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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-16 Daily Xml
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Bills

Supply Bill 2023

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (15:44): I do want to continue my remarks on the Supply Bill but I just very quickly want to add my voice to those who have much more eloquently thanked and acknowledged our nurses and midwives today. It was my enormous pleasure, with the Minister for Health and the member for King, to attend the 30th anniversary of the birthing unit of the Lyell McEwin.

It was an enormous pleasure to catch up with Jill and Anita, who delivered my six and seven year olds—six and seven years ago, funnily enough—and they are still heroes in my household. We talk about them every day and it was such a pleasure to meet them, and I just want to add my voice of thanks for all the work you do and may you keep on doing it. Thank you. Now you can go and enjoy your afternoon tea.

I will now continue my remarks on the Supply Bill; thank you for your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was talking about the commitment made before the election to a roundabout at the intersection of Yorktown Road and Adams Road in Craigmore, or in Elizabeth Park, whichever way you look at it. I will just finish on that particular commitment by saying that I hope, and I will check tomorrow, that the department have consulted with the Eastern Park Football Club. If not, then the next stage of the consultation I promise will be very much centred on the needs of the people in the Eastern Park Football Club.

It is very clear that the residents of Craigmore and Blakeview will benefit from this commitment to a roundabout. We just want to make sure that we get it right, get the design right, so that the people who use the Eastern Park Football Club—especially the children who use it—can continue to use it safely, whether that means altering their entry and exit way onto a different site other than Yorktown Road or incorporating their entry and exit from the roundabout. It is very important to me; it is very important to the people at Eastern Park Football Club.

I visited Eastern Park Football Club a couple of weeks ago. To my surprise, I was joined by several local councillors and I was very pleased by the commitments they made to looking at improvements to Eastern Park Football Club.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Including Councillor Arifi?

Mr ODENWALDER: Of course Councillor Arifi was there. There were others who were unexpected, but the more the merrier I say. The more councillors on board the better, and from what I heard from the councillors there that day, there certainly seems to be a commitment to improving Eastern Park Football Club. I think it is fair to say that it is a club that has been neglected for a while. I think the roundabout commitment has really brought into sharp focus some of the problems particularly around parking that they had, but not only that. They along with many other clubs, of course, have a continuing problem with changing rooms, with their visitors' changing rooms and particularly female changing rooms. If the message I am picking up from the local councillors is right and they are committed to improving those things, then I look forward to working with them in the future on ways we can make those projects happen.

The second commitment which I committed to is related to the first and is very close by: the Dwight Reserve. It is immediately across the road from Eastern Park Football Club and adjacent to the roundabout area I have been talking about. It is a smaller commitment. It is a commitment of $400,000. It is part of a larger package that the council has put forward in a masterplan of $800,000 to improve that playground and recreational space, both for general users of the playground—including my kids, which had no bearing on the funding—but also for the kids that use the area both as a recreational space for the Eastern Park Football Club and as an extra training space for the Eastern Park Football Club.

I think that the development of Dwight Reserve as a facility adjacent to Eastern Park Football Club is important. It was my hope when I made the commitment that that would be a total $800,000 commitment from state government and council to be completed together. I am hearing that that will be changed and that the $400,000 from the state government will fund stage I, with stage 2 to be completed at some other time. That, of course, is the council's prerogative. It would have been good to see them both happen and I do not think a final decision has been made. In the end we committed $400,000, and that will fund stage 1. So I look forward to the construction of that particular project. I think it will enhance the community. It will also enhance the facilities available to Eastern Park Football Club.

Part of the problem is that Yorktown Road itself is obviously a major arterial road, and so joining the two facilities is difficult for pedestrians, particularly young pedestrians. It is my hope that, whatever we do with Dwight Reserve, the roundabout itself will provide some safety to those children as a natural crossing point for those children who are using Dwight Reserve.

The third commitment I would like to talk about in my electorate is the promise of a local traffic management plan, in the Blakes Crossing area. Traffic management and parking—and you will know this yourself, sir, from your dealings with the school there—particularly around the school but also around the general precinct, has always been a problem. Parking and traffic management have always been a problem.

The development itself I think is a good one. It is a well-designed, walkable neighbourhood, but part of the problem is that it is clearly a modern design of a neighbourhood. It is based on what you might see in a European city and increasingly in American cities and Australian cities, where walkability and density are valued and prized, as I think they should be. The problem, of course, in the context of an outer suburban development is you do not have the adequate transport connections that you might have in a much more dense European city. You may well design a development which looks like a part of a European city, and it looks very modern and it is very walkable, but it does not negate the need for every member of that family of driving age to have a car to get anywhere. Hence, you get this problem where you have a dense environment where parking and traffic management, particularly around the school, is a major problem.

The idea is that the Department for Transport are funding the council's traffic management plan. I welcome that. A certain amount of that money has been put towards surveying the community, developing the design, and then there will be a further tranche of money set aside for actual works, which will be matched dollar for dollar by the council up to the value of $375,000. Every time I have a street-corner meeting in Blakes Crossing, or indeed every time I talk to Councillor Karlsen in Blakes Crossing, I am reminded of these traffic problems, and I think the council survey bore that out.

Everyone seems to have a different solution, including raising speeding limits, more off-street parking, safety crossings, blind spot remediation and school traffic management. I am pleased now that Playford council's 'What We Heard Report' has been finalised, with 259 feedback forms received. Council asked the residents and the property owners within the study area to provide feedback on traffic-related issues they were experiencing on their street and in the broader study area.

The study area is bounded by the natural northern boundary of Blakes Crossing, beyond which is the green belt leading up to Gawler; on the eastern side, it is bounded by Bentley Road; Uley Road to the south, and Main North Road to the west. This is deliberate. It deliberately cuts out traffic management problems related to, first of all, Main North Road, which of course is a very major highway and has its own issues and is almost in a constant state of reassessment, but also Curtis Road. As the member for Light will know and as the member for Taylor will remind people, Curtis Road is a perennial problem for everybody. It has not been included in this local traffic management plan because it is a perennial problem but also because the member for Taylor and the member for Light have during their own election campaigns made commitments around looking at traffic around that, and I look forward to seeing the results of that.

Of course, people in Blakes Crossing do use Curtis Road all the time, which is why I hear about it all the time, but that is the subject of a different traffic management plan, and hopefully the two things will be complementary. I look forward to having conversations once we reach the planning stage of some of these works. What did the council do? They direct mailed letters to residents and property owners in Blakeview—a promotional flyer, a background about the survey and so on. They established an engagement hub online. They surveyed people online and in hard copy. They also, very importantly I think, reached out to local schools and sought their feedback on the possibilities of local traffic management. As I said, Blakes Crossing Christian College particularly and also the nearby Playford primary, Blakeview primary, Trinity College and Craigmore high all contribute to some of the traffic congestion, particularly along that Uley Road stretch to the south of Blakes Crossing.

The following things were identified by the community in the City of Playford surveys: residential traffic issues, such as inadequate on-street parking, ability to access and exit properties, large vehicle access and illegal parking, largely due to narrow streets and roads, which is what I talked about before; the safe crossing of pedestrians; traffic congestion during peak times, particularly in and around schools, as I said, during pickup and drop-off; and also, of course, the ever-present problem of hoon driving and speeding.

I also held my own specific street-corner meeting. I often hold street-corner meetings in Blakes Crossing, and I always get a good response in Blakes Crossing. This one was in particular about this plan, and I received a lot of feedback both at the meeting and in the subsequent social media campaign that followed. It almost all centred around parking, speed and congestion around schools, and safety around schools.

A similar problem exists on the Yorktown Road-Adams Road intersection we talked about before. As I think the member for King will attest to, in places like Wynn Vale, Salisbury Heights and Greenwith, there are very limited ways to get in and out of some of these developments at certain times of the day. That is something that we really need to look at in the absence of a very well-established public transport network such as you might see in a denser European city. These are problems we are going to have to grapple with. If we are going to have developments that are dense, we are going to have to grapple with traffic management and/or greater investment in public transport.

The fourth commitment is somewhat more straightforward: a public toilet in California Reserve, Craigmore, to a cost of $250,000. This may seem like a minor thing, but obviously public toilets are important. The council, as I see most councils do, have a matrix where they grade different types of playgrounds. The type of amenity that is available at different playgrounds is subject to various factors, such as the population size around the playground and who visits and so on, but these arguments get pretty academic when you have a seven year old who needs to go to the toilet.

On balance, a public toilet was needed there. It was a very easy commitment for me to make. It is going to be a modern toilet, and one of those self-cleaning toilets, I understand, and I look forward to that being constructed later this year.

The Hon. N.F. Cook: Fancy.

Mr ODENWALDER: It is going to be fancy. It is going to be a Rolls-Royce toilet, I am told. I am assured by the council it will be a Bentley of a toilet.

The final commitment that I made is one probably closest to my heart, and that is around the Argana Park sporting precinct. I joined with the member for Taylor in making various commitments around Argana Park, and I am sure there will be more in the future. I am particularly excited about this one. I grew up in and around Argana Park, and it is really the heart of the community in that northern part of Elizabeth: Elizabeth North, Elizabeth Downs, particularly, and now, increasingly, Craigmore and Blakeview.

I went to school immediately adjacent to Argana Park at South Downs Primary School. Incidentally, I visited South Downs Primary School just last week with the Minister for Education. It is under the new leadership of Caitlin Manser and her team and they are getting some really good results at South Downs Primary School, including a 57 per cent reduction in suspensions. The minister was certainly surprised about the quantum of that reduction, and I think Caitlin and her team should be commended for that.

Argana Park, as I said, is close to my heart. I am really pleased that we are able to allocate substantial money as part of the council's master plan. Councillors Akram Arifi and Misty Norris both came to me and said, 'We've got this master plan for Argana Park; it involves work which will take several years. What can the state government contribute?' I am really pleased that we are able to contribute $1.115 million for change rooms for the soccer club and the netball club. This is the soccer club where my son Jimmy got his start and then returned to later, so it is one close to my heart. I do not have as much contact with the netball club, but I understand the member for King knows it fairly well. They will have female change facilities and adequate change facilities generally.

Mrs Pearce interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: Yes, that's right, for the member for King to enjoy. Additional to that, there will be $345,000 for lighting. This is just a small part, a small stage of the overall master plan. I think what the council has in mind for Argana Park is very exciting, and I look forward to that all coming to fruition. I am told that planning is well underway and that both the change rooms and the lighting—and I hope I have not got this wrong; I am sure Councillor Arifi will tell me—should be completed by February next year.

In the very little time I have left to me, I want to commend the government for its commitment to health in the north. I, the member for Ramsay, the member for King and others all benefit from the Lyell McEwin Hospital being in the heart of our community. I am really pleased there will be 48 more beds. Our commitment at the election was, of course, for 24 more beds; that has been expanded to 48 more beds. Construction has begun. There will be more emergency department space, and there will be more renal dialysis chairs—a new nine-chair dialysis unit.

I am very proud of the work the Malinauskas government is doing in terms of investing in local community, investing in sporting clubs, investing in health, and I hope that we can do more as our time progresses.

Mr ODENWALDER: Mr Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. J.K. SZAKACS (Cheltenham—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services) (16:03): I am pleased to rise today in support of our Supply Bill, this very important contribution that many members of this place are making and have already made to this bill. Today, I will touch briefly on a number of matters that are very close to my heart within my portfolio responsibilities, namely, police, emergency services and correctional services. I am also very keen to talk about the good work, the excellent work, that has been undertaken over the last 12 or so months in delivering election commitments in my electorate of Cheltenham, in the beautiful western suburbs of Adelaide.

The Department for Correctional Services is a critical agency in South Australia. It is responsible for the humane and safe operation of our state's nine prisons with just over 3,000 prisoners in the adult population. I am pleased to report to this house that in my 12 months as minister I am yet to privatise a prison, and certainly will not be privatising a prison, as was done so promptly by the former Liberal government.

Approximately 5,700 offenders in the community under various supervision orders by the courts or by the Parole Board are supervised by DCS. These individuals are supervised by the incredible staff from our 15 Community Corrections centres around the state. The DCS mission is to contribute to public safety through the safe, secure and humane management of offenders and the provision of opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration. This is supported by a vision for a safer community by protecting our community and reducing reoffending. It is this commitment to reducing reoffending that I am incredibly proud of. I know that all on this side of the house have demonstrated for a number of years our immense commitment to reducing reoffending.

The reality is that an outdated, archaic approach to justice is to lock people up and forget about them, lock people up and throw away the key. The truth is that the vast majority of people who offend will at some stage be released and once again in our community. The best thing that we can do as a state, where possible, where meaningful and where able to impact on someone's life, is to address those causes of offending whilst somebody is in custody. It is critical and exceptional work that DCS undertakes.

This particular focus on reducing reoffending, reducing recidivism, was born from the 10by20 program in a formal approach that was launched by the then Minister for Correctional Services, now Premier of South Australia, in what was a particularly progressive and thought-provoking policy shift in the way that we focus on rehabilitation in South Australia. It has been an immense success. Sir, I know from your time you will have seen the immense contribution that our staff in DCS make every single day in contributing to this.

Not only have we met our target of reducing reoffending by 10 per cent by 2020 but we have surpassed it and we have reduced reoffending by 15 per cent. But that is not enough. That is why in my tenure as minister I have been incredibly pleased to launch a new target, a more ambitious target of 20 per cent by 2026, where the dial has to keep shifting. It is good for community safety. It is also good for people who, through a suite of matters not of their doing, often find themselves within the criminal justice system.

There are many things that ministers find in their incoming briefings, their first meetings with their departments and certainly their first opportunity to immerse themselves within, in my case, prisons or other facilities. Certainly, one of the things that shocked me the most was the number of people incarcerated, the number of people who find themselves under a custodial sentence or even remand for that matter, who cannot read and write.

The impact the lack of numeracy and literacy has on someone's ability to get a job, to participate in our economy, to support their family by no means excuses criminality but gives us cause as a government and as a community to unpack and understand better the why. It is very much my view that improving basic things like literacy and numeracy will improve community safety by impacting the lives of people when they are in a correctional facility, as, too, will other programs that connect people and prisoners with work.

Work brings dignity. As the Premier often says, all work brings dignity and we, the Labor Party, are a party that believes in the dignity of work, and the dignity of good work, meaningful work and secure work. Programs that we can undertake within our prison settings to better equip people to work, to find work, to stay in work always improve the outcomes for those individuals involved. The way that we embark on investing significant money, both capital and recurrent, on prison industries is a really critical part of that.

As I have travelled around the state, I have seen firsthand the skills that are being attained by prisoners as they work. It might be metalwork, woodwork or the extraordinary baking abilities that I have witnessed and also tasted firsthand. There is the work being undertaken in very large-scale commercial kitchens and also the dairy operations at Cadell, which I am very pleased to have announced in the last 12 months is receiving a very significant capital upgrade to modernise and increase capacity. These are all skills that are leading directly to better employability for people when they are no longer in prison.

The programs that connect people with work are also critically important, and Work Ready, Release Ready is just one of those. Work Ready, Release Ready links people with a job prior to leaving prison because we know, again, if all of this work is invested in our prison population whilst someone is in custody, it is also important that when they leave custody they are already connected, they are already in an attainable pathway that keeps them in work, in employment and on the straight and narrow. That is why Work Ready, Release Ready is so critical.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the people from Workskil who are leading this program. They do an outstanding job. I have met with a number of the people involved in the delivery of this program and want to thank them for the dedication that they have to this program.

We have also delivered on our election commitment to improve and increase the cleaning of major arterial roads by prisoners. For some reason this was downgraded and dispensed with by the former government. We have committed to doing this and I am so pleased that one of the very first things that was attained when coming to government was exactly that: getting prisoners out there as part of this outdoor experience but also, very importantly, leading to better outcomes on our major arterial roads.

I will now move on to emergency services. I do so recognising that this week is National Volunteer Week and take the opportunity to thank every single volunteer across the state in whatever capacity they volunteer, but particularly our emergency services. About 15,000 South Australians volunteer as part of our emergency services. Just within my portfolio areas, they are members of the Country Fire Service, the State Emergency Service, and Volunteer Marine Rescue.

Whilst not directly responsible but certainly through some funding partnerships, I also want to thank and recognise the thousands of people who volunteer their services to Surf Life Saving South Australia. I note that Surf Life Saving South Australia were out on the beach today as part of National Volunteer Week, recognising the week. For those who ventured outside today, it is pretty cold and wet and windy, so I make a particular note of mention for our surf lifesavers for braving the cold to recognise surf lifesaving contributions today.

Within our emergency services we have those volunteer agencies I have mentioned, as well as the MFS and SAFECOM. I particularly want to note the excellent collaboration that exists and that is continuing to be fostered amongst those agencies.

Observing this sector now for many years, and certainly for many years before I was in parliament, and having had the privilege of serving on the South Australian Fire Commission Board, I have seen the impact that improved central emergency services headquarters have had on our sector, and not just from an operational perspective, increasing and improving the ability for agencies to respond to acute emergencies, to plan for emergencies and to coordinate emergencies. It is greatly improved from the time that SAFECOM, the Country Fire Service and the SES were housed in Waymouth Street.

The fostering of a work environment that leads to collaboration is also incredibly clear and evident in the move to Keswick as part of a single, central headquarters. That has been demonstrated so well through the coordinated flood response since August 2022, throughout late 2022 and through the Christmas and new year period—seeing peak flows happen in that period between Christmas and new year and into the start of 2023.

I think that there are very few times that anybody in our community can see the full suite of resources responding and being deployed in the way that we saw during our flood crisis here in South Australia. I know that I and a number of members of this place have already spoken at length about this: the coordination, the service and the work of our agencies through that period were outstanding—outstanding—and of course the Supply Bill I rise in support of supports that entirely.

This has been an exercise that has not been without cost. I am thankful and grateful that the cost has not been one of life; it has been one of those rare emergencies where a loss of life has not occurred, but there has been great cost from a household perspective and from a community perspective. The support provided directly through grants and other mechanisms by the state government has been around $200 million, but there have also been the additional operating expenses from our agencies, particularly the State Emergency Service.

As most people in this place would be aware, our emergency services levy does not contemplate the proactive or prospective funding of major emergencies such as this. That is why we have a Community Emergency Services Fund that has a holding capital that funds, in the time of acute emergencies, this type of activity. During the estimates process, I will be in a better position to provide and furnish details, but the expenses incurred by the SES are into the many, many millions of dollars as part of the response to this emergency. That is on top of the capital that was very quickly and very deliberately invested by the state government around the purchasing and procurement of the DefenCell product to protect our communities where they needed this flood protection so quickly. I am very pleased to advise just how successful the rollout and deployment of that has been.

I also want to note the contribution of SAFECOM, SAFECOM staff and SAFECOM personnel, not only from a logistical and functional perspective through the flooding but well and truly over the last 12 months. The last 12 months have seen SAFECOM distribute and coordinate the RAT distribution program in South Australia.

They were also absolutely instrumental in supporting the exercise of people's democratic rights on election day back in March 2022. It is a relatively small, at times unknown to the broader community agency at SAFECOM that has coordinated the logistical support and logistical outlay of RAT testing and voting all the way through the pandemic and even post the declaration of that emergency. I want to particularly note the contribution of SAFECOM through that time.

The emergency services sector is, was and continues to be one that relies heavily on plant and equipment, fire trucks, fire appliances, rescue appliances and farm firefighting units as part of a coordinated approach to emergencies. I am very pleased to report that the first round of the reintroduction of farm firefighting unit grants by this government was a resounding success: $500,000 quickly went out into our communities and into people's hands before the fire season.

Most importantly, the way that we as a government committed to and executed the delivery of this program was to ensure that to every extent possible we were promoting the purchasing of equipment from local suppliers, from local businesses, to support those small and medium-sized businesses as well as regional enterprise at every step possible. I will be able to return to this place soon with an update on the next round of farm firefighting unit grants. Without doubt in my mind, I know that they will be equally popular in the community.

I am also very pleased to reflect on the prompt and expedited tendering and procurement of 12 new fire appliances for the MFS, a $14.1 million investment by this government that has seen, in a very quick way, a modernising and a future modernising of fleet. The headwinds of the global pandemic were certainly taking a toll and have been taking a toll on the delivery of major fire appliances right across the world, but the best advice I have is that, because of the quick movement of the MFS and the prompt delivery of our election commitment as a government to source and procure these appliances, we have in large part been able to circumvent and get around what would otherwise be delays in getting these on the frontline as quick as we can.

With my time closing rapidly, I commend this bill to the house and thank the Treasurer for his ongoing work in this area.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (16:23): I am sure this house will be enthralled as I provide a quick update about the priorities and happenings within the electorate of Narungga and perhaps list and outline some of our hopes and dreams as we progress forward to the budget in the coming days and some of the things that desperately need attention in our part of the world.

In doing so, I should start by saying that we do, I still believe, live in the greatest part of this state. Yorke Peninsula is flying along at the moment. There is a bit of moisture in the ground, crops are going in and there is a genuine feeling of optimism in our farming community about how a wonderful season might be ahead of them. It has been my experience that that confidence flows throughout our community and we feel that benefit whether we are in a town or on the land.

Whilst there is plenty of good going on in Narungga at the moment, there is always something that we think the government should work on or improve, and at the top of that list is, obviously, health care. This has been of the greatest concern to my constituents for quite some time, and it was certainly a vote mover at the last election where people were voting, I would like to think, for someone who would be a staunch advocate for local health care and the provision of local services for people to access. We still need more movement on that front, an opportunity still exists for further improvement.

In the interests of impartiality, and to give credit where credit is due, there does appear to have been a renewed interest in regional health care from this government. It is wonderful to see a new hospital being built at Mount Barker, and work being done at Mount Gambier and Port Pirie as well as other places around our state where, I am sure, health care was front of mind for quite a few people and at the top of the list for improvement.

We would still like to see more done in our community, more done locally for us. Perhaps the best case in point regarding that is Wallaroo Hospital. The three towns of the Copper Coast—Wallaroo, Kadina and Moonta—have roughly 14,000 or 15,000 people inhabiting them yet the only hospital we have, the only emergency health care you can access on the Copper Coast, is a 21-bed hospital. That is wildly insufficient, and it finds itself full quite regularly. There should be scope to improve and enlarge that hospital.

The Port Pirie hospital up the road—and I might get my numbers slightly wrong here—has a similar catchment area. The city of Port Pirie might have 16,000 people at a guess, but that hospital is far bigger, and I think we well deserve to have our local Wallaroo Hospital increased to a similar size, as it is servicing a similar-sized catchment area. Those capital works that are on the mind of the LHN, the local health network, and that have been the subject of submissions to Infrastructure SA regarding their feasibility, should be front of mind for the government as it considers its next budget and the priorities it might have in the healthcare space.

Wallaroo Hospital could do with significant improvement and enlargement. That is not to detract from other hospitals we have up and down the peninsula. The public hospitals at Maitland and Yorketown would both benefit from realignment of their A&E departments. As acting chair of the health advisory council I know architectural work has been done to develop a plan so that Maitland Hospital could be a bit more user-friendly for the doctors who service it. It is currently a bit of a rabbit warren, if you ask the people who work at that hospital, and would certainly benefit by being a bit more free-flowing and open plan so that people who are in the unfortunate position of needing to be at that hospital can receive better care due to the improved space on offer.

We have capital needs right up and down the peninsula, and all of them could do with attention at some point—hopefully sooner rather than later. However, the primary concern—and this is true right across South Australia, but I believe is felt most acutely in regional South Australia—is that we need to see some action from a government, whether at federal or state level, to guarantee the equitable distribution of doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals right across our state.

When you live remotely or regionally and suffer an emergency it is a difficult thing to find your way to hospital but have no-one there medically trained as a doctor to meet you, and I imagine it would be a scary thing. When you are in a state of shock or are in desperate need of some pretty significant service you would like to think your local hospital could at least provide that accident and emergency service when you get there.

We are not asking for complicated surgeries or specialities to be transplanted out to regional South Australia, but there is a basic level of service that should be required for regional hospitals. In a lot of hospitals around our state that service is currently lacking, and we desperately need to see action from a government on that front to resolve that crisis—I do not use that word lightly—so that we can guarantee the equitable distribution of those healthcare professionals and make sure our regional communities remain attractive places to live and, for quite a large percentage of the population in those towns, to retire.

It is no good retiring to a regional town at the end of your working life only to find that those healthcare services that you are increasingly going to need to rely on are all the more difficult to come by. That is the highest priority for the people of Narungga I believe. It is something that I hope will be addressed in the budget in a couple of weeks and, if not in the budget, then I will continue to push forward for the budget thereafter and the one thereafter that. We look forward to, hopefully, at some point finding that we have achieved our goal there and that we have a result incoming.

There are another couple of priorities I wanted to talk to this house about briefly, and the second one again is a topical one around South Australia, that is, the shortage of housing that we have on the YP. Often, we have these heartbreaking stories of people you would not normally associate with homelessness coming into the Narungga electorate office to report the difficulties they have in accessing rental properties.

It is extremely difficult. I meet with as many of them as I can and we offer as much help as we can to make sure that they are not thrust into homelessness, but it is an extremely difficult thing to meet with people in that situation, who have that prospect in front of them, and to try to come up with a solution when the clock is ticking on the time they have left. I am sure there is a solution out there that would provide immediate relief.

In fact, just by way of an idea—I have not considered in complete totality all the outcomes it might provide—I wrote to the minister recently and suggested that maybe, with the proliferation of Airbnbs or short-term rentals I suppose, Housing SA could contract with them for category 1 people who are homeless just for a week at a time or something like that so that they can have a shower, refresh themselves and gather their thoughts.

I imagine that that time under a roof with the amenities provided would be refreshing and reinvigorating to launch back into the intimidating task of securing housing. I am sure there must be ideas out there like that we can lean on to open up immediate relief for people, but something needs to be done to address that problem because it certainly is a really, really prominent one across our state.

Aside from immediate relief, it does need longer term thinking. There has been some wonderful news on that front in our electorate recently, with a new land release at Fisherman Bay, to complement the freeholding of that destination by the council recently. In the not too distant future—or, in fact, if you drive out there now—you can see significant work going on at Fisherman Bay to bring that community into the 21st century and to provide it with the amenities it deserves and the people who have leased there for so long deserve.

It will be wonderful to see those old shacks that have not experienced the investment they need due to the uncertainty of tenure to finally have a bit of an upkeep and a bit of maintenance provided to them and, I can imagine in some cases, a complete rebuild to turn them into some quite palatial shacks. That community will be a radically different one in the next decade. It will be really fascinating to drive by there and compare what we have now to what will be there then.

That is thanks in large part—or in an absolute majority—to the work of the council and its CEO, Maree Wauchope, who has done a wonderful job unlocking that investment, and the councillors, Mayor Leonie Kerley and all the other people involved. It was a difficult problem to solve, but now that that the freeholding is happening, and that land release behind it is happening, it will turn into quite a town in its own right. I look forward to seeing that evolve in the future.

Having met with Wakefield Regional Council with the member for Frome and Minister for Local Government only last week, I am led to believe that the Sea Breeze proposal at Port Wakefield, which has been on the cards for quite some time (I am guessing decades), is not too far away from starting as well. That land release, those blocks—and I reckon the signs have been up forever—should be open and for sale relatively soon.

Again, that will provide some options for people who are looking to build in that wonderful little town. It is not too far from Adelaide and should be a nice little destination for people to build. There are a couple of really exciting things happening on the housing front and we look forward to seeing them and how they shape our electorate going into the future.

Thirdly, without dragging on too long, we really sincerely hope that the government continue to fund the road improvements in our electorate. We have had quite a prolific four or five years and we have managed to get some significant projects achieved, not the least of which is the massive development at Port Wakefield with the Crash Corner overpass and the duplication of the highway through the town which is now well on its way to Lochiel. That was a huge project, and it has had a significant impact on the safety of that corner, one that claimed many lives over its journey. It is a risk and no more, thankfully.

It is wonderful to see the traffic flow freely through Port Wakefield now and a sight to behold. The best indicator is that every long weekend or public holiday we used to have to put up with a story on the news about the traffic jam at Port Wakefield and how slow it was getting back. Now they are absolutely silent on it. The news channels do not have anything to report because the traffic is flowing freely. Those cameras and those journalists I think have relocated to the south of Adelaide to report on the traffic jams down there. That is a wonderful indictment on the work done there.

In the lead-up to the 2018 election, I vividly recall doorknocking and telling people that it would be wonderful and that it will be a priority of mine to get the road right up and down the middle fixed, the one between Arthurton and Minlaton, and we have managed to achieve that too. The stretch between Arthurton and Maitland was an absolute shocker, and it is now a smooth ride on a wide road and a lot safer for everyone, not least the people driving fully-laden grain trucks down that road. It has had a wonderful impact for the people who live in those communities.

They are just two examples of roads across the electorate that needed doing and got done, but we need to continue to see that investment. GPSA have done a wonderful job lobbying for the Arthurton to Kulpara stretch of road—an infamously bad stretch of road that is quite long but definitely needs doing. It is well used by farmers along that stretch. There is some quite fertile land there that produces significant crops, and that would be a wonderful road worth doing. There is the Bute to Port Broughton road, which is a really bumpy, undulating surface, as well as countless other roads. I risk missing some, but I have to accept that risk. Obviously, we look forward to hopefully seeing some continued funding to maintain that good momentum we have had on roads going into the future.

The final absolutely key priority I would like to mention today is the coastline, and it is arguably the electorate of Narungga's greatest asset. It is its biggest strength and the reason we have so many people come and visit and stay overnight: to see the wonderful beaches and amenities we have on our coastline. We need to make sure that we continue to preserve that. That is multifaceted. That is ensuring that the boat ramps that we install do not interrupt the sand drifts, causing one side to have no sand and the other to have a build-up.

It is ensuring that we have an adequate fund to start to address the backlog of jetty maintenance that has crept its way around the state. Golly, that will be an expensive but vital proposition for a government to take on. In a lot of cases, jetties are the lifeblood of small regional communities and the tourism asset of many regional towns, general stores and caravan parks. They are vitally important, and once they start to fall over, at that point they will be all much more expensive to replace. Certainly, I think making sure that we have a maintenance program to preserve them, rather than a fund to replace them, will be a far more economical prospect, so we need to make sure of that.

We need to ensure that the beach camping phenomenon that was arguably born during COVID is addressed. We know at Wauraltee Beach in the years leading up to COVID there were zero cars camped on that beach. Over last Australia Day, we had something like 400 people camped on Wauraltee Beach, which is wonderful for the community—400 caravans came up, stayed, shopped, bought petrol, went fishing and did all those wonderful things—but it poses a whole lot of other problems.

It poses problems with the sand dune preservation—people enjoying their four-wheel driving over precious sand dunes. It poses problems in litter disposal, as four hundred caravans produce a lot of waste, and not many bins are provided to dispose of it. It also provides problems with policing, with disputes between caravans and camping sites, and a whole host of other problems.

It pains me to say this, but it might be that some increased regulation may be necessary to ensure the safety of our precious sand dunes, which, as we have already articulated, are perhaps Narungga's greatest asset. We certainly need to do something because, if we wait too long to act, it could be that the sand dunes are beyond repair at that point. A multifaceted bunch of considerations need to be taken into account, but our precious coastline certainly needs some attention, and we need to make sure that we care for it and look after it.

By way of conclusion, and I will not take too much longer, I want to touch on a couple of things that came up at community cabinet, which was a wonderful, productive couple of days we had with the cabinet in Narungga recently. Embarrassingly, it surprised me how often it came up at the community forum, but the Wallaroo swimming pool is an absolute priority for us to get funded. A few years ago, the pre-existing jetty structure where we all learnt to swim was blown over in a storm. It was then replaced with a supposedly storm-proof pontoon system that stretched out from the front of the cafe on the foreshore, but that then blew away in the first storm that came along.

Unfortunately, council have been tied up in court and in mediation trying to get their money back for that investment. In the meantime, the community has had very little facility to conduct swimming lessons as a means for people to enjoy the sea water safely, protected from the waves and whatnot, so we need to see a solution for that. I know that a cross-section of the community wants that jetty-like structure replaced almost as was. That would be fine, but I would also urge the community to consider the benefits of an inground heated pool with a lap pool that people could use for fitness as well. Hopefully, we can find a way to replace that in the not too distant future.

Next, I want to touch on emergency services. We just heard from the minister that there is a desperate need—and I talked to Chris Beattie about this only Saturday evening—to have a new sea rescue vessel for Point Turton. We currently have a wonderful group of volunteers down there doing an amazing job, but they are limited by the fact that the boat they possess is only able to go two nautical miles offshore.

I am not a boater myself, but I suspect that most boat breakdowns do not happen that close to shore and that there is a requirement for those boats to go further. Without that boat, there is a gap in the water between Port Victoria all the way around to Edithburgh, which is a significant body of water and one that needs covering. The people there are ready and willing to help, but we just need to provide them with a vessel in which they are able to do so.

A little bit of a pet project of mine is the SES team at Port Broughton, which is currently co-located in the council work shed. On one side, there is an artificial divider. There are lawnmowers and council machinery on one side and, on the other side, there is a boat, a truck, a rescue trailer and all that sort of stuff. I think that the SES volunteers would certainly deserve their own facility and perhaps one that is co-located with the CFS, which has a rather space-inhibited shed. I would love to see a way that we could achieve that outcome.

On a final note, I want to thank and congratulate the government on a grant recently to the Wallaroo Golf Club. They are now in the position where they should be able to commence the greening of their golf course, that is, to put in greens rather than scrapes. That will become the first golf course on the entire peninsula to have 18 holes of greened golf course. That will be a massive benefit for our community. Golf tourism is really lucrative, and there will now be people who can come up from Adelaide, they can play the dunes at Port Hughes on a Saturday, they can play Wallaroo on a Sunday and they can have a fulsome weekend playing golf out in the open air.

The Wallaroo Golf Club, a wonderful club, have been working toward this for a number of years. They have had a lot of setbacks from different grant programs, but they have done an incredible job fundraising their own money. They have a significant cache of money they are willing to put in, and now they will be able to make that dream a reality. So I sincerely look forward to seeing that happen in the not to distant future. I am going to get a membership myself and join up, and I look forward to seeing that club grow from strength to strength with this new green. I speak in endorsement of the Supply Bill.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (16:43): I will use this opportunity to speak about events in my electorate. I had a tour of year 9 students from Unley High School in here for lunchtime today, and Supply Bill speeches were happening in the chamber. They were not aware of the process of a Supply Bill speech and why it was required. I explained that it is about actually paying people who are on the government payroll, making sure that our schools and hospitals stay open and that our police are paid—everybody who delivers the services of the state government are the beneficiaries of the Supply Bill. Without the Supply Bill, the government would come to a grinding halt.

That happens often in the United States of America. When I was over there in January 2019, government offices were closed because there was a dispute or a fight over supply of money to pay public servants. Even things like presidential museums were closed because, although they are set up with private sector foundations, they are usually staffed by public servants. They were not being paid and they were not there to service those who were visiting such museums.

There is some government spending that is causing some distress in my electorate of Unley, and that is the move of the Forestville Hockey Club to Unley High School. This has a bit of history to it, this project. Originally, there was a commitment from the previous Labor government in 2017 for $1 million to be granted to the Forestville Hockey Club to help them relocate. A site was identified by the previous government at Pasadena, at the Memorial Playing Fields. We committed to honour that commitment as the Liberal Party in opposition.

We won that election and then we worked through with that promise, but unfortunately I am advised that, once the proper planning was done, there simply was not room for a north-south hockey pitch at that site. The Labor government promised something that could not be delivered and consequently put the Forestville Hockey Club in a bit of a bind. We agreed that we would allow them to consult with the community and Unley High School to see if that was a solution.

We made no commitments about funding because it was a very early stage. We do know, because the Labor Party were promising money to anybody who asked at the last election—without any due diligence, without any understanding of the size of the project and the impact it would have on local residents and the school itself—they found another $2 million and committed that as an election promise, making that grant now $3 million.

The federal government, with Louise Miller-Frost as the candidate for Boothby, also committed over $1 million. The Mitcham council, who are always very quick to jump to support Labor Party promises, committed $140,000, but interestingly they said 'only if the synthetic pitch that was being used was sustainable and environmentally friendly'. They do not exist; those pitches simply do not exist. I have commissioned a lot of research from the parliamentary library to identify where such synthetic pitches are available, and they simply do not exist.

It will be interesting to see how the Mitcham council now deal with that $140,000. Mitcham council in a recent briefing also told me that they have had to find extra money so Labor could deliver their promises in the City of Mitcham, whether that be a share of a grant or, alternatively, ongoing costs for the new facilities, which are mainly council owned, which will be a burden for ratepayers in the City of Unley.

There seems to be some confusion about the nature of the promise to fund and commit to Unley High School as the new home for the Forestville Hockey Club. It is very clear in a press release that was put out by the member for Badcoe on 17 February 2022 where the then candidate for Elder, Nadia Clancy, states:

Forestville Hockey Club's proposal is outstanding. This new hockey hub at Unley High will reinvigorate hockey in the southern and eastern suburbs.

This was done without any due diligence, without any consultation with the school or with the local community. Do not forget, this is a very large grassed area that is used by the community that will be replaced with a fenced area that will be artificial turf. This is causing an enormous amount of concern.

We are very keen to see the Forestville Hockey Club have a home, but we did not commit funding to this project in the lead-up to the last election because the work had not been done to do that. Just like in 2017, the then Labor government committed funding to a separate site or a different site for the Forestville Hockey Club before the work had been done to know whether the hockey pitch would actually fit on that site.

Here we are seeing a repeat of history: mouth opening, words coming out for electoral benefit for the Labor Party without any work being done as to whether, first of all, it is something that the community wants and what effect it is going to have on the community. There are questions for the council and the state government on this project. Will there be limitations on access to the grounds for local residents currently?

We know that the Department for Education has policies to work with local government, in particular, to enable school grounds to be available for residents' use on weekends when not being used for school sport. I know that Unley Primary School, where my kids went, was very successful in that they actually managed to shift all their cost of maintaining the grassed areas to the Unley council, who agreed to do that in exchange for allowing people to use the green areas in Unley Primary School after hours. It was a very good deal.

People have become used to using these school grounds as part of the open space, particularly in the inner suburbs. Unley has the smallest amount of open space of any electorate. It is the smallest electorate geographically. There are about 26½ thousand people living in an area of just over 12 square kilometres.

We are losing trees all the time from private properties as people are putting extensions on, putting in swimming pools or knocking down one home and putting up three or four on the same space. It is always a challenge for access to open space in an electorate like Unley. The press release sent out by Jayne Stinson, which is absolutely true, states:

So far, the Liberal Government has not committed any funds to the hockey hub, though the Department of Education has supported the project being built at the school.

That is because the consultation was not finished. The consultation up to this stage has not even started. Even after the 14 or so months since the election, there has still been no consultation. To give you some idea as to the dog's breakfast that this whole project has been, it was a thought bubble, a group of people sitting around a table thinking, 'How can we capture maybe another 200 or 300 votes in surrounding seats around this fallout from the Forestville Hockey Club?'

I received a briefing in March, which was several months after I asked for a briefing. The briefing was an oral briefing; there was nothing in writing presented. One of the things I was told at that briefing was that the development application is currently being finalised by the Forestville Hockey Club ahead of being lodged with the City of Mitcham, and the public consultation process is commencing.

My understanding is, as of May, the public consultation process has not started. I asked for written confirmation on 17 March from the Minister for Education's office as to whether it was the case that the City of Mitcham was in fact the body that would be deciding on the planning application. To this day, I have not received a response to that request. There is even a question on notice in the other place through the Leader of Government Business from the Hon. Jing Lee that was supposed to be answered, according to standing orders, last Tuesday but still remains unanswered. So we still do not know who will be approving or not approving the project.

It is a very unusual situation where we have government land, a government school. The government has outsourced the consultation to a hockey club. As I was advised in my briefing, there is no consultation being done by the Department for Education or the Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing, or by the City of Mitcham. Consultation is being done by the Forestville Hockey Club. People who live nearby tell me that they have received very little information or very little opportunity to present their case.

The City of Mitcham is surprised at the suggestion that they will be the ones who will be deciding whether this project goes ahead or not, and that is important because I asked the officer from the Department for Education at that briefing what happens if the City of Mitcham does not approve the development, and the answer that came back very quickly was it will not go ahead.

So there is the challenge for the City of Mitcham, who are raising concerns about the use of such a large area of artificial turf, particularly after they have recently moved a motion saying that there is a climate emergency in the City of Mitcham and they need to do everything they can to arrest that emergency. Knowing full well that there is no such thing as an environmentally-friendly synthetic pitch, are they going to approve this proposal when it goes to the City of Mitcham CAP, whenever that is? We do not know when that is going to be. I and a group of residents in Hawthorn are monitoring that to try to establish when it will happen.

It is important to understand that this is not something that the Labor government inherited. The Labor government initiated this in 2017, making a commitment before the work was done for the Forestville Hockey Club to move to the Women's Memorial Playing Fields without looking to see whether it would actually fit. My understanding is you cannot fit a north-south facing hockey pitch on that site.

A process was started to see if there are other sites. Unley High School was approached. The then Minister for Education gave approval for Unley High School to do some due diligence on that to see whether that would work and to work with the community. That work is a long way from being completed but, nearly two years ago now, the Labor Party promised that money for that site regardless. That is the situation the people of Kingswood find themselves in. They are the victims of a government that was buying votes in the lead-up to an election and did not care what the consequences were. There are massive consequences for the quality of life and the environmental impact that this will have on the site.

Do not forget, on those two soccer pitches where this fenced hockey pitch will be soccer is played every weekend. There are cars that will overflow from the car park. There are licensed facilities that will be part of the planning approval for evening events. This is a significant shift in use, and it is a significant change in the amenity of those who use Unley High School, whether that be students or whether it be those who use the grounds after hours. I am calling on the government to look for another site.

It is pretty obvious, from what we are seeing now, that this was not thought out before the money was offered. Maybe the money should have been offered subject to finding somewhere else. I would not consider it a broken promise if the government said, 'Look, we're going to move it somewhere else.' They did that when they promised, in 2014, that they were going to build a second city high school at the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site. When they won that election, they realised it would not work at that site, so they built it down the road. They still built the school; they delivered what they said they were going to deliver. They can deliver this new pitch for the hockey club, but what I am saying is, 'Don't deliver it at Unley High School.'

I was open-minded about the concept initially, and I will be making my mind up based on the consultation. Even before the formal consultation has started, it is very obvious that this is not a suitable site for this project. So, Premier, what I am asking you to do is to find somewhere else for this project. I support you in doing that so that we do not take more public open space away from the very limited public open space that there is already in the electorate of Unley.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (17:01): I rise to support the Supply Bill 2023, to commend the Malinauskas Labor government for some fine investments and to talk today about major events in particular. Today, Business SA released the details of their business survey for the March quarter of this year. The result showed that business confidence in South Australia continues to climb from the previous quarter and that it rose by 5.8 index points. This increase followed a total increase, in the previous two quarters, of 16.3 per cent, which means business confidence has risen by 22.1 points in the past three quarters.

Anyone who has been out and about in South Australia in the past few months will know that South Australians are believing in themselves and believing in this wonderful state once again, because things are happening here. People in South Australia are noticing, but, more importantly, people around Australia and indeed around the world are noticing the difference that South Australia makes.

Business SA called out measures implemented by the Malinauskas government as possible drivers of the increase in South Australian business confidence relative to the rest of the country. They said:

The more positive response to the local economy could be influenced by the South Australian State Government's prioritisation of large-scale events, such as the VAILO Adelaide 500, AFL Gather Round and LIV Golf, which all took place between December 2022 and April 2023. An overwhelming number of business operators surveyed—

that is, nearly 80 per cent—

viewed large-scale events as beneficial to business in the state.

These events did not come around by accident. We went to the election with the promise of providing $40 million for a major events fund. I am really pleased to be chairing the major events committee here in South Australia, with a very small group of business leaders, one of whom was on the Liberals' major events committee. Every single recommendation that that committee put up to the Liberal government was knocked on the head. Everyone who was on that committee became so frustrated with the former government that they walked away from it.

I have to say, it is a complete contrast to see how the Premier treats major events in South Australia. We saw with LIV Golf that he was in direct contact with Greg Norman, talking about the possibilities of LIV Golf coming here to South Australia. When we look at the AFL Gather Round, there is no doubting the influence that the Premier had in getting that here to South Australia. He was in constant contact with the CEO of the AFL, Gillon McLachlan.

Also, at last year's AFL grand final, it has been well documented how he worked the room and basically tagged every AFL club president and CEO that he could to tell them about the benefits of having the games in South Australia and why the AFL needed to get behind Adelaide for the positive result that we would give the AFL and all the teams. Everyone I have spoken to, even those who did not go to any of the nine AFL games that were on in and around Adelaide on the Gather Round weekend, is absolutely delighted with the way it went.

People were telling me it had that feeling like the Grand Prix back. Everyone was wandering the streets and so happy. It reminded me of the Sydney Olympics, a time when Sydneysiders actually started talking to each other on trains and public transport again. Here, we would walk up and down the mall, down and around the town to the Adelaide Oval, out to The Parade in Norwood and up at Mount Barker, and everyone was out there in their Freo scarves, or Saints, Bombers, Lions or whatever it was. People were saying, 'Go the Lions,' or, 'Go the Dockers.' There was just so much goodwill and fun that was had here as well as the tens of millions of dollars that were pumped into the state over that Gather Round weekend.

The pride that comes to South Australians from hearing people around Australia talk about Adelaide and talk about South Australia in such glowing terms cannot be measured. State pride is an important part of the confidence building that this Malinauskas government has set about from day one after winning the state election in March last year. I know that on the Monday after Gather Round was over, the Premier was on 3AW in Melbourne. A journo mate of mine told me that when the Premier had finished on the radio, the switchboard lit up with Liberal and Labor voters in Victoria saying, 'We wish we had Peter Malinauskas as the Premier of Victoria.'

It is quite incredible, the national stage that the Premier of South Australia now commands, which I do not think we have seen on this level for many years. The Premier needs to be commended for the hands-on involvement that he has. We have gone from a Premier who said, 'I don't get involved in the decision-making because I would never get any work done.' That was the attitude of the member for Dunstan, the former Premier of South Australia, towards doing things.

Let us look at what happened in the major events area. We had built it up. I had five years as tourism minister, and we had built it up. We had doubled the visitor economy in South Australia from $3.9 billion to $8 billion in those five years. What we had done was really made sure that we got behind the tourism operators in South Australia. We increased jobs, and of course the jobs in the visitor economy are not just in Adelaide: they are right across regional South Australia as well. That is why it is such an important sector.

We had built up amazing events, some one-off, like the Anthony Mundine versus Danny Green fight down at Adelaide Oval. What a fantastic night that was. That was something we had not seen in Adelaide ever, and it probably will not be seen in Australia for a long, long time. Again, it was those sorts of events that turned the minds of people around Australia to Adelaide. The focus was on Adelaide. We built up the Adelaide Fashion Festival; the Liberal government came in and killed it off. We went out and worked really hard to get the Women's Australian Open golf here to South Australia; the Liberals killed it off.

We went out and grew the Adelaide 500 motor race. I could not believe it: I was driving down the expressway, it would have been in 2019, and Brad Jones, the director of Brad Jones Racing, who has four cars in the Supercars, rang me and said, 'Have you heard that the Libs are going to get rid of the Adelaide 500?'

I said, 'You're kidding, that's crazy. As if they would do that.' But, sure enough, some public servants decided that it was not a good idea, that it was all a little bit hard to run the Adelaide 500. They recommended that to the then Premier and, instead of getting in there and fighting for the people of South Australia and maintaining something that this state has always loved, he just took on the public servants' point of view and said, 'Yes, let's get rid of it.'

The NRL used to have a game between the Sydney Roosters and the Melbourne Storm here at Adelaide Oval. That was a fixture we fought hard to get because we know that people will travel from Sydney, will travel from Melbourne, to come and watch NRL here. As well as that, you are supporting a sport at the grassroots level, and we all know that 'you can't be if you can't see'. If you have some of the best rugby league players in Australia coming in once a year from Sydney and Melbourne to play here at Adelaide Oval, that is a good thing to diversify the sports we all play and watch in South Australia.

We fought hard to get the State of Origin here, and that was another great victory. I think it was in about 2017 that we announced we were going to have the State of Origin here. The first one was delayed a little bit because of COVID, but in two weeks from today we will see the State of Origin return here to South Australia—another great investment, another great initiative of the Labor Party, because that is what we do. Like those respondents to the Business SA survey, we get the value of major events.

I have to say we have a few big announcements to come in the major event space over the coming months, some of them massive and some of them important strategically. That means there will be some in the regions, and there will be some that might give us the opportunity to sell ourselves as an education state. We can market into other parts of Australia, other parts of the world, by having certain events here in South Australia.

We are taking a whole-of-government approach. Most of it is about heads on beds or the impact on the visitor economy, but sometimes we look for other key indicators. One example of that is the 10 test matches we have organised between India and Australia. Back in late November or early December, we had five Kookaburras versus India test matches. I reckon you could go back 40 or 50 years to tally up when we had five Kookaburras—the men's Australian hockey team—matches in Adelaide.

We had five matches in the space of a week, and what a successful campaign that was for Australia. It was tremendous to be out there to see Eddie Ockenden, that amazing Tasmanian and Australian hockey player, notch up his 400th game, a record. He was only the third person in the world to play 400 tests at the international level and the first Australian to do so.

This week we are seeing the Hockeyroos, the Australian women's team, take on India. What we are doing here, like we did with the Kookaburras, is really pushing the game into the market of India, the subcontinent, and right across the world where large Indian populations live. The telecast, which will go out live on hockey websites and which will be broadcast live throughout India on Star TV, is really important.

The message we are putting around that is how great South Australia is for Indian and other people around the world to send their children to, to come and study in Adelaide. We are really pushing StudyAdelaide because the largest cohort of students in the education system here in South Australia comes from India. Our fastest growing cohort of migrants to South Australia is also Indian, so we are taking a whole-of-government approach to the way we go after major events.

We certainly support major events here, unlike the Liberal government that did nothing except cut major event after major event after major event. One of the really exciting things I am looking forward to about going out to see the Hockeyroos is seeing Jane Claxton, a South Australian woman who went to Seymour College here. She will be the captain of Australia when the Hockeyroos take on India from Thursday night, and again on Saturday and again on Sunday.

We will also see Hattie Shand play. Hattie comes from Naracoorte and I am in a very small little chat group with a few mates and two of them claim to have been a major influence on Hattie. One of them is a guy called Craig Hole, who I am not sure rose to any great heights in the sporting arena, but Holey says he taught Hattie everything she knows as a junior coach. Another mate, Tim White, is the assistant women's coach of the Belgian team and was the Australian junior Hockeyroos coach for many years, the Jillaroos. He might have had a little bit more influence over Hattie's development and rise to the Hockeyroos than Holey did. Anyway, there will be a lot of discussion on the chat group between Holey and Whitey about who actually helped the most in her career.

I can say, as a South Australian, that I am really looking forward to seeing these two great South Australians go out there and represent their country at Gepps Cross over the weekend. I think it is going to be tremendous—again, getting back to that point of 'you can't be who you can't see'. If we do not have these international hockey games here, what does that say to all of these club members and these juniors who are out there playing week in, week out when they have to travel interstate or overseas to go and see the best players in Australia?

When the Olympics in Paris happen next year, in 2024, I am sure a lot of Australians will be tuning in to watch the likes of Hattie and Jane Claxton playing for Australia and cheering them on. Well, you can go out there this weekend to Gepps Cross and do it in person and let these great athletes know just how much we appreciate having them here in South Australia.

Other things that we are concentrating on in South Australia include building infrastructure. I am really proud of the investment that we are making in my local area, which is the electorate of Mawson. It extends from McLaren Flat across to Maslin Beach down that western side of the Fleurieu, to Aldinga, Sellicks, Myponga, Yankalilla, Normanville, down to Second Valley, Cape Jervis and across to all of Kangaroo Island.

We went to the election with a number of promises—I think it was over 740 across the state—and one by one we are ticking those promises off and delivering those promises. For the people of Aldinga, we are about to embark on the promised community consultation to determine the need for a swimming pool and an aquatics centre in the Aldinga area.

Working with the Onkaparinga council, we have partnered to deliver $2.3 million and 21 intersection upgrades, because we know that we have had visitors to the area who have caused fatal car crashes in and around McLaren Vale during the past few years. It has been devastating for our community. The roads are not technically at fault.

In every case, it has been driver error, inattention, perhaps drink-driving in some cases that have caused these crashes, but what we have to do is invest in making these intersections literally idiot-proof because we are sick of losing members of our close-knit community to the inattention and the disgustingly bad driving of people who come to our area and do not respect the local roads and intersections.

We are seeing a massive investment in Main South Road, something that we promised in our 2017-18 budget and then had to look on as the Liberal Party came to power and eroded that investment. They took what was to be a dual-lane road system from Seaford to Sellicks and decided to have one lane going one way and two lanes going the other way.

Does that sound familiar? Yes, it was the Southern Expressway: the Liberals' one-way Southern Expressway that had the boom gate come down across the lanes of traffic so it could close for an hour so the tow trucks could go up and down and make sure there were no cars on it. Then, an hour later, the boom gates would go up and all the traffic would flow in the opposite direction.

Diana Laidlaw, the Liberal minister at the time, said, 'We don't want to build those bridges wide enough for a future expansion because everyone in the world is going to have these reversible one-way roads.' I can tell you there was only ever one, and that was something that the people of South Australia will never forget: the Liberals' embarrassing one-way Southern Expressway. It ranks up there with another great Liberal Party decision, which was to sell off ETSA, which has caused us a huge explosion in the cost of electricity in our state.

We have the massive infrastructure build on our roads down in the south. Just as importantly, there are those more modest investments—the $50,000 for the Myponga Hall; $50,000 for the Second Valley Hall. I went in there a couple of years ago dressed as a koala at a fancy dress quiz night. I said,' How long has this kitchen been like this? It looks like it's the original.' It pretty much was the original. Well, the original would have been built 100 years ago, but this was a post World War II kitchen. We did some quotes and worked out that $50,000 will get them a new kitchen. So I am really looking forward to getting down and seeing all my mates in Second Valley in a couple of weeks' time—maybe not in the koala suit this time—but we are going to open that kitchen in the Second Valley hall.

At Maslin Beach—I wouldn't wear a koala suit to Maslin Beach, would I ?

The Hon. K.A. Hildyard: I don't know. Would you?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I don't know—maybe. Anyway, I will be at the Maslin Beach Community Hall, because we gave them $50,000 to upgrade their community hall. At McLaren Flat the ceiling was falling in on their community hall, so they got $50,000. At Cape Jervis they got $72,000 to fix up the area and the infrastructure around their community halls. There is government money there to be spent on behalf of, and for, the taxpayers around South Australia. There is no better investment than improving the quality of life for people in their local vicinity. In most of these places where there are no local gathering spots, these community halls are really important. I commend the Malinauskas government, and I fully support this Supply Bill.

The Hon. K.A. HILDYARD (Reynell—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (17:22): I am really pleased to speak in support of this Supply Bill, a bill which will enable our government to build on the considerable investments made over the past year across all parts of government and which will enable us to continue to respond to the needs of South Australians and to advance our state. It is, of course, with South Australians in our hearts and in our minds that we approach this Supply Bill and the ensuing budget process.

Every day, I feel incredibly strongly the privilege, the honour, that I have to serve as the member for Reynell, the Minister for Child Protection, the Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence and as the Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing. Every day, I feel very strongly the deep responsibility that comes with doing so. Our entire government is committed to undertaking actions that will make positive change with and for our community and for our economy. We want to help ensure equality of opportunity, fairness and inclusion for all, and we want our economy, environment and community to thrive.

Through the portfolios that I hold, I am utterly determined to drive reform that creates a state where women and girls can equally and actively participate in our economy and in every aspect of community life, that supports and empowers children and families facing really complex challenges, that understands the risks and deeply interconnected issues in child protection, and creates a community where more people experience the physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing benefits and sense of community connection that come through being involved in sport.

Every child and every young person in South Australia deserves to be safe, cared for and loved. As I said, it is such an honour to serve as the Minister for Child Protection. In stark and positive contrast to the former government, whilst we acknowledge we cannot change the trajectory for every child, the Malinauskas Labor government is investing in the child protection system. We are investing in the future of children and young people.

It is often said that child protection is everyone's responsibility. It is. To help ensure children and young people are protected and provided with every opportunity to thrive, whole-of-government, whole-of-sector and whole-of-community effort is required. Our government aims to bring that mantra to life. We want more people to have more awareness about the complex issues families face, and we want the whole of the child protection system to be focused and aligned.

This is not easy work, and really difficult issues will arise in families, but we are steadfastly determined to help drive improvements that make a lasting difference in the lives of children, young people, their families, carers and communities. That is why to date, in the 14 months since coming to government, we have invested $171 million of additional funding into the child protection system. This funding focuses on growing the workforce to support children, young people and their families and on establishing an independent community-controlled peak body to improve care and protection outcomes for Aboriginal children and young people.

A properly resourced peak body for Aboriginal children is a step that community leaders have wanted for some time. The peak body will represent the voices of Aboriginal children and their families, recognising that supporting and empowering families is essential to improving children's wellbeing. The role of the peak body will be an integral part of how we as a government partner with the Aboriginal community-controlled sector to design and to transform child and family services for Aboriginal children.

We have invested $13.4 million to improve opportunities to keep children safe and supported within their family unit through an expansion of family group conferencing, recognising the strength and love that exist in extended families and enabling that strength to help support children and families when needed. This family group conference will be led by families for families and will provide an opportunity for family and community members to come together with support and resources to make decisions that enable children to be safe and strong at home. It will include opportunities for families to make decisions together before children, for whom there are concerns, have been born.

Within all these programs and all our work focused on the wellbeing of children, we must address the cycles of violence within family units. With recognition of the deep and troubling intersection between domestic violence and child protection, we contemplate these cycles and how we can help prevent them across both the child protection system and our efforts in domestic violence prevention.

In partnership with the Social Work Innovation Research Living Space, we are delivering a training course to DCP workers, to build on their expertise when working directly with families experiencing domestic violence and to help improve outcomes for children. We have invested in the Children and Young Person's Visitor Scheme. In September 2019, following the cessation of a trial of the visitor scheme, repeated requests for further funding for the scheme to continue were shamefully not met by the previous government, even though it was a recommendation of the Nyland report. This funding ensures that this very important function can and will continue.

The Guardian for Children and Young People, including through her role as visitor, plays a critical role in advocating for children and young people in care and empowers their voices. I had just met with Guardian Shona Reid, and it was excellent to hear of her incredible commitment and passion for this crucial role. I thank her for it.

Our government is investing in the establishment of a registration scheme for social workers through a $4.7 million commitment to support the introduction of that scheme. Social workers are incredibly committed, qualified professionals who make a difference every single day in the lives of South Australian families. Our government is hiring more social workers. We have already recruited many of these workers—41 out of the 42 promised—and they are now directly supporting children and families. Alongside this, we are recruiting an additional 10 principal Aboriginal consultants to strengthen cultural competency and understanding in the system.

Our government is focused and determined to support children and young people to reach their full potential. We are determined also to support those who support children and young people and ensure their voices are amplified. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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