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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-17 Daily Xml
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Address in Reply

Address in Reply

Adjourned debate on motion for adoption.

(Continued from 5 May 2022.)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Flinders. I remind the house that this is the member's first speech and that he should be accorded the normal courtesies and respect afforded to new members on this important occasion. In case you do not know what that means: no interjections, please. Member for Flinders, you have the call.

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (11:07): Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would like to thank Her Excellency the Governor for her words of introduction at the last sitting of this place at the start of this term of state parliament. It really is a great privilege and with great pride that I take my place in this house as the newly elected member for Flinders. The electorate has been my home for my whole life and for many previous generations of my family. I am excited to be elected to this position of representation for my community and take up the challenge of being the voice for our needs and opportunities in this place.

Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the previous member for Flinders, Mr Peter Treloar. He served the electorate with passion, enthusiasm and conviction for the past 12 years. His dedication to the electorate and his constituents, and his contribution to this house, is to be congratulated and admired. Peter was held in high regard throughout the electorate as well as within this place, as was highlighted by the words which were spoken about him from all sides of this house. He has also been a good friend and mentor for me; he has always been willing to do what he can to help me. I have been reminded often that I have big shoes to fill in this place, and this is a challenge I am looking forward to taking on.

An election campaign in Flinders is unique, with 26 polling booths spread across hundreds of kilometres, which make up the electorate, as well as the mobile booth, which travels to the far-flung areas of the far west. I had volunteers at all these booths on election day, from the large ones in Port Lincoln, with thousands of voters, down to the very small booths in towns with dozens of voters in places such Wirrulla, Darke Peak or even my home town, Ungarra.

These volunteers were friends, family, party members and supporters who believed in me as a candidate and in what the Liberal Party stands for, so I would like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge their efforts in helping me to be elected to this position. Thank you.

I want especially to thank my SEC president, Danny Bartlett, who put in countless hours through the campaign, helping organise volunteers and spending days in the hot sun with me at the pre-poll, as well as others, such as Des and Audrey and Keith, who helped me in those two weeks of pre-polling.

The electorate of Flinders covers an area of natural beauty and environmental diversity. It was one of the original 17 state electorates that was created in 1856 and is the only district to have survived in name to this present day. It includes 10 different council areas—the district councils of Ceduna, Streaky Bay, Elliston, Wudinna, Kimba, Franklin Harbour, Cleve, Tumby Bay and Lower Eyre Peninsula and the City of Port Lincoln—as well as the local government area of Maralinga Tjarutja and a portion of the pastoral unincorporated area, which includes localities such as Fowlers Bay, Nullarbor and Yalata, going all the way to the border with Western Australia.

The over 2,000 kilometres of coastline in Flinders vary between the secluded bays and the beaches and islands of Spencer Gulf, the sheltered coves and inlets up the West Coast and the rugged, spectacular cliffs that face out towards the Great Australian Bight and the Southern Ocean. Its waters are productive and full of life, with Eyre Peninsula producing more than 80 per cent of South Australia's seafood. It is renowned across the nation and the world.

Port Lincoln is the regional hub, and here you will find the largest commercial fishing fleet in the Southern Hemisphere. The region is home to the South Australian southern bluefin tuna industry. It produces 97 per cent of the state's oysters, 92 per cent of the state's mussels, 62 per cent of the state's abalone, as well as finfish, prawns, lobster—I could go on. These industries are built on sound environmental management, sustainability, aquaculture development and entrepreneurship.

On the land, the electorate of Flinders is equally as diverse. It varies greatly, with higher rainfall, big gum country in the south, rolling hills with productive mallee soils, big granite country with such incredible character, wide open farming land and the red, rich outback land which we have in the far west. Our environment is unique and breathtaking, highlighted by the Port Lincoln, Coffin Bay and Gawler Ranges national parks, as well as many other national parks, conservation parks and heritage areas.

I come to this position with a strong connection to my electorate, with a history through my forebears with families such as the Telfer, Provis and other families stretching back to the 19th century. Like many others at the time, my great-grandfather travelled through bush tracks with horses and wagon loaded for the long journey, arriving at a scrub block, where the first task was to dig a small dam with a pick and shovel to try to catch water for his horses and start to build a life for his family there. I am so privileged to be able to farm that same land with my family more than a century later.

With such personal history and working experience, agriculture is a real passion of mine. Agriculture is the cornerstone of my electorate's economy as well as the state's economy. The electorate of Flinders now takes in all the agricultural land of Eyre Peninsula, which produces 40 per cent of the state's wheat crop, 24 per cent of the state's barley and 22 per cent of the canola. We need to make sure that we are continuing to invest in this valuable primary production.

The technological advances I have seen in just my 20 years of farming are incredible, let alone looking further back. For instance, my grandfather started farming life as a teenager, using horse teams to work the land and cart their produce. Before he passed away 10 years ago, he got to experience a 450-horsepower tractor, which was precision steered using GPS technology. Our state's farmers utilise technology and research to be state-of-the-art, modern, sustainable businesses. As a state, we need to make sure we are doing all we can to ensure that we are encouraging investing in agtech to ensure that we are doing all we can to continue to be at that technological cutting edge.

In my electorate, we have the Minnipa Agricultural Centre, which was first established back in 1915, more than 100 years ago, and has been helping with development of dryland farming ever since. It is an example of consistent and constant research, variety development and active farmer involvement, which is so vital to the future of agriculture in South Australia and should be encouraged and enabled by government.

The previous generations I spoke about were also incredible examples of hard work and selflessness. As well as building somewhere for themselves to live and earn a living, they also turned their efforts into building their community, with churches and schools often being first. As a man with a strong Christian faith, I am truly thankful to be able to have a heritage of faithfulness through multiple generations—especially my grandfather, Reg Telfer, who was a strong influence on my life. I am blessed to be able to worship and fellowship more than 100 years later at the same church as those forebears, at my home town of Ungarra.

The spirit of giving and volunteering continues in my electorate, regularly having one of the highest volunteer participation rates in census data. These people are investing back into their community, building a better place to live, not just now but for the future. In communities across Flinders, it takes everyone coming together to ensure we are doing all we can to support each other through both good and challenging times. You can find them volunteering at schools, sporting clubs, community groups, churches, museums, service groups—all over the place, and often in multiple different places around their community.

It was this sense of community responsibility which first led me into community leadership, taking up the challenge of serving on the District Council of Tumby Bay as an elected member. This led to more than a decade in local government, being elected to the role as mayor for over seven years. During my time, council was able to deliver a number of positive infrastructure projects which put the community in good stead for the future, as well as significant community events and programs which have added to the depth of quality of our community for people of all ages. The people who work in local government are passionate about local outcomes, and I have been truly lucky to work with a number of high-quality people throughout that time.

I have always had a region-wide perspective, and this led to me being elected unopposed by my peers to be the President of the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association, which is a grouping of those 11 councils from around Eyre Peninsula. This role helped me to understand the needs, challenges and opportunities from across my whole electorate, recognising the similarities which we have across our region but also the differences which are inherent when you are looking at an electorate which spans more than 200,000 square kilometres. I covered a lot of that landmass during the last 12 months, and I am sure I will continue to over the next four years.

I heard from community leaders and community members across all of Flinders. It is clear from those discussions that health across my region is the number one priority and concern for my communities. Recruitment and retention of medical professionals is the biggest health challenge for my electorate, especially those communities away from large population centres. Local government has been active in trying to help their communities through these challenges building houses for doctors to live in, buying and operating medical clinics, paying for medical services for the community and playing an active role in trying to recruit GPs.

To give you some examples, the council at Streaky Bay has had to work with the community to form the Streaky Bay and Districts Medical Clinic, which is a community-owned GP practice providing comprehensive general practitioner services for all ages for Streaky Bay, surrounding districts and visitors. At Kimba, the council has been involved with the community to build a new medical clinic in the town and has been very active in trying to attract a GP for a number of years. Wudinna, for instance, is currently without a GP. This issue is across my whole electorate.

I was encouraged when the former government developed and introduced the Rural Generalist Program, which is designed to provide a training pathway for medical professionals to develop the diverse skill set necessary to practise in regional areas. This training program is vital for us to build the long-term capacity, which we need for our communities to be sustainable. However, short-term solutions really need to be put in place as well. The current arrangements for our smaller regional centres are not working, and we need to develop structures, incentives and arrangements which actually reflect the needs of these communities. Short-term, expensive locum services provide no certainty or continuity and are undermining the long-term sustainability of communities in my electorate.

Without appropriate medical services, we are losing those who are most vulnerable: the elderly, the young families—those who add to balanced and all-inclusive communities. These people are forced to leave communities when there are no medical supports, and we cannot afford for that to happen to my communities in Flinders. We need all three levels of government working together to get solutions which are sustainable.

My experience in local government also extended to being elected as the President of the Local Government Association of South Australia by the 68 councils from across the state. My time as head of the LGA was one of significant change, with the local government reform bill being developed with the Liberal government, as well as having input from all sides of parliament. It was the most significant reform of local government for over 20 years, and I am proud to have helped play my part in aiming for balance and effectiveness in that bill along with the minister, department, parliament and the LGA under the leadership of Matt Pinnegar as CEO. There are still many opportunities for local government to adjust and change, to more effectively operate and reflect the needs of their communities, and I am committed to playing my part to drive forward the need for such changes.

During my time as LGA president, and on the LGA board of directors, I had the opportunity to meet with and get to know mayors, CEOs, elected members and staff from all across the state and to develop a greater understanding of the issues and opportunities they face. There are so many significant economic opportunities all across regional South Australia, and we need to make sure that the state government is doing all it can to promote these opportunities. This requires investments into roads and productive infrastructure that enable products to get to market efficiently and people to get to their destination safely.

As someone who nearly lost their life in a serious car accident, I am passionate about road safety, especially in regional South Australia. Almost two-thirds of the crashes resulting in a loss of life or serious injury on regional and remote roads are single-vehicle crashes that do not involve any other vehicles or pedestrians. Many of these occur when the vehicle leaves the road and collides with an object or rolls over. This is why the record level of investment into South Australian roads from the Liberal government in the last term needs to continue.

In my electorate, there has been significant investment into shoulder sealing, overtaking lanes and intersection upgrades on some of our major highways: the Eyre Highway, the Tod Highway, the Lincoln Highway and the Birdseye Highway, in particular. The works that have been done to widen long distances of these roads will mean that the margin for error is greater for people travelling along them if they make an error of judgement. As my predecessor in this place would often say, and is often quoted as saying, 'A wider road is a safer road.' There is an ongoing need for strong investment in our regional roads, and I will be actively advocating for the government to prioritise such expenditure.

As you can tell, I am a strong advocate for regional South Australia, regions that contribute so much and have industries that put $29 billion into the state's economy. I was part of a consultation team that helped develop the South Australian Regional Development Strategy, visiting communities and towns across the whole state to hear directly from local community leaders, small businesses and advocacy groups. This work was invaluable to fully understand the opportunities, challenges and needs of our regional areas, and to recognise that the regions are crucial for the future prosperity of our state.

The objective of the strategy was to define key focus areas that can drive government investment, decision-making and alignment in service delivery, reflecting the clear priorities of each unique South Australian region. There should be consideration of regional perspectives with every policy developed by government, especially in key areas such as health, education, housing, infrastructure and others. For regional South Australia, growth and development must be targeted in ways that make our community stronger and more resilient. We must ensure we get the basics right so that we can support our existing regional populations and drive opportunities for them to grow. There is so much upside for our state if we get these policies right.

As I finish up, I would like to make mention of those who are special to me. I do not have a full gallery of friends and supporters, but I have a few kicking around at the back there. It is a bit of a trip for us to actually get from my electorate all the way to Adelaide, but I know there are plenty watching on the live stream so—whichever camera—'Hello, and thank you for your support.'

Those friends and family and supporters who have helped me get to where I am today, especially throughout the state election, are too numerous to mention, but I would like to express my gratitude to them all. I would like to thank my local government friends from across the whole state, who have supported me and who have always been a good source of knowledge about what is happening on the ground in South Australia. I would like to thank my church family and friends from Ungarra, who have always been there for me with prayers and support throughout the years.

To my family, my brothers Luke, Joshua and Isaac and their wives and families, as well as my sister, Esther: thank you. We have always been a close family who have taken care of each other, and I truly do appreciate that. That also extends to my wider family of uncles, aunties and cousins, who have always meant that there is a wide support structure for me in our family.

To my parents-in-law, Ian and Jane, who have always been there for us throughout the years, and my parents, Malvern and Lyn, who were able to be here for my swearing in a couple of weeks ago: thank you for your love, support and encouragement throughout my life, even through challenging times. They, too, I am sure, are watching online, looking after our three little girls for us while we are over here.

Finally, to my wife, Karla—I put this near the end so I can take it steady—we have been together through most of our lives, learning together, working together, raising our kids together and doing life together. You are my best friend, the love of my life, my confidante and you have always been my greatest encourager and support through good times and bad. Thank you for everything.

To my parliamentary colleagues, both state and federal, who have supported me with their advice and direction as I have been finding my feet: it truly is a privilege to be elected into this place, representing my community in important decisions that are made that affect all of us. That responsibility should not ever be taken for granted by any of us, whether we have just got here, like I have, or have been here for many years. I will always endeavour to act with integrity and respect serving the electorate of Flinders, who have put their trust in me to represent them. I will finish with a couple of verses from the Book of Psalms, chapter 37:

Commit your way to the Lord and trust in Him. The Lord makes firm the steps of those who trust in Him. Though they may stumble, they will not fall, for the Lord holds them in his hands.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (11:30): I rise with my Address in Reply for this current term. I want to begin by thanking my bosses. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'I met your boss the other day. He's a really good fellow.' I say, 'Which one?' and they say, 'Peter Malinauskas.' I say, 'He's not my boss. I've got 25,000 bosses. He lives up in Croydon; he ain't my boss. He leads our party, but my bosses are the 25,000 men and women, the voters, of the electorate of Mawson.' They are the ones I get up every day for and go in and work hard for each and every day. They are the people I write to before the election and apply to for my job again, pointing out the things that we have achieved in the past and those things that we want to achieve in the future, particularly over the next four years.

At this election, more than any before, the response I got from my bosses was overwhelming: a 15½ per cent primary vote increase and finishing up about 13½ per cent with the two-party preferred. I particularly want to thank everyone this time around for the faith they have put in me to go around for another four years. It will take me out to 20 years of service to the electorate of Mawson by the next election, which is the same time as you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the member for Hammond and the member for Unley. We all came in in that 2006 election.

I have as much energy now as I did in 2004 when I put my hand up to run, and I am sure everyone else in the class of 2006 feels the same. However, you do change things around a little bit as you go on. For me, those changes were mainly done by an act out of my control: a redistribution before the 2018 election. This redistribution saw me lose 20,000 voters I had really got to know over a 12-year period. I liked them, I knew all the issues and everything else, and then less than 18 months to go before the 2018 election I was told, 'Hey, we have changed the boundaries a little bit. You have picked up an island called Kangaroo Island.' I think the only other islands we had in Labor hands before that were Delfin and Torrens islands. Kangaroo Island is not exactly Labor heartland—well, it was not.

I remember when that news came through. We were in a cabinet meeting at the Marion Swimming Centre and Jay Weatherill received a message about the boundary commission report. He said, 'Biggles, I think you're'—I will not put the word in there, but 'in trouble' would be a lighter version of what he said. I said, 'What's the downside of this? I have picked up about another six pubs, I have picked up another 12 bakeries, I have picked up an island and I like meeting new people. Where is the downside?' I went out with a positive attitude, which is all you can do when you are dealt that hand.

Basically, I had built Mawson up to a 5½ per cent Labor margin from 3.6 per cent in the 2002 election, and then with the stroke of a pen the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission turned it into a 4½ per cent Liberal seat. We were going to the election at the end of 16 years in government, so let's just say there were a few headwinds, but we pierced through them and got in with a very healthy margin of 115 votes after eight days of counting by the Electoral Commission.

We began the journey from 2018 through to 2022. One of the first things I decided to do, which was a little bit of a shock to me and I know it was also a shock to the party, was not to put up my hand for the shadow cabinet. That was decided over Easter, about two weeks after the election and a week after I found out I had won. We were in Hobart and about to have lunch with Will Hodgman, a really good mate of mine who is now the High Commissioner in Singapore but at that stage was the Liberal Premier of Tasmania. I woke up—I had been tossing and turning—and I thought, 'You know what? I have this brand-new electorate. I don't want to be in Mount Gambier, in Port Lincoln, in Ceduna, all those places that I love, as a shadow minister, because I know that my work ethic will have me on the road day in, day out for the next four years. I really need to be spending time in my electorate.'

I am so grateful I made that decision, particularly given we did not know what was to come: the deadly bushfires of 2019-20 that devastated half of Kangaroo Island and the pandemic that we had to work through with our communities. As much as I miss the cut and thrust of being in there and fighting the good fight as part of the shadow cabinet, I found other things to fight about in my own electorate.

In 2018, I wrote to the new Premier and all the ministers and said, 'I have a bit of a reputation for fighting for people and not fighting with people.' But for four years these guys gave me every reason to fight for people and fight for the people in my local area. In their first budget, what they did to the people of Kangaroo Island was to say, 'You know how you get 50 per cent off your rego because you're paying 40¢ a litre more than any other South Australians for your fuel? We are going to take that away from you.' Basically, overnight, they doubled the registration cost of every vehicle on the island.

If you speak to someone like Mike Smith at KI Freight, his registration bill went from $70,000 to $140,000 with one change in the budget. We are talking about a budget that is about $23 billion a year give or take. This is a $1.5 million gain for that state budget, but for the people of Kangaroo Island it was a massive hit to their budgets. Not only are they paying more for fuel but they are paying more because Mike and other freight companies have to put that extra $70,000 onto their costs.

The Kangaroo Island Council were up for about an extra $100,000 in rego costs because of this move. The only person who did not come out and support it, of course, was Michael Pengilly, Mayor of Kangaroo Island, because he will always put the Liberal Party ahead of the ratepayers. He will always put party politics ahead of the job he is meant to be doing, which is looking after the people he represents at the local government level.

We had 3½ thousand people sign our petition at the Kingscote Show and the Parndana Show. The Liberal Party guys told me afterwards that everyone kept coming up to them asking, 'Where do we sign that petition for this budget impost, this doubling of the rego?' They said, 'You have to go round and see Biggles. He's the guy with it.' I think we even had Vickie's aunty sign it. That was the passion people had for righting a wrong. Peter Malinauskas wrote to everyone on the island and said, 'A Malinauskas Labor government, if elected in 2022, will reverse that.'

I am really proud to stand here today to say that in the upcoming state budget on 2 June the rebate on registrations on Kangaroo Island will be returned—not returned by the Liberal Party, for whom traditionally these people have always voted, but by the Labor Party who have a sense of decency, who have their ear to the ground, and who know that cost-of-living pressures are real and huge for all South Australians and particularly for people on Kangaroo Island who already have higher imposts than other members of the South Australian community. That was one thing the Liberal Party gave me to fight for.

There was Main South Road, which they were dragged kicking and screaming to before the election. In the final days before the 2018 election occurred, Rob Lucas finally signed a letter saying that they would match and commit to a $435 million upgrade of Main South Road between Seaford and Sellicks. When they got in, I had a meeting with Stephan Knoll, who was the Minister for Transport at the time, and I said, 'Let's work together. I have some ideas about what people want.' He came down and we had a photo taken together on Main South Road with the wonderful people from the Main South Road Action Group. I really want to commend them. I reckon they are one of the best community activist groups I have ever come across anywhere in South Australia.

Stephan came down, we did a photo and I put it on the front of my newsletter because, as I said, I want to fight for people not with people, so if we can work together people really like to see that. Then Stephan got into trouble from his Liberal Party counterparts, who said 'You shouldn't have been in a photo.' That is when the cooperation ended and the commitment to the project ended as well. Four years on from our commitment of $435 million over stage 1 and stage 2, we still had not seen any work start.

They took money from that project and spent it somewhere else. We do not know where that has gone, so we had to go to this election committing a further $125 million to do the job properly and also to put in three overtaking lanes between Myponga and Cape Jervis. For that, I want to thank the Treasurer, the Minister for Transport, the leader and everyone else who was involved in the election promise process, because I think we did pretty well in the seat of Mawson.

We have a very long list that we plan to roll out. We have $1.3 million for the Aldinga skate park. We have the unisex change rooms at the Aldinga Sporting Complex, worth $825,000. We are going to do a study to see whether we should have a swimming pool in the Aldinga area; there is $150,000 for that study.

We have $105,000 to put in an irrigation system at the McLaren Vale Sporting Complex, because do you know what they have at the moment? They have one of those little tractors that you would use at home in the 1970s on the cable that goes out, so a volunteer has to go down there and change that little tractor around all the time, making sure it is going in the right direction.

There is $1 million for the Tatachilla Lutheran College to McLaren Vale cycling and walking path, to make it safe for students to get from McLaren Vale out to the college. There is $3 million for an Aldinga to Willunga cycling and walking path as well, so we are connecting those two parts of the world.

We all love having students coming in here to do tours, and when you try to explain things to them it is always good to give them an example of how they could make a difference. The Yankalilla Area School students were getting into me about how they needed some shade cloth and they needed some upgrades of things at their school, when we were doing the rounds and showing them where we all sit and how parliament works.

I said, 'Why don't you head back to school and all write me a letter about what it is that you would want done?' I went to the then shadow education minister, the member for Wright, and I said, 'Look, we've got all these. What do you reckon it would cost?' He said, 'About $200,000.' I said, 'Have we got $200,000 to give the kids at Yankalilla to upgrade their middle school area?' He said, 'Absolutely. For you, Biggles, and for those good people of Mawson, you've got it.' So there is $200,000.

We have $100,000 for the Cape Jervis traffic management study. The next one is the one that really excites me, because when we talk about this budget—$23 billion or $24 billion, whatever it is—it is a lot of money, and sometimes we think that we have to spend billions to get the attention of people, but at other times the way you get their attention is actually to do something that is really crucial and important for their local community.

We have a whole series of hall upgrades. I do not reckon the Second Valley kitchen—and I have been to a few big fancy dress parties there in the koala suit and a few other outfits—

Mr Pederick: Show us the photos.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: They're on Facebook, mate. Have a look: it's the funniest Facebook you'll ever see. I do not reckon their kitchen has been upgraded since World War II, when they probably built it, so they have $50,000. The other thing is disabled toilets at bowls clubs and these community halls. We have $50,000 for the Maslin Beach Community Hall, $50,000 for the Myponga Memorial Hall and $50,000 for the Second Valley Soldiers' Memorial Hall and the McLaren Flat community club.

We have bigger projects, like the $4.2 million that we are spending on 21 intersections in and around the McLaren Vale region. I want to thank the Onkaparinga council. We have the former mayor here, now the member for Davenport. The Onkaparinga council did an excellent prospectus, where they basically gave us a whole list of projects. It is like a catalogue. You just go through it and say, 'Oh, we'll have one of those, we'll have one of those and we'll have 21 of those.'

These 21 intersections are not necessarily dangerous for us locals, because we know they are country roads and they are intersections, but we have had a spate of fatal crashes there that have been largely due to inattention or missing that there is a stop sign or a give way sign coming up. The council came up with a very well thought-out plan to upgrade 21 of these intersections. Again, I want to thank Onkaparinga council for doing that. The $3 million bike path from Willunga to Aldinga was also in their planning, and many of the other projects, like the $1.3 million for the Aldinga skate park and the women's change rooms at Aldinga, were also part of that bid.

I guess that is a sign of how you can work with local government. If we want to look at Kangaroo Island Council, two weeks before election day they finally said, 'Can we have a meeting to talk about what our election commitments are?' I said, 'I'm sorry, but we've already got hundreds of millions of dollars to put into the electorate of Mawson,' because other council areas like Yankalilla and Onkaparinga had already spoken to us. That is not to say that we did not make any commitments to Kangaroo Island—because we did. We are reversing the rego concession on Kangaroo Island. We are also pumping $10 million into the hospital over there that badly needs an injection of funds.

While we are talking about Kangaroo Island, I want to take everyone back. I have not told this story publicly before because it was a story I did not want to be publicised, as I did not think it identified and spoke to who I am, and it certainly did not speak to who the people of Kangaroo Island are. It happened on my first visit to Kangaroo Island, after being elected their MP. I had been there for years and years before as a tourist, as a journalist, as a member of parliament, as a minister.

I was parked out the front of the Ozone Hotel, where I was staying. My cousin Mary-Lou Corcoran used to run it. I went out the next day and got in my car and drove to my next meeting and thought, 'Something feels a bit weird here. I must have a flat tyre.' I pulled over and said, 'I have a flat tyre. That one is flat as well.' Then I went around the other side and I had three flat tyres out of four, and I was thinking, 'What is going on here?' Someone had slashed my tyres on the island.

As I said, I did not actually want to bring this up before because it absolutely does not speak to who the people of Kangaroo Island are—maybe for one or two people, it does. When my son, Conor, was putting up election posters a few weeks before over there, someone did make out they had a gun and was going to shoot him off the ladder, so there are obviously one or two characters over there, but these people are not representative. Kangaroo Island is a beautiful place, full of beautiful people and I love them dearly.

I have to say, when I went to Turner's Tyre Service, Mark Turner said, 'Lucky they only did three because we only have three of that certain tyre that you need,' and I was starting to wonder whether it was Mark—no, I did not really! He is a great bloke and a great community man who sponsors the racing club and everything else over on the island. But it was a little bit of a wake-up call because I was thinking, 'I know they didn't vote for me,' I think we only got about 22 per cent of the vote on the island in that 2018 election, 'but surely we can be friends. We are going to have to work together for the next four years'.

I had a lot of meetings on that trip, but on my next trip over I met with the progress associations—Baudin Beach has one, American River has one, Penneshaw has one—and I turned up and they said, 'What are you doing here? We have never had a state MP come here. We do not even get the local councillors coming to our meetings.' I said, 'I am just here to introduce myself so that we can get to know what your issues are and so that you know you can be comfortable, if you have any issues that you want to raise, that you can just give us a call or send me an email.'

I said, 'But the main reason I am here is to show you that I do not have red horns and a tail. I am not a communist. I am from the Labor Party and no-one in my family ever voted for the Labor Party,' although dad did say he voted for Des Corcoran because Des was a good bloke who always worked hard for our area. That is all I have ever tried to do: just turn up, front up. It does not matter who people vote for; if they are your constituents, it gets back to the fact that they are one of your 25,000 bosses. We all get on well, even if we have a difference of opinion in who we vote for and the party that we support.

I was building this relationship with the people of Kangaroo Island and then we had the bushfires of 2019-2020. That was a devastating time for the island. What I learned from the Wangary fires back in 2005, before I was a member of parliament when I was Pat Conlon's Chief of Staff and he was the Minister for Emergency Services, was that you have to be a big government. You have to get in there and wrap your arms around the community and find out what it is that they want, and you help in any way you possibly can.

I basically said to my partner, Karen, 'I am going to be on the island, on and off, for as long as it takes.' I went over there with my swag, camped out at Parndana, and a lot of times ended up in the evacuation centres with lots of other islanders and visitors to the island. It was a really scary time for everyone on the island. There was so much pressure on everyone. Those fires burned for four or five weeks; it was a terrible time. You would think you had survived because they would come at you from the north, they would come at you from the west, they would come at you from the south, and then three weeks later they would knock you down and destroy your house from the east. It was a really difficult time.

I do not think I have ever been closer to a community than during those times. I saw the level of inaction from government. They put a person in charge of the fire recovery who said, 'We are going to wait until the fires are out to ask people what they want done. Rather than do things to them, we are going to do things with them,' and we said, 'But it is going to take four weeks to put the fires out.' I know from my experience in 2005 that people wanted generators. They wanted generators so that they could get back out on their property. All they had left was the soil where their house used to stand, and to get people out there is a big part of the grieving process.

In Wangary, we gave them shipping containers with wheelbarrows, generators, portaloos, toilet paper, gloves, shovels and all those sorts of things that can help people do that. You are staying with your friends, you are staying with your family, which is lovely—people are opening up their houses, 'Come and stay with us'—but sometimes you just want to bawl your eyes out, or you just want to hug your wife or your kids. We did not have these places cleaned up for over 100 days, so every time someone went back out to their farm, it was just the crumpled ruins of what was their family home. That is not good enough. That is why I was quite outspoken during that period.

We got $130,000 donated through five businesses on Kangaroo Island that sell generators. Mates of mine in business on the mainland rang up and bought a generator for them, including patients of my mate Dr Michael Reid down in McLaren Vale. The Labor Party is not the flavour that he votes for, but he likes what I do in the local area. He sent an email to 10 or 12 of his winemaking clients who have a bit of coin and said, 'If you don't buy one of these $2½ thousand generators, your next examination is going to be very painful.' We had $25,000 worth of generators from there. AHA chipped in $35,000 and BankSA chipped in about $35,000, as well as a lot of other business mates of mine.

As to two-way radios: when you are out fighting fires—I know the member for Hammond has a farm firefighting unit—when you get out there and it is a bunch of white Hilux utes it is pretty hard to tell who is who or talk to each other. We had someone on the island whose husband had a farm fire unit. She contacted me on New Year's Eve 2019 into 2020 and said, 'These guys can't communicate with each other, so can we get some two-way radios from the government?' I said, 'You're dreaming. They might have them to you by June when it's pouring with rain, but you need them straightaway.'

She said, 'What are you going to do?' I said, 'Let me think about it.' I put up a thing on Facebook and said, 'These guys are getting around there with no communication. You can ring Jamieson Marine on Kangaroo Island and donate $250 and they will make sure a two-way radio gets to a farm fire unit.' It was as simple as that, and 161 two-way radios were donated. We know they saved lives. I heard one of the farmers interviewed on ABC radio on the morning of 4 January, the day after the worst of the fires, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He and his daughter were trapped, and he could talk to people and they could get him out of where he was.

Another person told me that the only thing that kept him sane during the enormous noise, heat and fear that came with that fire was hearing his mates' voices over the radio. That is what governments are meant to do. That is what local members are meant to do, to be in there and roll up their sleeves. 'I don't hold a hose'? You do not have to hold a hose. I never held a hose, but I did a lot of good things for the local area because I listened to what it was that they wanted me to do.

Based on that, people on the island saw that they had someone as their local rep who would go the extra yard for them, who would stand up for them, who would fight for them. I am very grateful to those people on Kangaroo Island who voted overwhelmingly for my return as their local member. I was so delighted. I was getting a bit emotional, I have to say, on election night when I saw those figures come in. There are four booths on the island and it was four out of four. We won those booths. We had never won any of them before.

That restored my faith in the political system. The people always should come before the party when you are a representative in this place and when you get in there and do the right thing. That is not to say that I did not have enormous support from everyone in my party during those times—in fact, over the whole four years. The shadow cabinet came over to Kangaroo Island. They met with locals who had been affected. They got out and worked out what they could do in their portfolio areas that would make it a better place.

I want to thank them for the empathy that they showed, for the hard work and understanding that they showed, which no doubt really helped my connection with the local people on Kangaroo Island. The people in Aldinga, Second Valley and Yankalilla also noticed what was happening over there. I think something that you need to do is just work really hard day in, day out. It does not have to be a disaster: you just have to be there to listen to people.

We had things like the proposition to dump PFAS in McLaren Vale. McLaren Vale would be the last place in the world where you would scrape all the PFAS soil off Air Force bases around Australia, put it in trucks, bring it and dump it in our area in landfill. We have $850 million in thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses connected to food, wine and tourism. Why would you destroy all that by dumping PFAS there We had meetings there where we had 350 to 400 people come to those meetings in a time of COVID.

I want to pay tribute to Amy Williams and her family. Amy ran for the Liberal Party and she did a great job as a candidate and we did not have a cross word. In fact, we had a beer together at five past six on election night and we just said, 'Cheers to democracy,' because there was not a cross word for the whole thing. We were on the pre-poll booth. My family was there and Amy's family was there: Jill, her mum, and Ian, her dad; Stephen, her partner; my sister Toni and her husband, Roger; and my son, Conor, and his partner, Hannah, were all there.

My dad was a stock agent and he used to buy and sell cows for people down along the Fleurieu, so he knew the Williams family well. I think we always have to remind people that, while you might see some conflict, you might see some fighting at certain levels, that is not how we have to operate. We can have differences in opinion, but at the end of the day we are all human beings who put a hand up to try and do a better job.

I want to thank my staff, who work really hard in the electoral office, because I always say there is not much point in me hanging out in the office because you guys are probably already voting for me, I need to be out and about in the electorate, and I have 6,000 square kilometres to be out and about in. So I want to thank Jazz and Erin and Mel and Darry who have done such a great job over the past four years and to the trainees that we had during that past four years: Courtney, who is still with us, Jess and to Brooke as well. They work really hard and they are the first point of contact for a lot of people who are in trouble or who want some help with something, so I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart.

To the volunteers: people like Kerrod Trott, Leo Sexton, Maureen and Ray on Kangaroo Island. I look at someone like Leo Sexton who has been a Labor supporter, as has Maureen, all their lives. They live on Kangaroo Island, and it was great when we had the declaration of the poll. As the winning candidate, you get to decide where that is, and we had it in Parndana at the pub there, with Ted Chapman looking down from the Kangaroo Island Shearers Hall of Fame, a picture of him with a singlet on, shearing a sheep. Ted was looking down on us as we celebrated the victory in the seat of Mawson.

I wanted to have it in Parndana, and the Electoral Commission was great because they accommodated me by sending over the returning officer to do it there. I wanted to do it there because out of every part of the electorate no part was hit harder in that four-year period than Parndana and the surrounding farms, so it was really important that we did that. To have Leo there and Maureen, who were just cock-a-hoop that their guys finally won. It was a bit like being a Melbourne supporter when they won the flag last year, I think.

I want to thank my family, my partner Karen, who is always there for me, and I am batting way out of my league: she is an absolute ripper. I want to thank Karen for being so beautiful, for being so caring, for just being a wonderful human being, and my son, Conor, who has been the brains of the operation since he was four years old back in 2004, when I first stood.

He was giving me all the advice back then. He has been my campaign manager for the past two elections, including that unwinnable 2018 one and then he backed it up in 2022 to give us the biggest swing of any seat I think in the state. He has only just turned 24, he just graduated last week from Adelaide Uni with degrees in economics and international studies and he is fantastic.

He had his partner with him this time, Hannah, who comes from the northern beaches of Sydney, which is a little bit like Kangaroo Island. They are traditionally pretty strong Liberal lands up there, but her dad, Jeff, is a schoolteacher and he has been handing out for the Labor Party up there every election he has been alive. People like Jeff are the people we salute in the Australian Labor Party, people who go and do the hard yards.

I want to thank my sisters, Toni and Jacinta, and their partners, Roger and Wayne, and my nephew Zach, who came down from Brisbane as well to hand out on election day. By the end of the day he was so sunburnt that he could not see where his skin finished and the red Labor T-shirt started. He was at Sellicks Beach all day, where I think we ended up with 73 per cent of the vote, so he did an amazing job. I want to thank another family member, a family member who came to us unexpectedly, and that is Dusty the Kangaroo Island kelpie.

Dusty is symbolic of those bushfires. He is symbolic of survival. He is symbolic of the hope that comes out of a bushfire. He and I have been to every primary school in the electorate, and we sit and read a book about bushfires written by an author and a mum who lives on Kangaroo Island. He came out with a beer—Dusty Draught—to raise money for the farm firefighting units to get protective gear for those people to go with the two-way radios.

During COVID, he was a companion and a friend to everyone in the area but, most importantly, to older people who could not see their kids or their grandkids and were isolated. Each day they would talk with Dusty and say, 'You're the only thing that gives us a laugh.' I know he does not like the member for Wright's dog—he thinks it is a cat. He sledges me and he sledges our cat, Aliska, who he calls Patrick, and he sledges the member for Wright's dog, who he calls a cat. But he has very good credentials, and he is a genuine, loving dog, and we love Dusty.

Time expired.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Brown): Before I call the member for Playford, I remind the house that this is the member's first speech and that he should be accorded the normal courtesies and respect afforded to new members on this important occasion.

Mr FULBROOK (Playford) (12:00): Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker. I congratulate you on your appointment. While the Speaker is unavailable today, the elevation of an independent Speaker is significant, and I wish him all the best in his recovery and continuing in his role.

I was honoured to hear the Governor's speech and am delighted to play my role in the delivery of the agenda she so eloquently outlined. As Her Excellency is relatively new to the position, I also wish her all the very best in her very important role. I thank the previous member for Playford for his outstanding service and support. The wonderful thing is he still sits in this chamber, albeit in the Speaker's chair, and will continue to be outstanding as the new member for Florey. Noting that the member for Ramsay previously represented parts of my constituency, her stellar work must also not go unnoticed, nor the support of her staff and her team that were given to me during the campaign.

This is going to be a long speech. It is not lost on me that few have the opportunity and honour to tell their story. I thank the people of Playford for this privilege and aim to do justice to the many wonderful people I mention today.

This begins with our new Premier. It is an honour to be part of his team. To me, the most enduring quality of his leadership is he will never ask anyone to do something he is not prepared to do himself. Like every good leader, he leads by example. I have been fortunate to work for the new Deputy Premier. She is one of the most intelligent people I have met and is our best bet in addressing numerous environmental issues that we face.

As a migrant, it is a true honour to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Kaurna people, and I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I also acknowledge that the electorate of Playford is on Kaurna land and will respect this while performing my duties as its local member of parliament.

My time in the Northern Territory compels me to place on record that actions speak much louder than words. While I believe in the importance of sincerity, the opportunities before this parliament are pivotal to Aboriginal Australians. May we lead by example in enshrining a meaningful voice to them in the hope that it can lead to a brighter future for us all together.

It is an honour to stand in this chamber as a rich man. These words are in part borrowed from the late Max Jelly, a loving father, husband, grandfather, soldier and friend to many, including me. I have been fortunate to have grown up in a household full of love and to have wonderful friends and now a beautiful family, making me also wealthy.

I realised this when I was much younger and under sad circumstances. As a young man, I visited Max in hospital, knowing his time was coming to an end. Almost 20 years ago, he held my hand and quietly told me he was dying a rich man. As I became incoherent, he explained that his wealth had nothing to do with the accumulation of money and all to do with the love he had encountered along the way. I cannot pinpoint the exact time I decided politics was for me, but I do know from that moment his life took on much greater meaning.

While I do not think red was his political flavour, I begin by placing the memory of Max Jelly on Hansard as my way of saying thanks. I do not expect many of you here to know him but see it as proof that if you are decent to people you will be remembered long after you are gone. Despite many difficult chapters in his life, he could always find reasons to smile. He was the closest thing I knew to a hero. We have all met people like him: they are real, they are amongst us and they make everything better just by being themselves. In a world where the superficial gains respect over substance, I choose his memory and understanding on wealth as a first clue in who the people of Playford have sent to this chamber.

It is not lost on me how much of an honour it has been to have been elected alongside seven talented women to the Labor camp. With their strength in numbers and as individuals not only can we begin to rewrite a wrong, but we are all winners when the parliament better represents the people who elect them. Our next challenge must be the representation of a greater cross-section of the many ethnic communities that mould as one to make us all Australians. As a representative of one of the most multicultural electorates in South Australia I found no shortage of future leaders ready to rise to the occasion.

The origins of my values go back to Europe, namely, England and Poland. During the Second World War my maternal grandfather, Wadek Krzton, who served in the Polish Army and later worked in London, met my grandmother, Marjorie Hyde. The two got engaged before Wadek went back to Poland in 1947. Marjorie joined him once she turned 21 in 1948, and my mum, Elizabeth, was born the following year. While their marriage of 29 years was a happy one, tragically in 1975 Wadek went missing and was never found. Marjie, as we subsequently called her, returned to England. Despite her hardship, she always remained faithful to fairness and being a champion of the have-nots.

I fondly remember watching question time with her during visits to England, observing her shout at the television and yearning for the chance to give Mrs Thatcher a piece of her mind. I became fascinated by the ritual and, as time went by, our little talks evolved into a 30-year political discussion. Towards the end of her eventful life, she moved to Adelaide. By Christmas 2020, whispers were emerging of my being the candidate for Playford. At the same time, it seemed clear that her health was going downhill. While I was asked to keep quiet, I confess that before I said my final goodbyes, I bent the rules a tiny bit and shared my secret with her. My final memory of Marjie was that as I left the room, despite her fading health, she had a great sense of satisfaction on her face.

My dad, John, not only shares my name but also hails from the town of Reading in England, where I was also born. Growing up as a young boy in the Second World War there could be no denying this chapter had a profound effect on him and his rather large bookcase. I never met my grandfather George. He was one of many born in the late 19th century who had been disrespected as a soldier, worker and tenant. What set his generation apart was the traction they made in standing up to the lorded gentry and saying enough was enough. He deserves much more than these few words, but close to 50 years after his death, in a distant land, I think he would appreciate knowing that his blood flows through this Labor member of parliament.

By the time I was born in 1980, the wrecking ball known as Thatcherism was in full swing. The erosion of the welfare state was started by an individual who proudly proclaimed that there was no such thing as society. Realising there was more to come, my parents decided a better future awaited me and my sister, Jayne, in South Australia. On a slight segue, during this campaign my dear friend and long-term supporter Paul Isbel pointed out to me the irony of Thatcherism. Despite its endeavours, it succeeded in creating another Labor MP, albeit on the other side of the world and 40 years later.

Starting a new life in a distant land is a bold step. My parents had never set foot in Australia and, like so many migrant families I met during my campaign, their bravery was rewarded. While family was left behind, mum and dad made the right decision to migrate, and I cannot thank them enough.

I think the lure of good wine brought them to Adelaide, where we lived in migrant flats in Ascot Park for 12 months. While basic, even as a toddler I remember these being happy times as we surrounded ourselves with other families, who became what dad described as our plastic uncles and aunties. Families such as the Masons, Pietrowskas, Luczaks and the immortally flamboyant Uncle David helped fill voids in our lives that are as meaningful today as they were 40 years ago.

Settling in a new country with just the four of us meant no casual visits to cousins, no babysitting from grandparents or being led astray by a rogue uncle. It was just the four of us. It has taken a few years for us to realise and, while I know they will challenge every word I say, we have been proud and resilient and our closeness means we are difficult to break. I can only imagine how much harder it is for those who came here without a word of English and not of European descent.

It did not take long before mum and dad were bewitched by the beauty of the Adelaide Hills. They often joked of their peasant heritage, which they proudly flaunted when they took over a few acres in Scott Creek. It was a utopia for us all and light years away from the council houses of Reading and heavy industry of Upper Silesia.

Their paradise was filled with fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, wood lots, sheep, chickens, and occasionally geese, meat hens or turkeys. I have fond memories of our dam filled with yabbies, long road trips with my sister, Jayne, or forever wearing gumboots, and maybe picking blackberries, but always watching out for snakes. Across the dirt road lived the Austin family, with Melissa a willing recruit to my misadventures.

Sadly, the 1980s were not happy hunting grounds on the employment front, especially to migrants. Mum and dad quickly realised they were not going to make a fortune and found happiness in living modestly and reaping what they sowed. Selflessly, and as is the case with so many migrants to Australia, they gave away so much so that their children could have a bright future.

Scott Creek primary, the local school of 50 kids, was also a happy backdrop. They say small is beautiful and, with a principal in Brian Yuill to show us why fairness mattered, I had everything I needed for the happiest of childhoods. While I refuse to alter this perspective, things took a turn for the worse when dad began working as a postman in the 1980s. I clearly remember the day back in 1989 when I was doing a job at a neighbour's place for Scout Job Week. Mum came over to tell me that dad was in hospital. I was told not to worry, but he had been forced off the road by a passing car while driving a motorcycle.

If it is a measure of a politician to keep a promise, I am proud to say that for 33 years I have kept mine by never hopping on a motorbike. When bones break, some heal better than others and, unfortunately, in dad's case things would not be the same for him again. He has continually put on a smile over the years despite the ongoing agony he experiences to this day. I know that getting up those few stairs to watch me in the gallery have been agonising, but he bravely hides it under a beautiful smile.

Beyond the physical pain, there is the emotional torture that workplace accidents leave in their trail. Maybe these were different times, but I will never forget watching him take a call on Christmas Eve from the local manager of the post office. Despite the pain he had been through, and willingness to get back to work before things properly healed, dad was sacked the day before Christmas. This taste of betrayal is something a nine year old should never swallow.

We have heard the member for Adelaide bravely share the significance of green doors and letterboxes from her childhood and the member for Elder recounting the brilliance of tinned tomatoes. To me, the image of a cheap, red telephone that never worked properly cannot be unseen. I remember dad receiving this news from this phone while the aura of uncertainty descended upon Christmas.

Events like this force youngsters to consider what they can do to help, and this is pondered for years to come. While I cannot borrow a TARDIS and tell that young boy everything is going to be okay, I see hope as the ultimate currency for those in similar circumstances. May we spread this thick and fast over the next four years.

My family has always believed in seeing the good in everything, even something as terrible as a workplace injury. Cameos in the workforce became few and far between for dad, but, as you can see, from almost living off the land I was never hungry and fortunate to always have both parents around me as I grew up. The reality of our lives today is that we are much poorer from our constant need to have both parents working to stay afloat. Sad to say that, even before entering parliament, the time I spent working has come at the cost of time with my son. While my intentions have been well meaning, I will be happy to join with anyone to explore how working families can give more time back to their loved ones.

High school in Heathfield was initially a shock, but I stayed focused while working in a supermarket for seven years. A part-time job not only put some extra money in my pocket but also gave me the opportunity to grow up. Before too long I found myself in Flinders University studying history and public policy. While I was just a face in the crowd, I was inspired most by Dr Lionel Orchard and his lectures on urban politics. Initially I felt that social sciences were not for me and found myself taking on a second degree in marketing through Edith Cowan University.

With two degrees in my pocket, I heard London calling as a place to begin a career. It was anything but, and it gave me the wake-up call I needed. People go to the UK to see places like Big Ben or Stonehenge, but I could not unsee those sleeping in doorways, colossal traffic and the exploitation of workers. Realising that it was not the place for me, I settled on having a short holiday while pouring pints for a few months. To be paid £4.25 an hour, while the short bus ride to work was £3.80, made me realise there was something wrong.

I could only have stayed afloat thanks to the generosity of Barbara and Arthur Sergent. I am also grateful for their early career advice. Upon my return to Adelaide, I read about this dreadful thing called WorkChoices and drew parallels to the labour market in the UK. Having had a taste of something similar, I felt obligated to ensure this never happened here.

By 2004 I was an active union organiser and proud member of the Australian Labor Party. Within three years I was managing the Labor campaign in Mayo for Mary Brewerton. We did not win, but we were quite pleased with the 14.6 per cent swing we pulled off. While 15 years late, I take this opportunity to place on record the extraordinary efforts that Mary made. Along the way I was inspired by the selfless efforts of party members like Terry and Joyce Hemmings, Trevor Corbell, Doreen Woods, Tim House, Shirley Lord, and John and Sandra Marshall. While age and distance may try get the better of us, I want you to know that I still consider you part of the team. No matter the contest, be it Mayo in 2007 or my own tilt in Kavel in 2010, you gave it all and I remain indebted.

I have been fortunate to work with some of the best in the business, for which I also owe them much. After two years spent as an immigration officer, Bryan Moulds gave me my big break at the Property Council. While we disagree on shandies, cricket and the marginal nature of the seat of Heysen, his guidance today is as favourable to me as it was when I was 25.

Dr Jane Lomax-Smith unleashed me into the realm of political employment, taking me on as an adviser in 2008. Jane is an incredible advocate, with a photographic memory that made her so effective in her pursuit of social justice. She taught me a lot and, most importantly, made the whole crew laugh. If I was not standing here now, I would have developed a sitcom based around life in our office.

The wisest man I know, David Lewis, gave many great written gifts to the world. While I do not think he will ever see the merit in my giant novelty cheque, I have hung on to many of his words. My favourites—'good policy is good politics' and 'politics is the art of the possible'—have remained and shall remain guiding lights. Jennifer Rankine will always be ‘the minister’ to me. I have never met someone so hardworking. Beyond her very special powers of getting to the truth, she is the ultimate force for good. It is a privilege to count her as a friend, and I am grateful for the five years we worked together.

Simonne Whitlock, also affectionately known to me back in the day as SR, cannot go without mention—a true friend and the best media adviser in the business. Bonded by the affection of two overly dependent cats, we survived bushfires, singledom and estimates together. She works hard, maybe even too hard, but her commitment to her work is dwarfed by the depth of her heart. Other great names I have had the privilege to advise alongside include Andrew Love, Tim Ryan, Briana Hendry, the member for Wright, Ben Temperley, Leah Manuel, Steven Nugent, Chris Langworthy and Tristan Sloan. The latter three are still kicking goals in the Northern Territory.

Life as a political staffer is not the glamour fest some like to paint. The quest to overcome headlines and deadlines is both stressful and tiring. With minimal job security, the challenge is not for the fainthearted. It is easy to denigrate, but I feel this is unfair. If working in such a role for 11 years labels me as a professional politician, so be it. I am what I am. I have never shied away from wanting to do the best for people and recognised from an early age that the best way to bring about change was through the political arena.

I welcome recent efforts to improve conditions for those working in either side of politics. I have genuine concern for the staff of the previous government who must now find new jobs. I am also aghast at reports on scandals coming out from Canberra. As a unionist, it does not matter which side a staffer is from, everyone deserves dignity and respect in the workplace.

Following the birth of my beautiful son, Julian, I took a break from advising and went to work for the education department. Working on school infrastructure, it was a thrill to see things from the other side and to apologise for the many briefings I had supposedly made people write. Libby Sowry not only forgave me for my sins but became an excellent boss, and her team were a joy to work with. Whenever we hear ministers in the chamber recite issues with confidence, think of people like Libby, Ross Treadwell or Julieann Riedstra, who spend hours bringing things together.

A wise man once told me that if you stop believing in something then you should walk away. While it cannot be changed, the shift from year 7 into high school by the previous government was my trigger point. When Labor was last in office the department made it clear that far greater educational benefit could be achieved by investing in programs rather than extra classrooms.

As my job was altered to deliver this change, I felt in all good conscience that I could not stay. My wife and I found new challenges in the Northern Territory. For 2½ fantastic years we watched crocodiles, explored Kakadu and ate copious amounts of mangoes while I provided advice on the planning front to the Gunner government.

I made so many friends in Darwin and could not be more proud that one of them was my minister, Eva Lawler—hardworking, kind, clever, warm-hearted and fun. These are just some of the words to describe a brilliant human being whom I cannot help but respect. I saw the good and the bad in the Northern Territory. While it has its challenges, its beauty rests in its resilience. You cannot live there without its having a profound effect upon you.

Family and COVID were strong forces pulling us back, and I was deeply honoured to be endorsed as the Labor candidate for Playford. I could not be standing here today if I did not receive the support and faith given to me by my union, the Australian Workers' Union. Peter Lamps is not only a great secretary but also the quintessential unionist. I know that he would never seek personal acknowledgement and would always argue that he is the mouthpiece for the many, but I am breaking the rules and singling him out for all his support.

Unions like the AWU supported me, but more importantly they continue representing the men and women in my electorate who make this state great. I am privileged and thankful to have been an official of the union and see firsthand the challenges faced by unions in representing members across a range of issues and industries. I commit here to assisting them to achieve the goal of a fair go all round and thank my many AWU comrades for sharing and showing me how we are stronger together.

We often see the union movement demonised for being a barrier to self-interest. Sticking together is a human trait that should be respected and embraced. Many of us only have to look at our ring fingers to appreciate the value of someone watching our back. So long as people care for one another unions great and small will prevail. Any effort to deprive people this opportunity is tampering with what it is to be human.

Beginning our campaign in August last year, I was fortunate to be joined by some outstanding volunteers and together we doorknocked, phoned and letterboxed all corners of the electorate. There is no 'I' in team, and I could not have done it without the selfless support of some amazing volunteers.

My dear mate James Rosser regularly made the trek from Colonel Light Gardens to be by my side. We have been mates for over a decade, and I cannot find words to express what our friendship means to me. While I go off on my crazy tangents, he has always been there to keep things in perspective.

Simion Bugingo was there for me right from the start. The world threw many challenges at him during this time, and he always maintained his cheery, selfless composure. His inner strength is beyond measure. Greatness awaits, and in years to come the most significant part of this speech will be the fact I mentioned him before he became famous. I also want to wish him and Beverly a happy and beautiful life together.

Bianca Merenda moved heaven and earth in support of the Playford campaign. She would have walked several hundred kilometres to ensure each letterbox received its rightful share of attention. Loyal and always there with a smile on her face, I am grateful for everything she did. Munhemul Khan and his band of brothers were by my side throughout. It has been a great honour getting to know him and his family, and I count him as a true friend.

I also want to thank the great Salisbury councillors who stood by my side. Sarah Ouk, Beau Brug and Chad Buchanan gave up what spare little time they had to attend street corner meets and follow up on many council issues I encountered on the way. I have lived in a number of councils but never met such a dedicated bunch of councillors. They are a credit to Salisbury and do an outstanding job.

Tony Pham politely berates me for throwing him into the limelight, but he also knows the value I place in words. He is a very modest, bright, caring and warm person. I have enjoyed his company throughout the campaign. It is wonderful he has taken the leap of faith to join my office staff, and I cannot help but be enormously proud of him.

He says it to me a lot, but in context to the Hon. Justin Hanson from the other place, 'You're a good man, Charlie Brown.' Thank you for being that shining light and sounding board. I am not sure how I would have coped without you and your receptive ear. I often note how others remark that you are a great bloke, which makes me even prouder knowing that we have been union buddies and the best of mates since 2006.

I know I will miss out some names, but I also want to thank Pauline Austin, Allan Jones, Rene Vodegel, Jim Hill, Barry Beechey, Matthew Marozzi, Miranda Mulder, Tully Haines, Amy Buxton, Hassan Huka, Ryan Schumacher, Katie Holloway, Lisa Creffield, Chris and Neil, Aemon Burke, Michael Atkinson, Reggie Martin, Steve May and Josh Peak for their support and encouragement on the journey.

I will not pretend I am not disappointed that my electorate office is temporarily in Modbury North and some distance away from my community. The silver lining is that a brand-new one in Parafield Gardens is being fitted out, and I look forward for it to be ready later in the year. This is centrally located and will serve the community well. In the meantime, it is great to be supported by fantastic staff like Tony, Ryan Schumacher and Pristine Cook, who go out of their way to care for constituents. A special shout-out goes to Sam Dauner for the amazing role he has played in getting things set up.

I literally would not be standing here today without the ongoing support of my rheumatologist, Dr Barbara True. For 14 years I have suffered from psoriatic arthritis, which, if not treated, makes most forms of movement very difficult. She has helped me manage it every step of the way, including a flare-up at the start of the campaign. The gratitude I have for her is beyond measure, and whatever does not kill you makes you stronger.

I also want to thank those candidates who stood for the seat. We may have our differences of opinion, but I can honestly say to Shane Quinn, David Wright and Hemant Dave that it was my pleasure getting to know you. I have stood unsuccessfully in the past, and I want to express my gratitude. Thank you to you and your crews for making me laugh and being exemplary representatives of your causes, especially during the two weeks we spent together at pre-polling.

As a nod of respect that I place in you all, I asked Independent candidate Shane Quinn to put a few words together that I promised to read into my speech, which are as follows:

My father said on many occasions, if you do not like something, sit back and shut up or do something about it…so I did.

I had every intention of changing the world, starting with the electorate I ran for. I was not after big paydays or chauffeured cars, not even pats on the back, just getting things done.

I cannot argue with that, and it is well-made points like those from Shane that show we have more in common than what separates us. We only have to look at Ukraine at the moment to realise how fortunate we are.

In these next four years, I am keen to make an impact on a number of fronts for my community and to work with people like Shane. I know he wanted to see action at The Pines School and so did I. It was a pleasure to tell him and governing council chair, Paul Williamson, that Labor has committed $1 million towards a new gym at The Pines School. Facilities at the school have been an issue for many years and I am keen to see the standard lift.

I cannot ignore traffic, and I will work to see improvements on our local roads, bike paths and public transport networks. Public housing is significant within the electorate, and I congratulate Minister Cook on her efforts in developing Labor's housing commitments. We will see much-needed upgrades for 350 currently vacant houses, and 3,000 more public homes improved through a maintenance blitz. The case for many of these upgrades in Playford is strong.

Above all else, I recognised the biggest commitment I can make is to be there for my community. Sometimes, it is to be a shoulder to cry on; other times, it leads to tangible benefits, such as a new postbox in Mawson Lakes, the replacement of a slanting Stobie pole on Kings Road, concrete medians to slow speeding traffic near the Cadzow family home or trimming trees overhanging the property of Mr Singh. These may be little things to some but, when your back is against the wall, they mean everything.

We doorknocked and phoned thousands of people during my campaign, and my biggest commitment to my constituents is to keep on listening and build on what we achieved during that campaign. This includes listening to local businesses, providing them certainty and clearing the way for their success. If a rule does not uphold a community value, then it should be classed as red tape. Supporting business does not mean flogging off government assets. Privatisation provides political expediency and overlooks long-term community benefit.

While the Liberals reneged on their promise to never sell ETSA or pay consultants $7 million to almost give away the TAB, Labor cannot proclaim its innocence. This is why I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Premier in recognising the past mistakes, such as the sale of the forests, and backing him in, bringing back our trains and trams into the public sector, legislating against any future sale of SA Water and banning new privatisations of public services. When I told David Brown at a street-corner meeting I was proud of Labor's policies, I specifically meant these.

A maiden speech is often reflective of the past, but I ask members: if tomorrow's generation could write to us now, what would they say? Would they thank us for anything, or would they be angry? I know if I could send a similar letter, I would be saying thanks for nothing in relation to past privatisations.

The environment is a huge concern to me, as it is to many voters who put their faith in me. Beyond this but in some way linked, there are two other big sleepers coming our way fast. I am deeply concerned of a future where there is a transport underclass as fuel prices rise, roads become clogged and, with few alternatives in place, the ability to move freely may become a luxury. The sooner we end our dependence on fossil fuels, the sooner we can free ourselves from these future shackles. The Premier's and Minister Koutsantonis's vision for a new industry producing hydrogen has enormous potential and deserves praise for being visionary. It is easy to criticise, but the fallout from complacency is devastating.

Hydrogen may just be the tip of the iceberg for a new beginning and, by embracing the opportunity locally, we are giving ourselves a fighting chance against a dystopian alternative where travel is a luxury for the few. Make no mistake, a new form of fuel on its own will not address this problem. We need to rethink the shape and size of our urban environments, invest in bicycle paths and rail while bringing jobs closer to our homes.

I was often asked during the campaign why I was standing. I made it clear that I was sick of picking up a newspaper and reading how marvellous it was that we have another million-dollar suburb. It is not marvellous: it is an absolute disaster. Housing is not a choice. Housing is not a luxury. Housing is a fundamental human need and right. Housing is the single largest expense for almost every household in the community.

When we are forced to pay vastly higher amounts for our housing, we are left with less to spend on local businesses or to invest in our own future and the future of our children. I am encouraged that since I started 10 months ago I have noticed some parts of the media recognising that we have a huge problem for both prospective renters and homebuyers.

According to the latest data from Demographia, the median cost of a house in Adelaide is now eight times the median household income. We used to pride ourselves on our competitive advantage of being an affordable place to live. Now, according to ANZ and CoreLogic, it will take, on average, 11 years for first-home buyers to save for a median 20 per cent deposit. I have a mortgage, and therefore a foot in the door. I am one of the lucky ones, but the group of have-nots is growing by the day. If we do not make an effort to tackle housing affordability now, we betray generations of future Australians.

Some may think that because the value of their property has skyrocketed this is not a problem for them. I beg to differ. We must remind ourselves that rising housing costs are all relative. If your house goes up by $100,000, then there is a good chance the one you want to buy next will go up by the same amount. If we do not already, most of us also aspire to have children or grandchildren and I, for one, do not want unaffordable housing to be a terrible legacy we hand to them.

State governments on their own are not the silver bullet to solving the problem. We are most certainly part of the mix, but we cannot do things on our own without the support of all tiers of government, along with business and social services, pulling together as one. The challenge with any goodwill shown in solving this problem is that one false move may quickly unravel everything. In a national market, any gains we make locally can be cancelled out overnight by interstate investment, and hence that is why this must be seen as both a local and a national problem.

I also want to make it clear that this is not a call to drive down the cost of our properties. Such a move would create negative equity, and I have seen the consequences of that when I lived in Darwin. The desired end point is fairly clear: we must aim to slow housing prices to allow time for wage growth to catch up, and we need to reduce the cost of new supply coming onto the market.

How we get there will be varied. Arguments around solutions—such as land supply, building materials, new cities, taxation, and public housing—all tackle this problem differently. I have been around long enough to know that there is merit in all of these, even if some pull in the opposite direction to another. That is why we need a concerted effort to examine the merits of every option before deciding on a way forward.

The other problem is a general willingness to want to get this problem solved. This can only happen if all sides of politics across the country and in different chambers put down their weapons and start working together. It took a generation for us to land in this mess, and it will probably take that long to address it, but it will only happen if we all have the will to succeed.

I make this plea to everyone in this chamber: be an adult, put your differences aside and become part of the solution. I made my commitment to Katherine Maurer that I would say such words, but I also say to my son, and all other children living in my electorate, that I am here to be part of the solution. My son, Julian, and nephew, Toby, are in the gallery. I promise to care about the issues so that, hopefully, you will grow into a world where you do not have to.

To Julian, also known as The King, Monkey or Mighty Julian: you are a warm, funny and caring boy who gives so much. Like your dad, you are a bit of a joker—maybe not quite as funny. We have built around us a world layered with complexity. When this has got the better of others, use that superpower of yours and give them a smile, and when things get hard for you, remember, daddy loves you very much. As you get older, remember that I am only ever as far as a phone call away, and hopefully even closer. Most importantly, do not stop being yourself. Nobody can do a better job of being you.

To my sister, Jayne, I have always admired your ability to stick up for yourself. I am even more impressed with how you do it for others. You could easily be doing this job, but instead you have chosen to excel at teaching and make a difference in many lives every day. You have every right to be proud of what you have done. You, Stuart and Toby are a great unit, and we love spending time with you all.

My parents, John and Elizabeth, mean the world to me. Something does not feel quite right if I do not speak to them on a daily basis. We pull each other's legs all the time, and I enjoy every minute I spend with them. I love them deeply and owe them so much. My mum never stops wanting the best for her family. Selfless and loyal, she is always surrounded by friends because she is one. My dad is my best mate, and that is why he was the best man at my wedding. I am glad you can be here today because this win is for you.

During my wedding speech, I had everybody worried that I was going to forget my wife. It was as deliberate then as it is now: I am saving the best until last. My wife, Briony, is a very special person. She puts up with a lot, especially me. The last few months have been a challenge and she has never complained. A lot has been sacrificed for me to be standing here today, which is why this win is as much a victory for her. She has a heart of gold, the patience of a saint and never stops giving.

I have been lucky to travel to many parts of the world, but the most beautiful thing I have ever seen was the instant love she had when our son, Julian, was born. Instinctively, she knew how to be a great mum from the get-go, and I love her for all that she is and what she does. When we first met, she told me she liked adventures. We have had a lot together and I look forward to many more to come.

I cannot stress how much of an honour this moment has been for me and my family. While I think it is important to have some idea of who I am, what matters most is the people at home. I have given you over 6½ thousand words in telling you my story; now it is over to you to tell me yours.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Brown): I pass on my congratulations as well to the member for Playford.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (12:43): I rise today to provide my contribution to the Address in Reply to the Governor and welcome all the new members and the re-elected members to this place. It is a privilege to represent your constituency, but no more than it is for me to represent again the people of Chaffey in the Riverland and the Mallee in this place. I would sincerely like to thank Her Excellency the Governor for opening the Fifty-Fifth Parliament.

It was an absolute pleasure recently to host the Governor in the electorate of Chaffey. Not only did she attend the 65th Mardi Gras at Loxton but she also had the pleasure of attending the RSL Loxton branch ANZAC dinner and unveiling the monument dedicated to the Riverland's rail history. She also visited Cashmore Avenue in Loxton, sharing the same name as her mother, Jennifer Cashmore, who was the member for Coles from 1977 to 1993 and the third woman to be elected to the House of Assembly.

As I have said, I am also very proud to be re-elected to this place for my fourth term. As we all know, Chaffey, being the premium food bowl in South Australia, has a lot to offer—not only through its greater economic drive to the state's economy but through its people: their tenacity, their dedication and their ability to rise above the hardships that have been presented to the regional and primary industry communities that are facing a variable climate that really puts regional centres under scrutiny, particularly with the recent natural disasters. I will talk about that a little bit later.

I am humbled and grateful to have received the support that I did through the election and the campaign leading up to that election. I have given my word to every constituent in Chaffey that I will continue to dedicate myself to their interests and that serving the people will always be my first priority.

This year, some of the electoral boundaries have changed. The electorate of Chaffey has expanded, taking in a little more of Mid Murray Council as well as Karoonda East Murray council. Some 30,000 square kilometres are now the electorate of Chaffey, which gives me the opportunity to go out and explore some of the great parts of regional South Australia, encompassing the Riverland and the greater parts of the Mallee. It really is a wonderful experience to go out there to experience some of the newly maintained roads that were rebuilt under the Marshall Liberal government.

This gives me an opportunity or a segue to recognise the former Premier, member for Dunstan, Steven Marshall. Steven can be proud of the legacy he has left as Premier over the last four years. The previous government's lasting achievements can be credited to his determination and his genuine passion for our state. I am grateful for his friendship, commitment and passion for our state, especially for the regions of South Australia.

Many of our primary industries have done it tough over the past four years with drought, hailstorms, bushfires, the coronavirus, the pandemic that has disrupted global markets, and in particular the impacts that China has had on many of the commodities, particularly in Chaffey. It has also been important to have the former Premier committed to and focused on regional South Australia and supporting these industries. I have been honoured to serve alongside the former Premier and am grateful for the responsibility he gave me as Minister for Primary Industries and Regions here in South Australia throughout those turbulent times.

As a minister, I was very humbled to be given the esteemed honour for primary industries and regions. It is a great passion of mine—not only in a former life before coming into this place but also in understanding the complexities of living in the regions, understanding the complexities of being a primary producer, and understanding a variable climate that we deal with every year.

Some of the issues that we had to deal with, and the complexities of being a primary producer, included contaminated strawberries where needles were put into strawberries. This put most people on high alert when they were purchasing their fruit and vegetables—not only were strawberries a target but it put every consumer on high alert. We saw large amounts of the primary sector, particularly strawberries and berries, thrown out due to the uncertainty. We dealt with floods and we dealt with bushfires: not only as the member for Mawson has said, but there were bushfires right around South Australia.

As a government, I think we did a very good job. It is all very well to criticise and say that things did not happen quickly enough, but we needed to get a workforce and volunteers out there to support and prop up those communities that needed help and support during those times, both on Eyre Peninsula and Yorke Peninsula.

The devastating fires in the Adelaide Hills and on Kangaroo Island were very visual bushfires. We know that densely wooded areas on Kangaroo Island were great fuel for fire as well as the forests over there. There were also the Keilira fires down in the South-East. These fires were just a part of what we were to be dealing with in terms of natural disasters and that I dealt with particularly as a minister for the regions and agriculture that were surrounded by all this uncertainty.

Sadly, we also experienced drought. During my time as a minister, much of the state was in drought and I want to thank all the participants who came to support the roundtable meetings we had, the commodity sectors and the banking industry, looking at ways we could best support those industries and communities that had been long-suffering through the drought that saw almost all the state impacted.

I must say it was quite heart-wrenching to see the effect that it had not only on businesses but also on the mental health of those communities and those individual farmers who were unable to stump up payments to banks, unable to put food on their tables, unable to feed livestock, having to ship livestock around the country and having to sell livestock. Fortunately, we saw very strong commodity prices through that drought and that gave some level of buoyancy to what could have been an absolute disaster.

We also saw a significant number of hailstorms around South Australia, with none more impacted than the Adelaide Plains, up through the Barossa and into the Riverland. Sadly, we saw the Riverland experience three significant hailstorms. The government did come to the party and stumped up support packages to help them.

We saw biosecurity threats: we saw Queensland fruit fly come into the Riverland and then we saw Mediterranean fruit fly come into Adelaide, which came at a considerable cost not only to industry but to government, looking at how we eradicate those invasive pests. The world's most invasive insect is the Queensland fruit fly, as well as the Mediterranean fruit fly. We really did have to change the way we thought about distributing fruit. We had to stop giving our family and friends fruit, and stop the movement of fruit over a very short period of time so that we could eradicate those pests.

We also saw the Pacific oyster mortality syndrome (POMS) in the oyster industry that brought the oyster industry to its knees. The government was able to give them significant support so that we could develop our own facilities and infrastructure in South Australia to develop the spat and grow that spat out of our small farms and then start to rebuild and regrow the oyster industry in South Australia.

One of the big side effects, the unseen issues, were the mental health issues and the suicides that we saw through these very turbulent times of uncertainty and that really did pull on the heartstrings. As the minister responsible for all those sectors, there was never a waking moment when I was not thinking about the people who had been severely impacted, their families, their friends and their community members. I will talk about the FaB Scout program a little bit later. They are some of the challenges that as a minister I had to deal with.

I am proud that I was able to leave a legacy. In my short time as a minister in government, we saw the reform of the scalefish industry, with large amounts of licence buybacks so that we could not only have a sustainable industry for fish stocks but make sure we had fishermen who had a sustainable business that they could continue to operate knowing that the government had brought back some of those long lines and net licences to bring those who remained in the industry into an area of sustainability, so that they could put a restricted amount of fish into markets to hold prices up and not flood markets with large amounts of fish caught, which was devastating not only the prices but also the sustainability.

We saw a harvest extension in the pilchard industry and that not only saved those operators but gave them the ability to supply the food stocks to the tuna industry. One goes hand in hand or hand in glove with the other. We also saw the opening up of leasehold areas in South Australia so that we could see more aquaculture, which is the future of the fisheries industry.

We saw a large area opened up for those aquaculture businesses, whether it be algae, whether it be seaweed, whether it be the ongoing kingfish, tuna or finfish industries, or whether it be some of the molluscs or the shellfish. It is a great opportunity, and I think we are seeing the benefits and the rewards of that opening up.

We also saw the lobster season extended. It was dealt a severe blow by China. We know that China really did pull the rug out from under a lot of commodities that South Australia has relied very heavily on, and we have seen the devastation that caused, not only in lobster but in wine and in red meat. We have seen large sectors that have had to restructure and continue their way without China being one of the great so-called saviours with high demand and high prices that gave our primary sector a real shot in the arm. Sadly, they were brought to their knees once China pulled the rug out from a lot of those industries overnight.

The dog fence rebuild is another great legacy, and we are very proud that a $25 million rebuild of the 2,150-kilometre fence is protecting a $4.1 billion industry in South Australia. Industry, state government and the commonwealth government came together to provide $25 million of funding to rebuild 1,600 kilometres of that fence. It was nothing short of a once-in-a-generation achievement, and I am very proud to be able to say that I worked with industry and with the commonwealth to make sure that we actually got a rebuild of a fence that was falling apart. We were seeing wild animals coming through that fence. Farmers were lying in bed at night wondering just how many sheep were going to be lying dead in paddocks of a morning once the wild dogs had roamed their way through.

Lifting the moratorium on GM crops on mainland South Australia was another great initiative, and we are very proud to have brought us into line with other mainland states. It gives more tools in the toolbox for our farmers and our grain producers not only to develop some of those GM technologies here in South Australia but also to bring in research money. It brings in investors' money, and it gives us the ability to be competitive, more competitive than we were.

We know that GM canola was part of the package but, more importantly, there are other crops that we are looking to put some GM technology into. We are looking at pastures for the dairy industry, and if we can get another rotation out of an annual crop in some of those dairy properties that is a game changer for the dairy industry. It is a game changer for some of the livestock and red meat industries. It was a real turning point, and we are very proud of that.

Regarding the introduction of the amended pastoral bill, sadly that has gone back to the environment department, and I am hoping that the minister responsible will be responsible in allowing that pastoral bill to advance. I do not want to see it roll back to the dark old days. We have to make sure that we give the tools to the pastoralists that they need to advance their businesses so that they can be more flexible and have the ability to be more diverse with those pastoral lands. The drafting of the biosecurity bill was also very important.

The introduction of 55 mobile blackspot towers over a period was a $10 million investment by the state government. The previous Labor government forgot about the regions. They forgot that there was digital non-connectivity, and so as a responsible government we not only governed for all of South Australia but we put the balance into the connectivity with mobile phone towers.

We also funded and developed a number of blueprints for forestry, for dairy and for the grains industry, which I am very proud to be a part of. As a minister, they are the things that I am so proud to stand here today and say as part of a legacy. It is a short legacy, I might add, but it was advancement in agriculture. We know about agtech, we know about carbon sequestration and storage, we know about the future of what farming is about to behold. I think I was able to plant some of the seeds there, and hopefully the current primary industries minister will support some of those initiatives so that we can advance agriculture and the primary sector. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

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