anything worth referencing, and it occurred to me that I had forgotten to thank a friend of mine, Mike Daniel, in the previous one, so hopefully he accepts this in lieu of thanks in the initial one. For those wonderful people and everyone else who helped, thank you sincerely for your assistance in staffing the 30 booths up and down the leg. It was much appreciated.

I would also like to offer congratulations to other candidates: Tom Michael, Mark Paull, Ashley Wright, Kerry White and Wendy Leanne Joyce, who all conducted productive, respectful campaigns. Dianah Walter should also be congratulated on putting her hand up for election. Unfortunately, she received the determination from the Electoral Commission rather recently about a series of misleading advertisements, so that was a rather disappointing way to end the campaign, but she should be commended for putting up her hand nonetheless. It is a difficult thing to do, and I am sure she is better for the run.

I also congratulate all other members who have been re-elected and elected for the first time. It is a tremendous honour to take your seat in this place and enjoy all the goings-on that occur here on a daily basis, so congratulations to everyone here. In congratulating those new people, and those who have returned, it is also worth mentioning those who have not had the good fortune of returning to this chamber.

There are quite a few of them: Dan van Holst Pellekaan, Corey Wingard, Paula Luethen, Richard Harvey, Carolyn Power, Frances Bedford—who, I might add, was tremendously welcoming when I joined the crossbench a couple of years ago and a wonderful asset—Rachel Sanderson and Jonny Gee. Commiserations to those who missed out at the election and congratulations for those that have had the opportunity to retire and find alternate employment.

I would also like to thank a special thanks to four people. I had the great fortune of having an office adjacent to Peter Treloar's for four years and of sitting next to him in the chamber. He was a tremendous mentor for the goings on of parliament. I think the people of Flinders were well served for the entirety of his term and will continue to be under the new member, but thank you to Peter for all his support.

Upon considering the idea of nominating for parliament, I initially sounded out two people: Sam Duluk and Stephan Knoll. They were tremendously supportive throughout the whole process, and it is quite disappointing to see neither of those two gentlemen here in this parliament. Of course, I regard Steve Murray as an excellent parliamentarian, and I think he would have been a wonderful asset to this parliament. So thank you to those four gentlemen for their assistance as well.

I want to touch on some of the things we managed to achieve in the electorate of Narungga over the past four years because I regard it as being a tremendously lucrative period for our community. We had a series of wish list items we brought to the parliament, and amongst them were health investment, road investment and just a general investment in local sporting infrastructure. I think if we mark ourselves against the wish list we brought here four years ago we would measure up pretty well.

The health system, although there is a lot of work to do and I do not contend that it is completely solved yet, has benefited tremendously on the peninsula. We had investment in the Ardrossan hospital that kept it open for four years, and it needs to be rolled over and reinvigorated. We had new services and investment in the facilities at Wallaroo Hospital, which again needs to keep on being built upon.

Wallaroo Hospital is one of the rare examples where it has funding, as part of the regional health plan, which has been mentioned a few times, to hire three full-time doctors to work in the public hospital system. That is a great initiative, but it is proving tremendously difficult to attract those doctors to accept those positions as opposed to locum work.

The profitability of locum work, where they can work one day off and take home huge sums of money and not have to worry about showing up the next day if they do not want or anything like that, is proving a real hindrance to attracting those people who might otherwise be partial to working in a regional setting. We had that money there to attract doctors to work in the public health system. Unfortunately, that has not quite paid off yet but, hopefully, as we continue to fine-tune regional health we might be able to get some doctors staffing Wallaroo Hospital on a full-time basis.

We had other things. There is a brand-new surgical theatre at Yorketown Hospital after it was threatened with closure just prior to the last election. They are doing lists now of minor surgeries. It is a wonderful asset for that community—and there are a few other things like that. Regional health, I think, is by far and away the biggest issue that voters in regional South Australia are interested in at the moment.

When you approach anyone on the street and ask what will swing their vote, it is the one thing they are interested in, so we need to keep making sure that we put that at the forefront and ensure that we continue to make progress and attract professionals to country South Australia because that is ultimately where the shortage lies. We can build all the buildings we want but if there is no-one there to staff them then we will be in the same hole we are still in.

There has been a mountain of work done trying to incentivise doctors out to regional SA, but it seems to me, as a layperson, that incentivising doctors is not working. We need to start to guarantee that they are there, we need to start to take steps to forcibly distribute—if that is the right word—doctors out into the right parts of the state. I will be working towards that. I reckon that is the answer. I think there needs to be some really proactive work done to ensure that we have access to what the member for Stuart referenced the other day as the basic services that we should have available to us. We do not expect the exact same services that are offered in the city, but we do expect access to a basic level of service.

I also referenced roads. Again, when you talk to a country person, the other thing they bring up more often than not is the quality of the road network. I am really thrilled that over the past four years, between the three levels of government, there has been in excess of $200 million put into Narungga roads. Some of the really bad ones that I had on my list when I was elected and that I talked about in my maiden speech have finally seen an investment.

Perhaps most notably is the road right down the middle, the one that came up a lot when I was doorknocking, between Arthurton and Minlaton. That has been fully ripped up all that way and is finally getting resealed and redone. Pleasingly, across the really poor, bumpy part it is not just a surface job; they have ripped it up and redug it and actually laid a proper base, so hopefully that road will last a bit longer. It is certainly wider now. A wider road is a safer road, as both members for Flinders have said. It is certainly a lot wider now and hopefully it stays flatter and safer for just that little bit longer.

There is the Port Wakefield overpass, which is well on the way to being done. I think now motorists are starting to see what the finished product will look like. At conception, there were a few sceptics who wondered whether that was the proper way to do it or whether there might be a better solution. I dare say they are still out there but I think, as it takes shape and as people start to see how it will work in practicality, it will be a wonderful thing. Even if it does not solve the problem completely, even if there is a slight delay, it will be better and safer than it was. It is money well spent if it saves a few lives on country roads. It is wonderful to see that take shape, the massive project that it is, and it cannot be too far away from being done in its entirety.

There are a couple of others: the Wallaroo entrance road, which was signed off just before the election. The first stage of that is underway or has been completed. I am really excited about that. The next step is council doing the stormwater and then a final coat of road. There are many, many others still to do. I am not suggesting every road in the YP is fixed up and ready to go but we have made a really good start. If we can keep that momentum going for the next four years, we should be well on the way to having a wonderful and much-improved road network that is the envy of a lot of other electorates around the state.

As I referenced, too, there is plenty of work going on in sporting clubs. It is pleasing to see some that have been waiting quite some time finally getting the investment they have been yearning. I note that Kadina are playing the CMS Crows this weekend. We cannot play at Minlaton as we normally do because those clubrooms are currently in the midst of redevelopment. That is a wonderful thing to see and I look forward to next season, if I can still move, to hopefully play at Minlaton and see that brand-new club facility underway.

As I said, we have achieved a great deal in the past four years, but there is still plenty more to do. I have already referenced the work that I would like to see done in the health space. I think attracting and retaining, or guaranteeing access to basic health services in country SA is pivotal. It is the biggest issue that we are facing. I do not think it is too much for country people to ask for and expect the basic access to services that many in the city have. I think as well—and it might offend present company—that Wallaroo Hospital is in desperate need of a dramatic upgrade. The Pirie hospital up the road is far bigger and services a far higher standard of care in a lot of different areas, and in my understanding, based on the service plans, it is a smaller catchment area, a smaller service area. That is not to denigrate the Pirie hospital. I am happy for that to have that wonderful access.

When we look at the population that Wallaroo serves and the work that it does—particularly during the tourist season, when we have a massive influx—it needs to be drastically bigger. It is a 21-bed facility at the moment, but now it could easily be 50 or in the high forties. I will be working towards seeing a big upgrade to Wallaroo Hospital.

There is a plan in at Infrastructure SA, and I will be looking forward to reading that report to see if it is considered a good use of taxpayers' money with a recommended spend for our region. I will be advocating to the government to adhere to that recommendation by Infrastructure SA, hopefully giving Wallaroo Hospital a real upgrade and, as I have already touched on, provide continued investment in Narungga roads. There are still a few more to do.

I would love to see the Minlaton to Stansbury road get some shoulders to make it a little bit wider, and I would love to see a Bute to Port Broughton road upgrade. I would love to see a North Coast Road upgrade, which is a council road, but it is still in desperate need of an upgrade that may be beyond the scope of council by itself to do. There is plenty more to do, and we have made a wonderful start. As I said, it would be wonderful to be the envy of a lot of other state electorates with regard to roads.

One thing I would like to see in relation to roads is a turning lane fund, and I have written already to this new government. There are so many wonderful coastal communities up and down Yorke Peninsula, and a lot of them have what they consider to be dangerous access points, where they have to slow down on the road to access them. In peak summer, when most tourists are accessing those coastal communities is also when you will also find heavily laden grain trucks trying to use those same roads.

If you have to slow down with your caravan or your boat to try to get into one of those coastal communities, and you get a grain truck coming right up behind you, it can be dangerous. It would be a relatively cheap fix, I think, to have a turning lane installed so that those cars can get off the highway, slow down on that turning lane and access those wonderful coastal communities just that little bit more safely, so I will be advocating for that.

Hardwicke Bay is in desperate need, perhaps more so than any other one; and I think the Acting Speaker is a visitor of Hardwicke Bay. With the entrance road being on that corner, it is a bit of a blind corner, so there is all the more risk with those cars having to stop on the main road, and hopefully we can get them off. I will be advocating for that as well as for many other investments in regional roads.

The final issue I would like to mention as part of this speech is child care, which by no means has been a silent issue, but of late it has become especially topical. We need to ensure that those people who work in or want to work in regional areas can leave their kids in child care one day and contribute to the local economy. If they are stuck at home looking after those kids, then we are deprived of a professional worker who could otherwise be contributing to our local community and our local economy.

With YP Council and the Minlaton SYP childcare action group, I met with a private provider for child care. The private provider—not to denigrate them—indicated that it might be in the high sixties of kids per day in order to make it a viable business model. Well, that is not viable for a lot of country towns that do not have that number of kids in child care on a consistent basis at the very least. I would like to think that there would be a scalable model or an alternative model that might enable regional communities to provide that child care for different size populations, so I will be working on that.

I have written to both the education minister and the Premier and suggested that maybe access to child care might be a good feature of the royal commission that is planned and coming up for out-of-hours school care. I would like to think that would be considered to be added to or augment the terms of reference for that particular proposal. I have also written to the regulatory body (the acronym of which I cannot quite remember off the top of my head) and suggested that they conduct their own report into how child care might be enabled in regional South Australia. I would like to see some more work done in that space, and I am sure it will make a tremendous difference to our local communities.

In closing, it is again a wonderful privilege to be re-elected by the people in Narungga. It is a really humbling experience, and I give them my word now that I will continue to work as hard as I can so that we get our fair share of the pie on the YP and that we get those infrastructure projects that are so desperately needed to make our community a better place to live and a more productive economy for the benefit of the general state. With that, Mr Acting Speaker, thank you sincerely and I look forward to the progression of this parliament.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Brown): The member for Torrens.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (16:49): Thank you, Acting Speaker, and I congratulate you on your re-election and your election as the member for Florey. I welcome the opportunity to acknowledge in this place the traditional owners of the land, the Kaurna people, and to pay my respects to their elders past and present as together we walk along the path of reconciliation.

I take this opportunity to reflect on that day in Canberra when, in my previous role as a senator for South Australia, I was present when former Prime Minister the Hon. Kevin Rudd made the apology to the stolen generations. I recall the emotion and the hope in the chamber and on the lawns outside the house on the hill, our nation's parliament, following the Prime Minister's heartfelt words.

In relation to our parliament now, I welcome that this parliament, if all goes well, will finally fulfill the promise of a meaningful treaty with the first South Australians with the establishment of an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, the restarting of the treaty process in the state and the set-up of a truth telling process guided by the Uluru Statement from the Heart and driven by our state's first Aboriginal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Kyam Maher.

I speak today in reply to the address of Her Excellency the Governor, the Hon. Frances Adamson AC, Governor of South Australia, on the opening of the Fifty-Fifth South Australian Parliament. I offer my congratulations to all re-elected members who sought and gained the support of their constituents and the new members of which there are quite a few. In particular, I would like to make special mention of the eight new Labor members in this place who worked so hard earning the privilege and honour of sitting on this side of the chamber for the next four years and beyond, we hope, representing their electorates.

I start with my neighbours in the north-east, the member for Newland, Olivia Savvas, and the member for King, Rhiannon Pearce, both determined from day one to achieve their goal, along with the member for Adelaide, Lucy Hood; the member for Elder, Nadia Clancy; the member for Davenport, Erin Thompson; the member for Gibson, Sarah Andrews; and the member for Waite, Catherine Hutchesson, all who fought amazing campaigns connecting with their community and securing the support of constituents to be elected to this Fifty-Fifth Parliament of South Australia. I look forward to working with each of them to achieve our shared goals.

It is significant that your arrival in this place brings with it the highest number of women and the youngest person, the member for Newland, elected to the House of Assembly in its 165 years. Hanging on the wall before me as I stand here—I can almost reach out—is the artwork created to acknowledge the long struggle that resulted in the South Australian parliament in 1894 being the first to give women the right to vote and to stand for parliament. Interestingly, in this, the Fifty-Fifth Parliament of our state, it is the first time also that any government, or opposition for that matter, has more women than men holding a seat in this place.

I congratulate also the member for Playford and the member for Taylor, who brings with him significant experience from his time in federal parliament, along with a wonderful sense of humour to which I am sure we will all be a witness.

In my Address in Reply in the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, I said, 'We on this side will be working hard to ensure that we will not be spending any longer than one term here in opposition.' Being elected to government from opposition did not just happen: it took listening, thinking, speaking and action in so many areas, so many topics with so many discussions taking place at street corner meetings, coffee catch-ups, community forums, front doors and the phone and so much more.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the Premier on his leadership in opposition and our Labor team, including the new members, for their dedication and commitment to listening to the people of our state in metropolitan and regional South Australia and from all walks of life. We listened, we heard, we reflected and now we sit on this side of the chamber to put in place the Malinauskas government plan for the future.

Along with the deputy leader, shadow ministers, members and candidates, we listened to what was important to the people of our state:

from the homeless and those striving to get their home and those on the rental merry-go-round, to owners of multiple properties;

from on-the-ground workers and their union representatives to business owners, large and small;

from those suffering the effects of the devastating bushfires and increased ramping at our hospitals to the emergency service workers, many of whom endured their own suffering;

from families in need of support to the teachers in our schools;

from the volunteers who are the backbone of our local sporting clubs to the volunteers who keep community organisations operating, serving our communities;

from family members with parents in aged-care facilities to aged-care workers;

from nurses and doctors at our hospitals to the patients and their families;

from individuals enduring mental health complexities to providers and support services; and

from those with disability and the carers who support them.

The honour to stand in this place on this side of the chamber where we all in this house, individually and collectively, strive to take our seat, representing our constituency and governing our wonderful state of South Australia, became a reality for Labor just two months ago. For that we owe thanks to the women and men of South Australia who put their faith in us, in Labor, in the now Premier, the member for Croydon, and the Deputy Premier, the member for Port Adelaide, along with the whole Labor team.

For me directly it was the electors of Torrens who returned me for a third term to be their voice in this place. To the residents in Oakden, Hillcrest, Vale Park, Hampstead Gardens, Manningham, Windsor Gardens, Klemzig, Gilles Plains, Holden Hill, Greenacres and Valley View who supported my re-election, I offer my sincere gratitude. It is a tremendous privilege to serve you as the member for Torrens. I thank the electors of Torrens who, at the 2022 election, put their faith in me.

The electorate of Torrens is a diverse one with people of many cultural and ethnic backgrounds and new citizens regularly arriving from around the globe. It has a strong and vibrant community group sector and some of the most passionate sporting clubs, including Gaza Sports and Community Club, the North Adelaide Rockets Basketball Club, the North Eastern MetroStars Soccer Club and the Adelaide City Football Club. In addition, it has many important social and learning hubs, including the North East Community House, Hillcrest Community Centre, the Wandana Community Centre and the Holden Hill Community Centre and, of course, we have many schools.

It is home to many dedicated community groups and clubs that I have come to know extremely well over the past four years: the Gilles Plains and Hampstead RSL; the Northgate Oakden Residents Association; the North East Community Assistance Program (NECAP); TADSA; the Klemzig, Windsor Gardens and Walkerville Neighbourhood Watch and the new Neighbourhood Watch in Valley View, which is a new suburb since the boundary redistribution; the Hillcrest Scouts; the Enfield Horticultural Society, of which I am a patron; and the Hillcrest Seniors, to name just a few.

In 2014, I welcomed the opportunity to stand for the state seat of Torrens for the first time and to become a member of the then Weatherill Labor government. To hold government is what we all aspire to and work towards in the South Australian Labor Party, to deliver on our policies and to be able to facilitate fairness and equality of opportunity for all in our community.

In opposition, I committed to working hard with the new government where it was in the best interests of my community and the state of South Australia, and, when necessary, to hold the government to account for the decisions it made and, in some instances, for those it failed to make. I am one who always looks to find the silver lining and, looking back, I believe I stuck to my commitment throughout the fours years in opposition.

I had a number of significant issues in my community that needed to be raised, which had a great impact: the closing of the Strathmont Centre by the then Liberal government and also the closing of access by the public to the Hampstead Centre. While the then government said that they would accommodate the more than 2,000 people who used those facilities, they ended up sending a lot of them through to the Modbury Hospital rehabilitation pool which, I might add, was built by the Labor government. Of course, once COVID hit, all those people missed out on the swimming lessons, rehabilitation and water therapy that they required.

I would like to take this opportunity to place on record that I am proud to have been a member of the Weatherill government and to highlight some of the progress and things that were delivered, including a state-of-the-art health and biomedical precinct, the iconic SAHMRI and a world-class new Royal Adelaide Hospital. We were a government that revitalised the CBD with the redevelopment of Adelaide Oval, the new Adelaide Botanic High School, the Riverbank Precinct, the Adelaide Convention Centre, Festival Plaza and laneways and small bars. We were a government under which crimes against persons and property halved with more police on the beat.

From March 2014 to March 2018, in my particular area in the north-eastern suburbs, the Torrens community benefited from significant investment in our community, including the extension of the O-Bahn into the Adelaide CBD, improving travel times and reliability for thousands of public transport users; the multimillion dollar Modbury Hospital and Lyell McEwin upgrades; the installation of a koala crossing on Fosters Road near Cedar College; and the partnership that was approved with the Port Adelaide Enfield Council that delivered the Lights Community and Sports Centre on the former Ross Smith school site, now a multi-use sports centre that is home to the Rockets Basketball Club, with five courts making it international standard.

There is also the synthetic soccer pitch and the lighting upgrade in Adelaide City Football Club and the North Eastern MetroStars Soccer Club; the new Oakden ambulance station, including a 24/7 emergency crew; support for multicultural community events that help develop an understanding of different cultures and are inclusive of all members of the community; and new STEM facilities for Hampstead Primary School, Hillcrest Primary School and Wandana Primary School.

At the 2022 election, we saw that commitments were needed again in our community; in fact, some had been totally ignored. So I am proud and pleased to be able to announce the Gaza Sports & Community Club upgrade, incorporating female change rooms. It resolves the issue of players changing and substandard change rooms and women and girls having to change in cars or toilet cubicles; this will be addressed through Labor's commitments. For four years, I called on the Marshall Liberal government in the state parliament to honour their candidate's promise to the Gaza committee at the 2018 election to meet Labor's commitment to the new change facilities, but they failed to do so.

On the issue of the swimming pool closed by the Marshall government, in government we have committed to an upgrade repair for the infrastructure at the Royal Society for the Blind pool. This will mean that Royal Life Saving South Australia will be able to deliver swimming lessons for our multicultural community and for people needing to learn to swim. There will be water therapy for clients of the RSB and also swimming lessons and water therapy for children with autism. We will not let our children down. That is part of what we were talking about in relation to the RSB swimming pool.

A commitment towards making South Australian autism-friendly has been given by the Premier. As a former teacher, I welcome that commitment to children with autism and their families. Also, we have reform of early childhood education and care so that children can start school ready, including the introduction of three-year-old preschool programs, the lifting of quality teaching across our schools, the promise of some of our contract teachers being made permanent, the establishment of five technical colleges for students who want to go straight into the trade school and supporting young people with learning challenges or struggling with mental health issues so that they are engaged.

Of course, health was also a priority. Time and again, throughout the COVID pandemic residents told me about their concerns. I am proud that this government plans to deliver 350 extra ambulances; 300 more nurses; 100 additional doctors; 300 extra hospital beds; 120 mental health beds; 10 major hospital upgrades; five new ambulance stations; 14 rebuilt, upgraded or expanded stations; and a new ambulance headquarters. We have already touched a mental health, but there is even more for mental health.

Interestingly, last week I attended the Commissioner for Children and Young People's summit and I believe that quite a number of people here attended that summit. One of the issues for the students that I spoke with was mental health and that was a priority, so it is wonderful that this government is going to deliver on that as well as more for drug rehabilitation and for country health. What also often impacts on young people are the wages that they are paid. I am pleased that Labor will introduce wage theft legislation to create criminal penalties for persistent and deliberate underpayment of workers, including wages and superannuation.

We do not get to this place without the help of many, so I would like to thank, on this occasion, of course the leader and the members of our Labor team. I want to thank each one of my supporters and volunteers throughout the election campaign. A special thanks to my dear friend Monika, who continues to volunteer as a language interpreter and cultural ambassador for the many different communities in our electorate. She is continually fielding phone calls way after the sun has gone down, always working and helping to bring communities together. I would like to thank her wonderful husband, Raj, and her son, Dhruv, and daughter, Tarini.

I also thank the federal member for Adelaide, Steve Georganas, for his support and Angelique and Toni, who made hundreds of phone calls on my behalf. There are so many volunteers to name but I will, if I have the time, go through some of them: Manjit, Harvinder, Jawahar, Jaskirat, Jagmeeta, Vikram, Trisha, Navneet, Gurpreet, Diya, Eric, Deo, Juvenal, Emmanuel, Mohit, Mehak, Shreya, Benny, Hui, JinTian, Zhenxiang, Mehak, Mohit, Akhil, Vipul, and Emmanuel, Jai, Blessing, Smridhi, Jagdev, Pradeep, Stephanie, Kimberly, Wendy, Nick and Paul. I also thank Kuldip, Michelle, Ray and Yvonne, David, Farrah, Peter and Beth, Charlie and Adelia, Mel, Sheila, Ken, Margaret and Peter, Trevor and his family, Peter, Karen, Rob, Lewis, Lily, Don, Tash, Chook and Gillian.

My thanks to the many Torrens sub-branch members, particularly Bob, John, and Graham for the many bags of material they delivered. I think they must know every letterbox in Torrens now. My sincere thanks to my staff Tracey and Caprice and Rosemary for their valuable after-hours contribution and all who played a part along the campaign trail.

I would like to put forward a special thanks to Hannah Evans, my amazing campaign manager, who again worked tirelessly over the past eight years and from day one to election day. This election, however, she had the assistance of her fiancé, Simon, who had no idea what he was getting himself into when he placed that ring on her finger. He took to campaigning like a duck to water, preparing posters, up and down ladders, handing out how-to-votes on election day and delivering to letterboxes.

Hannah, I truly appreciate your dedication and your insight and commitment from day one eight years ago through to election day 2022 and I wish you a wonderful journey ahead. I would like to thank also my nephew Cale for the many hours you put in letterboxing, putting up and taking down posters and the many hours both you and Ché spent preparing corflutes.

To our son, Ché, thank you again for your support and enthusiasm, endless hours of letterboxing, keeping up to date with 24-hour news cycles, for cleaning and putting up and taking down corflutes while in between working on university assignments and always for your insight and very honest and valuable opinion on everything.

To my partner, Russell, for your love and support, your great organising skills, tireless work in our multicultural community ensuring that the benefit of Labor policies are understood, often having to address language and cultural barriers, your commitment and understanding is never ending.

I take this opportunity to place on record my thanks again to the electors of Torrens, who at the 2022 election put their faith in me to represent them for the third time. It is truly an honour. I am committed to my electorate of Torrens and to the state of South Australia, and be assured I will always stand up for what is in the best interests of the residents I represent and the people of our great state.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT