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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-13 Daily Xml
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Narungga Electorate

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:30): I rise to put a couple of community initiatives on the record on behalf of our electorate and in doing so would like to start by acknowledging the wonderful work of Derryn Stringer, who is the chair of the Snowtown Progress Association and also a representative on the Wakefield Regional Council, with whom I had the great pleasure of meeting last week to discuss his plans for a revitalised Snowtown.

Derryn's passion and energy for Snowtown came through in spades on that occasion, and it was wonderful to see all the plans that he had to revitalise that area. It started with the oval precinct, on which there has been some work done recently, including new change rooms. Derryn has ripped out an almighty number of pine trees and replaced them with tuckeroo and other sorts of tree, and that has done a really outstanding job in making the area a bit more palatable for the RVs that come in to use it as an accommodation precinct.

They have also ripped out the old archways, which were precluding quite a number of RVs from making it into the campsite in the first place. In doing that, they have made it a far more beautiful place for the RVs to stay and made a far more practical place for them to get into. I am led to believe that the visitation numbers have gone through the roof as a result.

The next step in that oval precinct, as Derryn and the Snowtown Progress Association see it, will be to move the tennis courts. They have a grant to resurface, so they are hoping to attract some funding to make up the difference to enable those courts to be moved. They want to move them to open up more space for RVs and, again, increase revenue just that little bit more.

Secondly, they want to beautify the entrance into the town. Currently, arriving in Snowtown can be a bit of a bleak prospect, but Derryn has these wonderful plans to plant some native trees and shrubbery and make the entrance to Snowtown that much more beautiful and that much more enticing for people driving past on the highway. He has plans to do that not only from the highway side but also from the other side.

On the other side, members may or may not know that there is a council dam used for some irrigation. Amongst other things, Derryn has plans to enlarge that dam and create somewhat of a walking trail around it, which again would be good for those people who pull up for the day or stay a night and give them something to do, to walk around the oval. He has wonderful plans. I am trying to facilitate a meeting with Derryn and the Minister for Planning. I think there are some wonderful things we can do for very little investment that would have a tremendous impact on the town of Snowtown.

Again, I want to emphasise that this is not a progress association coming in with its hand out for the entire amount; it is an energetic, passionate person who has the volunteers and the wherewithal to secure donations and suppliers with grand plans to make a significant difference to a town that has been suffering, honestly, off the back of an unfair reputation that has come about as a result of some crimes that were committed elsewhere, the back end of which has left Snowtown with a reputation from the bodies in the barrels murders. It is wonderful to move on from that and create a new, energetic Snowtown; hopefully, we can bring that about with some modest investment and some really exciting plans.

The second community issue I would like to bring to the attention of this house is the situation we have currently going on in Moonta. Relatively recently, the gentleman who owned the three pubs in Moonta—the Moonta Hotel, the Royal Hotel and the Cornwall Hotel—sold out to an interstate investor who has since shut off the meals at two of those three pubs and limited them at the third one. For a town the size of Moonta, for a tourism town like Moonta, this is a completely unacceptable situation and it narrows down the options for someone to have a feed to the Port Hughes Tavern (which does a wonderful job and I could not recommend highly enough) and not much else.

Unfortunately, Cafe Capella's burned down recently, and they are in the process of rebuilding. There are not a great deal many other options for people who are visiting Moonta and enjoying all it has to offer, so we need to do something about it.

I bring this up because council recently, at their last meeting, resolved to bring this situation to my attention and ask that I bring it up in parliament as a matter of urgency, which I am doing today. I have to make clear to the council that I have done this previously in different ways and in different forms, but I think a solution needs to be found ASAP.

One measure that is underway, I am led to believe, is that the commissioner is reviewing the licensing regulations to see whether we should return to a situation where pubs are compelled to provide food when serving alcohol so that investors like the people who own the three hotels in Moonta are not allowed to just shut off the kitchen, serve alcohol and have pokies; they would have to provide feeds at the same time. I look forward to seeing that review takes place and the recommendations from it tabled here relatively soon.

Again, at the risk of repeating myself, something needs to be done to provide more options for people who visit Moonta. I congratulate Brent Walker, who I believe was the initiator of this motion at council, on his work, and I congratulate the council. I am looking forward to getting stuck into working with the government to ensure that Moonta returns to its place at the top of the tourist town rankings.

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