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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Regional Community Crime Levels

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (15:04): Today, I want to speak about the concerns of regional communities, about the ever-increasing crime levels that we are seeing across South Australia. As a passionate regional member of parliament, I regularly speak to individuals, businesses and organisations from across our state and these concerns about increasing crime have been getting louder.

We have heard about the challenges that the police are facing in this state, with the shortage of around 200 officers down from where they need to be for our policing model; a need for recruiting more officers to fill the many vacancies; and an attrition rate that is the highest it has been in many years at well over 5 per cent. That is, well over 5 per cent of officers are leaving the police force every single year. More police are leaving the force than this government is recruiting. This is incredibly concerning for the people of South Australia as a whole, but especially in regional South Australia where it is already a great enough challenge to get enough officers to fill the positions in some of our further-flung areas, such as in my electorate.

I want to highlight the concerns of the communities in my electorate about increasing crime and community safety concerns, and I want to speak especially about the situation being faced in Ceduna at the moment. Every week I get numerous phone calls, messages, emails and stories from individuals and businesses in Ceduna about their concerns of what they see as a lack of awareness of the crime problem and violent and antisocial behaviour which they are facing. These include concerns from:

businesses who have daily thefts from their shops;

individuals who are living in fear of their homes being broken into; people who have told me about their houses being targeted multiple times by thieves breaking in even when they are home;

businesses who are experiencing levels of constant vandalism, which is unacceptable: the number of broken windows keeps rising; and

people who are witnessing violence, public drunkenness and experiencing personal threats.

I want to share directly some words from letters from people in Ceduna. The first states:

I don't think that I can continue to come to work every day and be exposed to the constant disrespect and inconsiderate behaviour that is starting to impact myself and staff's mental health.

Another states:

To sum up honestly, if Ceduna keeps declining, I will be forced to close my business.

Another states:

I moved to Ceduna 38 years ago and absolutely love the lifestyle, but am heartbroken to see the path this town is going down.

And another states:

My husband has to sleep at the shop to ensure that we don't get broken into.

Every week I get more and more of these types of stories. The community of Ceduna feels like it has been severely let down, especially by the federal Labor government's decision to remove the Cashless Debit Card from their community. The town feels betrayed and forgotten, and they can't take it anymore. You can see from those desperate words.

I am imploring the Premier, the Minister for Police, the Attorney-General, and the Minister for Human Services: please hear the voices of the community of Ceduna, listen to the business owners, listen to the Indigenous leaders, listen to the community leaders. They are at their wits' end. Visit the community, unannounced, to fully understand and experience what the people of Ceduna are having to put up with every single day and night.

In this place again, I want to reiterate my call for the state government to investigate funding to ensure the long-term future of the Tumby Bay jetty. The jetty at Tumby Bay is unfortunately closed at the moment due to degradation of the over-a-century-old structure, leading to what has been assessed as being unsafe for the community. It is a terrible outcome for both locals and visitors alike, and this is why both myself and the community are galvanised together to plead for action.

Over the weekend, we saw something extraordinary in Tumby Bay. It was an impromptu call from the grassroots level for people to gather at the jetty, and it saw what can only be described as one of the largest displays of civil disobedience that regional South Australia has seen for a long time. They pushed past the fences, the barricades, the SafeWork notices, to walk up and jump off their jetty. There were hundreds of people risking fines or legal charges to very publicly send a message to decision-makers at all levels: 'We need our jetty'.

Tumby Bay needs to have their jetty appropriately funded for the long-term sustainability of their community for future generations. I would not encourage disobeying the law and the risks around that, but this is the desperate position that the community of Tumby Bay are in. I am calling to the government to please listen and find an achievable solution. We cannot afford to lose such iconic pieces of our coastal communities.

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