HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-14 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Appropriation Bill 2022

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (16:42): I rise to offer my support for the Appropriation Bill presently before the house. I am excited to be part of a team that is putting people at the centre of everything that we do, a team that will never stop fighting for what is important: a better health system, better schools, opportunities for local businesses and jobs, much-needed protection for our environment and, overall, a better future for all South Australians.

This government is prioritising what is important for South Australians. With Flinders hospital located in my electorate of Davenport, many of my constituents are health workers. In the lead-up to the recent election, I met with many doctors, nurses and ambos from my community. There was something that they all had in common: exhaustion. They were drained by back-to-back shifts. Many had not had a real break in a long time and had been told not to expect holidays any time soon.

But it was not just the long hours that were tiring them; it was the sheer frustration of not being heard and the frustration of trying to do their jobs with strained resources. One nurse told me that she was responsible for looking after an entire ward overnight on her own. She said she had come home from work feeling sick with worry, knowing that she had not been able to give the quality care that her patients deserved and praying to God that she had not accidentally stuffed up and hurt somebody.

We know we have to get all the elements of our hospitals working well. We need appropriate numbers of staff and beds to ensure patients can cycle through the system and not block our emergency departments, which we know leads to ramping, which leads to slower ambulance response times and ultimately people's lives.

I am proud that we are making a record investment across the health system to start addressing the ramping crisis and to fix the significant problems that the former government ignored for four years. I am particularly pleased that partnering with the Albanese government will see $400 million spent on the Flinders Medical Centre, including 136 extra beds, an upgraded intensive care unit and an expansion of dedicated mental health and older persons' facilities. This budget will deliver more beds and employ more ambos, doctors and nurses to boost capacity across the health network and relieve pressure on hospitals and emergency departments.

We know that building a fantastic education system is the best way to set up our state for a strong future. That is why we are making our investment in education and skills a priority. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the incredible teachers and staff working across our state schools. It only took a few days of homeschooling for parents to really begin to value the work of our fantastic teachers, and it has been particularly challenging for them over the past few years. Even without a global pandemic to worry about, our teachers are challenged daily.

Many students require extra assistance from experts, but right now that is not so easy to get. So often teachers need to manage the special needs of individuals while also managing their day-to-day teaching. Parents get frustrated when their child cannot access the support they need. We heard this loud and clear, and that is why we are investing $50 million for 100 extra speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists and counsellors in our schools for our kids who need that little extra help, and there will be a specialist autism leader in every public primary school.

I have primary-school-age kids, and this is something that is raised with me time and time again by parents, carers and teachers in the schoolyard. Kids often wait months to see an expert after being identified as needing extra support. They often go from one referral to the next, never really getting the support that they need, and that has a huge impact on a young child's learning abilities and making new friends. I cannot wait to see this delivered and benefiting the kids and families across our state.

It is superexciting that this parliament has finally acknowledged the real threat of climate change. The Malinauskas government's first state budget will put climate action and nature back on the agenda, investing heavily in the future of our state's environment. Of course, with important words like that of declaring a climate of urgency comes the need for real action, so it is vital that this government invests in clean jobs and clean energy with the construction of a new hydrogen power station, which will help us to achieve our bold target of 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

I am particularly proud that, as a member of this Labor team, I have been able to secure some great wins for my electorate of Davenport. A key priority of my community is road safety, and there is lots happening to improve our roads right across our state. One project I am particularly keen to see delivered is the $10 million safety upgrade of Main Road, Cherry Gardens. The community have been pleading with the government for years to see Main Road, Cherry Gardens, fixed. I would like to thank Cherry Gardens resident Dave Meszaros, who took me on a drive in his truck to show me where the danger points are and to demonstrate how narrow the road is and how difficult it is for one truck to pass another. Thanks Dave—it was terrifying!

There are often accidents, and it is the residents who live along this dangerous stretch who are often first on the scene when there is a crash. Local resident Mr Nick Villios has been the most vocal over the years. Through tears of frustration, he has explained to me how his daughter will not bring his grandchildren to visit him anymore because she is too scared to drive on the road. Over the years, Mr Villios has written to just about every politician and journalist he could find advocating for the improvements. Despite a tragic accident in 2018, where a young boy was killed, and the road being listed as South Australia's fourth riskiest road by the RAA, it was never made a priority by the former government. I know the community are hugely relieved to know that this government's commitment will see the road widened, resurfaced, roadside hazards removed and guardrails installed.

Supporting grassroots sport is also a big priority for both my community and this government. Nothing says community quite like your local sporting club, so we have committed $1 million to upgrade the Happy Valley Sports Park, which includes improvements for football, cricket, netball and the local bowling club. It is so important that our clubs have a place to call home, a place to display their memorabilia, to celebrate their wins and achievements or to share a meal or a drink with their teammates.

In Davenport, we are also backing the largest gymnastics club in the south: Hub Gymnastics. We will deliver on our $3 million commitment to upgrade the Paul Murray Recreation Centre so that Hub Gymnastics can expand their facilities and accommodate their 500-strong waitlist of athletes. We are also delivering some fantastic upgrades at Serpentine Reserve, O'Halloran Hill. One element I am particularly excited about is the installation of a basketball half court. This comes following the advocacy of local children and therefore comes with the added pressure to deliver it quickly. We want to make sure that the same kids who advocated for this project will get to enjoy it too.

The Happy Valley/Flagstaff Hill area is becoming known for its beautiful open space and trails. Over the weekend, I was out for a ride with my son on one of the bike paths recently installed along Happy Valley Drive. It was incredible to see so many people out and about enjoying the sunshine, doing some healthy activity and also just enjoying their community. I am pleased that we will be delivering on my $1 million commitment to complete the final stage of the Minkarra link trail, which links the northern and southern trails and promotes healthy communities.

We are a government that wants to deliver for all South Australians but, importantly, we are also a government that has a handle on managing the economy and supports an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. I commend this bill to the house.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta) (16:50): The Appropriation Bill is of course one of the most significant bills we deal with every year. It appropriates a large sum of money. I think we are heading slowly towards a $20 billion mark for the state government to be able to fund its activities over the coming 12 months. It is a bill that will be supported by the opposition, as it always is. This year, the Appropriation Bill, the budget papers, contains a number of activities that were undertaken by the previous government but not reported on in previous budgets, and it fulfils a number of the new government's election commitments and contains some other information.

Last sitting week in the parliament, we had the opportunity to deal with the Supply Bill, which deals with the money required to run the state until this bill passes. Next week, after estimates, we will have a third opportunity to talk on matters of this nature, when we respond to the estimates committees before ultimately passing this bill over to the Legislative Council. I absolutely love each and every one of my portfolio areas, but I do not propose to go over the same material in each of those three speeches, as much as it would be directly relevant.

What I thought I might do instead is this: last week, I talked about early childhood for some 20 minutes; next week, in response to estimates, I will probably talk about education, training and skills for the majority of my time in response to estimates. I know that the education minister and I are looking forward to a good day together next week, with some 6½ hours of opportunity to go into great detail the tremendously important range of matters he now has the privilege and honour of presiding over, and I know he enjoys that honour and takes it seriously. I look forward to going into it in great detail with him then.

Today, I thought I might use this speech to talk about my other portfolio area, that of the shadow minister for arts and festivals. This is a tremendously important part of what our government does. South Australia is known as the Festival State. The former government was led by Steven Marshall and, as Premier, he took on responsibility for the arts portfolio. He devolved some programs to Minister Pisoni, Minister for Industry and Innovation Skills, as it was called at that time, and to me, as Minister for Education.

It was an opportunity for us to share across government, highlighting the important role that those institutions play in our state, highlighting who we are as a state, the way we perceive ourselves and the way the world perceives us. Our artistic community certainly valued significant support from the Marshall Liberal government. It remains to be seen whether the new Malinauskas government will provide anything like the same level of support.

I had the privilege to represent the Liberal Party recently at a forum put on by the Arts Industry Council of South Australia. The new member for Boothby spoke on behalf of the Labor Party, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young spoke on behalf of the Greens, Independent candidate Jo Dyer spoke about her point of view, and I was able to represent the Liberal Party's point of view. I noted that the Greens, certainly encouraged by a number of the artists present at that time, had a very significant body of work that they wished the federal and state governments would sign up to.

I noticed the Labor Party spent a lot of time in their talking points addressing how they understood the aspirations of the artistic community that had been put to them and that they would look into whether those issues were to be met. We are talking about the precarity of employment, for example. I note one of the Labor Party's election commitments involves investigating long service leave entitlements. There are a number of matters that the Labor Party has signed up to, some very fine words that would be appreciated by many in South Australia's artistic, creative and cultural sectors.

The proof will be in the pudding, to see what they deliver in government. If this budget is a marker of that, then it suggests to me that they will identify some projects that the Premier is keen on. They will commit to those and they have delivered on those—there are about four of them. But, as to the underlying works that is indeed what our arts and festivals will be for South Australia in the coming years, it remains very much to be seen whether the level of interest is there. Let me go through what I am talking about.

The government had a promise for boost funding for the Fringe in the order of $2 million. It will, I believe, recruit overseas headline acts and do some other work to support the Fringe in its important work. The Fringe over the last two years was the largest artistic and cultural event in the world. It is usually second but, of course, through the pandemic the Fringe was able to continue that tremendous work. It is important for South Australia. That is a level of support that the Fringe will receive as an entity. That was the first promise.

There is a $2 million boost in terms of grants for artists and artistic production. Indeed, the former Marshall Liberal government spent significant funds on supporting artists, particularly through COVID. There are many, many grants programs through the budget for other sectors as well and so the arts sector has this boost in grants. As I said before, there is also the portable long service leave entitlement.

I note in Budget Paper 4, Volume 4, arts and cultural policy and support on page 28, the targets identified by the government for what they are hoping to achieve in the arts portfolio include providing that additional investment into the Fringe, providing investment in grants for artists and smaller arts organisations. That is, as I say, $2 million for each of those areas. Then, thirdly:

Work with the sector to address issues relating to work insecurity and income inequality for artists, including investigating the establishment of a portable long service leave scheme for artists.

It remains to be seen what they come up with but, if I were an artist who had voted Labor because that was what I was hoping for, the way that is worded would not leave me holding my breath for that to be delivered. I am sure that the work, including investigating the establishment of it, will ensure that the department will provide some advice to the government. We will see how they respond.

There are in fact five further targets listed under the arts portfolio for what the government is seeking to achieve. All five of those, of course, were remaining priorities of the Marshall Liberal government—important work, and I am pleased that the new government is continuing that work. I will go through them because I think they are tremendously important to the state of South Australia and who we are and the way we present ourselves.

The first of these is Tarrkarri, the Centre for First Nations Culture. This is a massive project. This is a nation-building project on Lot Fourteen, adjacent to the Botanic Garden where the former government was proposing originally to build flats and then Jay Weatherill, as Premier, proposed that we have a modern art gallery. The Liberal opposition, as we were then, Steven Marshall as the Leader of the Opposition and I as the shadow Arts Minister, thought there was a higher purpose for that part of the site as well.

The idea was that we would have a centre that would recognise the histories and the songlines of our world's oldest culture and here in South Australia where we have through our Art Gallery, our collecting institutions, the Museum and other areas and through those institutions the most extraordinary collection in the world of Aboriginal art and cultural artefacts. In our living Aboriginal culture today, through the work of artists on the APY lands, in the South-East, in every corner of this state and in this city, Aboriginal artists are doing extraordinary, groundbreaking and spectacular work and telling those stories and songlines, celebrating culture. That is going to be an amazing opportunity for Tarrkarri to add to not just the way that Aboriginal South Australians present culture in South Australia but the way that our country engages with Adelaide.

It will be a drawcard internationally, sir, I promise you. Indeed, I am pleased to see that the work that the former government did will be continuing. It received some federal government funding but, overall, it will be a $200 million project that will enhance our state and our nation. It will be tremendously important in the work we do in reconciliation and also as an icon for our state and our nation.

Another very significant project that is underway as a result of investment by the Marshall Liberal government, and listed in this budget as one of the targets for 2022-23, is to progress construction of the state-owned cultural institutions storage facility. That sounds like a fairly dry topic, but I assure all members of this house that at the end of next year, when this project is completed, it will be something that our state should be proud of, and I encourage all members to become familiar with this project.

Our Aboriginal cultural heritage and our migration cultural heritage—the artefacts that form our history and our identity through our Art Gallery, our Museum, our state's history collection, the collections of the Maritime Museum, the Motor Museum and particularly the Migration Museum in this context, as well as a number of other institutions—are not held in fit-for-purpose facilities at the moment. We had an event in 2016 or 2017 when Jack Snelling was the arts minister. I asked in this house whether the government would look into an art and cultural storage collection. He admitted its priority but it certainly seemed to be very unlikely they would ever do it.

This was after an event where priceless Aboriginal artefacts that form part of our South Australian Museum's cultural heritage collection had the sprinkler system turned on on them when there was a break-in to the warehouse where these things are kept. The sprinkler system was turned onto them directly. They were not stored in appropriate cabinets even within this rented accommodation. The opportunity for us to have access for generations to come to these priceless artefacts was potentially denied, damage was caused and there was significant cost in restoring these items.

We owe a duty to Aboriginal South Australians and we owe a duty to future generations of all South Australians to ensure that our cultural history is kept appropriately. We have a collection in the Art Gallery worth over a billion dollars. The fact that we know that a small percentage of that is on display at any one time is normal museum practice, but what is also normal museum practice is that those that are not on display are kept in climate-controlled conditions that are appropriate for the safe and secure storage of those cultural artefacts and artworks.

The collection itself is going to be well in excess of a billion dollars worth of materials, artefacts and art that are stored in this location. It was announced in I think the 2020 state budget as a project by then Premier Steven Marshall, and it is a project that I think will be absolutely significant. Hopefully, it will be an opportunity for the community to engage with a number of these artefacts, which are usually kept locked away, in a much more appropriate manner. It is not going to be something with a major visitors' centre or anything like that, but it will be an opportunity for those artefacts to be accessed by the community as appropriate on many occasions.

Critically, when the museums, cultural institutions and display institutions want to access those materials, or indeed might gain benefit from loans of those materials, they will be accessible and they will be looked after. That is a project that will be there for the future, for many years to come. That was a project approaching $90 million, and I am pleased to hear that it is continuing.

I was grateful to the Minister for Arts, who provided a briefing to me this morning, along with her officers. She is the first of the ministers from whom I sought briefings who has responded, and I congratulate and thank her for that briefing. According to that briefing, I am advised that the time line is that the early works, which were started in December last year, will be tendered soon for more major works, with construction to start in July this year and completed at the end of 2023. I should say for clarity that on the same timetable, as we are advised, we are looking for it to be completed in late 2024 and open to the public in 2025. These are two major institutions, and I look forward to seeing them in place.

Another significant body of work undertaken by the Marshall Liberal government when Steven Marshall the then Premier was also the Minister for the Arts was a fulfilment of our promise at the 2018 election to deliver an arts and culture plan for South Australia—a body of work that was led by people in the artistic, creative and cultural communities and not driven by government but driven by them.

It was the first significant and substantial plan of its type since the Hon. Diana Laidlaw was the arts minister in the 1990s. It was a process that was very heavily subscribed to and supported by many people involved, and there was a very significant level of buy-in from the artistic, cultural and creative sectors in forming those recommendations and supporting them thereafter.

We will be keeping a close watch on how the government progresses the arts plan. I was pleased to hear this morning that one of the recommendations of that arts plan, the development of an Aboriginal arts strategy, which was progressed by the Marshall Liberal government and which, I think, was announced last year, will be progressing and work will be continuing. We will be keeping an eye on it to make sure it is.

The remainder of the arts plan I look forward to testing in estimates potentially next week and how much of that work will continue. This is not a body of work that was dreamt up by the member for Morialta and the member for Dunstan and imposed on the arts sector. This was a body of work that was created during the term of the last government led by the arts sector for the whole of the State of South Australia.

There were a significant number of recommendations in that—dozens of recommendations—many of which were supported in principle and where work was either underway, some of which had been completed, or there was some work still to do. I am looking forward to seeing that the work in relation to the acoustic hall, which I understand Infrastructure SA processes, is still in train, and I commend the government for continuing that exploration. I look forward to seeing what it produces in the months ahead.

I think that the really interesting thing in this budget is clearly going to be in those two sections of the budget: one in the Department for Innovation and one in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet and identified in the budget papers as savings measures/operating efficiencies. The Department of the Premier and Cabinet has, I can advise the house (Budget Paper 5, page 99), operating efficiencies of $65.8 million, $14.5 million in the coming financial year and then $20.6 million, $19.7 million and $10.8 million in the four years after that.

The Department for Innovation, as it is now identified, has operating efficiencies assigned to it of also a very significant state: departmental efficiencies of $230,000 in 2021-22, and I am sure they will be able to meet that; $20 million in 2022-23; $18.9 million in 2023-34; $16.3 million in 2024-25; and $16.5 million in 2025-26. Those two departments do not just include the arts portfolio, obviously, but certainly in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet the arts portfolio is a very significant proportion of the spend.

This is why I come back to what I said at the beginning of the speech about the level of interest shown by the government in this sector, not just dealing with those election promises, but the Fringe and the arts grants—and I should have also included the $500,000 for the Film Festival and a series of commitments in live music over the next couple years. Apart from those, what else is the government going to do, and how much of the artistic and festival cultural fabric that makes up this state and what this celebrates and what we present ourselves to the world will be nurtured and maintained by this government?

These savings in the tens of millions of dollars in those two departments I fear may lie heavily in the arts portfolio. We will learn more next week. I suggested to the minister this morning that there is a very high likelihood that might be a high-level question I will be asking in the arts program on Thursday of next week: how much of the departmental efficiencies from the DPC, which are $14 million, $20 million, $19 million and 10 million, will be applied to her portfolio in area in arts? My hot tip is that the Premier will be going in there to bat, I would imagine, for those departmental efficiencies to be more heavily skewed towards those areas he values less.

We have a sense, from the way he talks about it and the way the government talks about their budget, of where arts and festivals fit in their order of priorities. That is their prerogative. They have been elected to government. They did not necessarily say that there would be $20 million cuts in areas like this, but they are the government and they have to produce a budget. They have $3 billion worth of election promises to find the funding for. We will see in the coming months and years how heavily that axe will fall on this sector.

I make the point that this is a sector that I think came after the election to assume that the Labor Party, certainly by their words, certainly by the words in an arts industry forum I spoke at not two months ago, were going to be there for them. I suspect the truth is the exact opposite, but we shall see. I look forward to the estimates process. I thank the minister again for providing me with a briefing on that, and I look forward to engaging in the other portfolio areas when we come back in our estimates replies in a week or two.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (17:10): I rise to also speak on the Appropriation Bill, and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Treasurer, Treasury and all his staff who are involved in the delivery of the budget. I have worked on state budgets with the former Treasurer, the member for West Torrens, and I know that an incredible amount of work goes into its delivery, so I congratulate them on their hard work.

I am proud that this was a Labor budget with significant investments in health, education, housing and infrastructure. But there is one topic I did want to speak on today, and that is the topic of education. I am a former education editor and a former education journalist. It was something I was very passionate about to pursue it as a career, having been a School Card kid myself, a proudly public school educated student and also the first in my family to go to university. I know the power of education, and I know that education is the great equaliser, so every time we invest in education we are investing in the future of our state and in the next generations.

The budget includes some bold policies in this space that go beyond our four-year term but look to set up the state for our future, including policies like a royal commission into early learning. Along with thousands of families in my community, I am a parent of young children. We want the best for our kids, and we know how important the first thousand days of life are, and so I commend the Treasurer and education minister for this investment in the early years.

We know what a juggle it is not just to raise children but to then go back into the workforce after having children, so this is an important policy not just for the first thousand days of a child's life but also for ensuring that our parents, in particular mums, have that opportunity to get back into the workforce after having children. That will be something that I am looking at closely as part of this particular policy in terms of access to out-of-school hours care and also quality universal preschool for three year olds and four year olds.

In this space as well is the idea of the midyear intake for preschool and reception. I was a journalist at The Advertiser in this space when we shifted back to the single intake for our public schools. At the time, I was not a parent of young children, so it did not really cross my mind that I one day would actually be experiencing this policy for myself. My daughter was born on 21 May, which meant that she missed out on starting kindy and then school that year. It meant she had to wait for the entire rest of the year in which she was going to be able to start kindy, preschool and school. Given my daughter is six (and it sometimes it feels like it is six going on 26), it did feel like an incredibly long wait for her to be able to start school because of the issue of not having a midyear intake.

When talking to parents in my community, this is a policy that is widely welcomed. Regardless of whether you decide to start your child in the middle of the year or perhaps wait for the following year in which they can start preschool and school, it is really just giving parents that choice. All children are different, and they have different developmental stages, so this gives parents the option of deciding what is best for their child. I really welcome that midyear intake policy.

We are also backing our teachers in our schools, and in particular we are looking at 400 scholarships to really diversify the teaching workforce. My brother is a teacher. In my previous role as an education journalist, I met hundreds of teachers. They are so incredibly passionate about their profession. I know that one of the biggest determinants of success for a child is the teacher in their classroom. I think everyone can talk about a story in which a teacher has positively affected their life, whether it is taking that extra care with a certain subject or inspiring them to maybe consider a career in various subjects.

For me, one of the teachers who really inspired me was Mrs Dennis at Naracoorte High School. She saw something in me when it came to English and writing. She was really a driving force behind my career moving into journalism and then public policy writing. It is so important that we are backing the very best and brightest teachers who are getting into this profession because they care deeply about teaching—teachers like my brother, who I am so incredibly proud of, who give their all to the teaching profession. It is so important that we are backing those people who are passionate about education through scholarships and support.

As well as support around teachers is support for their students. When talking to teachers and families in our community, we have heard about the lack of support around mental health in schools. That is why one of the policies within our budget that is so important is the increase in mental health support for students, that is, having a pool of specialists which teachers can call on—a $50 million investment. We know our teachers should be spending the time in the classroom teaching, and the fact that this will give them extra support around mental health to call on to support students in the classroom will be incredibly important.

Another key issue that came in around listening to our community was families with children living with autism, and one of the key things we heard was the fact that it was so important to listen. These families felt that time and time again they had to start their story from the very beginning, talking about their children's needs. That is why the policy we are looking at in terms of a lead autism teacher in every school will mean that that parent has one support there they can talk to and that they do not feel they have to continually tell their child's story again and again in order to get the best support. I very much welcome that policy.

We also know that not all kids in our community will go on to university. There are kids who are just as impressive and as smart and as amazing with their head and their hands, so it is so important that we invest in the trades. In particular, we know that having a trade is probably quite lucrative at the moment, given the cost of construction. We are building five new trade schools—I am also very excited that one of those will be in the South-East, where I grew up—because we have been hearing from so many parents that they have such smart, bright, talented kids and that, whilst university might not be for them, they need a place in which they can fulfil their full potential and develop a really exciting career.

In terms of my own electorate, we are also investing in Adelaide Botanic High to accommodate an extra 700 students. Having visited this school recently, it completely blows me away what a different learning experience it is to perhaps what we all experienced at school with blackboards and chalk—to go in there and see that there are 3D printers in every room. It really is an incredible, state-of-the-art school, and I am so excited to see that expansion occur so we can give that opportunity to so many people within our community to have an incredible, strong public education at Adelaide Botanic High.

We are also investing in TAFE, with the return of high-demand courses, and it is wonderful to see this investment. There was a lot of concern during the former Liberal government's reign around TAFE. Having listened to TAFE lecturers within my community, they felt that it was privatisation by stealth, death by a thousand cuts, so it is so important that we are investing in our TAFE system.

I also want to take this opportunity to talk about a couple of local commitments within my electorate. I spoke earlier about the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. It is very exciting that we are beginning public consultation today on the location of the new centre. We are looking at three locations. Importantly, we are looking at keeping the current facility open while we build a new centre. My street-corner meeting on Sunday was attended by more than 60 people from across my community. It was a huge turnout. I think that really reflects how beloved and important this new service is to our community. It was very clear there was a huge sense of relief that the current facility will remain open while we build a new centre.

In addition to building a new Adelaide Aquatic Centre, we are also investing in returning a community sport, rec and wellbeing hub to the Walkerville YMCA site in Smith Street. This was again a facility that was beloved by so many people in our community. These two sites are very similar in that you do not come across very often a community facility where people of all ages and all walks of life come together. It is so incredibly important. It reminds me of all the beautiful community sporting and rec hubs that I had in my own town growing up in a country town. The fact is it should not be any different because you live in a metropolitan area.

It was very early on in my campaign for the electorate of Adelaide that I identified just how important this site was. The INEA YMCA was the tenant of this site. It was considered an aging facility that needed a little bit of TLC and upgrading, but the INEA YMCA's lease was not renewed. This meant that they had to move out. They moved out in late 2020, and the site has been sitting empty ever since.

There are thousands and thousands of people in my community who are no longer accessing the important gymnastics services there, gymnastics for kids living with disability, vacation care, children's parties and Strength for Life. It was such a wonderful community hub. It was not just a benefit physically for the people who accessed that site but there were also economic flow-on benefits for the local community. I am very passionate about main streets and making sure that the investments we make in community infrastructure flow onto the main streets and the small businesses within them.

For example, at the YMCA site, we would have a group of seniors going to exercise as part of their Strength for Life group. They would come out of the centre, walk down to Nest Cafe at Walkerville Terrace and all have a coffee and a cake. When you times that by 30 or 40 people, that is such a significant boost to a local business. I am very much looking forward to bringing back a community hub to this site. I have had a lot of queries from the community, eager to see this process underway.

Shortly after being elected, I met with the Mayor of Walkerville and the acting chief executive to talk about the importance of this plan. I also took along the Minister for Sport, the member for Reynell, just to highlight how important this investment in community infrastructure is to the Malinauskas Labor government. It was very exciting to look at some draft plans by the Town of Walkerville to see how we might upgrade this site. Recently, I went along to the Walkerville Netball Club's presentation night at the Walkers Arms, and I was very excited to be able to give those netball players an update on the fact that we are bringing back a community sport and rec hub to the Walkerville YMCA site.

These policies are all about keeping people local, keeping people active and keeping people connected. I want to create that same sense of strong communities that we see in our regional areas. I do believe that they should exist in our metropolitan areas. I am so excited that, in my community, they do. These policies are about building those, creating stronger communities, and I am very excited to continue working hard for my neighbourhood.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (17:24): I rise to make a contribution to the Appropriation Bill. One thing that was very evident to me was the lack of support coming up towards the Riverland and the Murraylands. What I saw was a $2.1 million investment into an eminent jurist as the commissioner for the River Murray. Straightaway, that raised alarm bells with me because we now have a Labor government, both federal and state.

The state Labor government have form. Through the 16 years they reigned in South Australia, we saw nothing but political opportunity at every turn, so that is why today I am going to give potentially you, sir, a little bit of history on the Murray-Darling, particularly how it came to be where it is today.

It all came about when we had a federation drought from 1895 to 1903. It was a significant drought, but it was a turning point in how we better managed an opportunity and that was the Murray-Darling Basin. The drought peaked in 1902 when we recorded the driest year. In April 1902, we averaged the driest month in the 20th century across Australia, with just three millimetres of rainfall. It is estimated that half of Australia's sheep population died of starvation and, while winter brought some rain, the state endured low temperatures, which induced extreme severe frost, with snowfall even reported at Eudunda and Burra.

We always know when we are dealing with adversity that it drives political conversation, and it definitely did. The River Murray Waters Act was passed in 1915. It was an agreement between New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, as well as the ACT, to share the Murray's flows, particularly from Lake Victoria. What we saw was an engineering solution for the basin, particularly here in South Australia where we have quite wide waters. It is the delta of the basin, so we have to manage it. Before the lock systems were implemented, we saw that the river would dry, and we would have boom and bust. The floods would come down and they would cut huge gutters in the river corridor.

Quickly, there was the opportunity for the lower reaches of the southern connected basin to have engineering solutions. A lot of that was about mapping and putting in lock placement. That was carried out by Captain E.N. Johnson from the US Army Corps, and he had three teams of surveyors. They conducted mapping from 1906 to 1908 by way of 21 sketchbooks. These surveyors got around in small boats using long poles and mapped the reaches of the River Murray. This initiative was put forward by boat operators. It was not about irrigators or food producers. It was about making sure that we had navigable channels to freight food and commodities up and down the river to create that economy. Locks, weirs and storage systems started to be constructed.

After the establishment of the River Murray Commission in 1917, we had 14 weirs along the River Murray, with nine controlled by SA. It started at Blanchetown with Lock 1 in 1922 and it moved its way along the river. It was not just moving from Lock 1 to Lock 2 to Lock 3, etc. These structures were strategically placed so we could control the water in our river reaches. It moved to Lock 2 in 1928 at Waikerie, Lock 3 at Overland Corner in 1925, Lock 4 at Bookpurnong in 1929 and Lock 5 at Renmark in 1927. It then moved into the upper reaches in South Australia, with Lock 6 at Murtho (Border Cliffs) in 1930, Lock 7 at Rufus River in 1934, Lock 8 at Wangumma in 1935 and Lock 9 at Kulnine in 1926, which is in Victoria but is controlled by South Australia.

There are three types of lock structures and, for any of you who have visited any of the locks in South Australia, they are all concrete piers. They have a board structure to regulate the water level or pool level. We also have other types of lock structures. There is a trestle style, which is at Sunraysia and further up from Sunraysia. They are lock structures that are dragged in and out of the river for maintenance and the like. We also have earthen banks at Yarrawonga and further up at the very top of the River Murray system.

What we do see and rely on in some way, shape or form is the bypasses or the pressure valves around those lock structures so that we can reduce pressure on the structures. For instance, we know that we have seen significant environmental regulators put in at Chowilla reserve, the Pike River now has significant gold-plated infrastructure at Lock 5, Katarapko has not long been finished at Lock 4, and we have the famous Banrock Station or Banrock wetland at Lock 3, which is the bypass. We have Riversleigh at Lock 2 and Paisley at Lock 1.

When those weirs and structures came along, we had to put storages into our Murray-Darling Basin system to capture some of that precious commodity—water. Between 1919 and 1936, we had construction of the Hume Dam, and that took significant time. It was a learning process and came with great challenges. It has a capacity of just over 3,000 gigalitres and, keeping in mind that South Australia's entitlement is 1,850 gigalitres, it gives you an understanding that the Hume Dam has almost two years' entire capacity of what South Australia uses.

Construction was started by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, who turned the first sod. From there, we saw advancement in not only storage but the opportunity to create quite a large farming and food producing economy. Dartmouth Dam was then slated for construction between 1973 and 1979. That holds more than 40 per cent of the River Murray system's total storage capacity and holds nearly 4,000 gigalitres in total. Consumptive pool in the basin is about 10,000 gigalitres, so of that 10,000 gigalitres we see significant wealth for the nation's economy. We see significant food security, and we see significant ecology and environment, and that is relied upon in day-to-day life.

It is important that we get a context of exactly why the management of the basin was put in place, why we built structures and why things have changed. We must say that Hume and Dartmouth operate in harmony, so anything that spills out of Hume, or anything that needs to be released to create air space can be caught in Dartmouth, is then made available. The Snowy hydro scheme not only is a huge contributor for power generation but gives diversity with our power generation.

Many of you would know that a lot of that water is released through the significant pipework, through the turbines, in peak time. It is captured below the release sites, and then it is pumped back up into the upper catchments at low-tariff times. They generate power when they are making a good return and then, when the price of power comes back through the course of the evenings, it is then pumped back up to be re-used. Over that considerable amount of time, we have seen those structures mitigate and minimalise any flood impacts on the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin.

We also had to significantly change the way the river was managed at the lower end, understanding that not only did we have to maintain a pool level but we also had to make sure that we did not allow saltwater in times of drought or in times of storm surge to come in through the mouth and work its way up the river system. That is why the barrages were built between Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong. Construction began in 1935 and was completed five years later, in 1940.

The five barrages were constructed to manage lake levels and improve water quality, particularly in the Lower Murray and the Lower Lakes. Then we saw what we now call an almost fully managed river system in South Australia. It has created great wealth. It has changed the way that the environment survives. It has changed the way that we expect and hope that we will have a healthy working river. I hope that anyone who has significant interest in ecology, the environment, the health and wellbeing of our natural environment, will understand that the management was put there for a lot of different reasons. It was not just there for freight and for irrigation.

In 1969, a deal was struck, and this is where South Australia played its leading role. Steele Hall, the Premier at the time, and the local member for Chaffey, Peter Arnold, were in negotiations. They had significant headwind, particularly with Don Dunstan, particularly with proponents who were looking to have the Chowilla Dam built. The Chowilla Dam was to inundate huge areas of land. As I said, we do not have deep valleys here in South Australia. We do not have those very efficient catchment systems that are able to catch water and not have maximum evaporation.

We saw a change of government over this Chowilla Dam. We saw the local member, Peter Arnold, lose his seat in Chaffey. In 1969, negotiations were reached between Steele Hall and the commonwealth and the basin states that if South Australia agreed to the Dartmouth Dam agreement they could have a cap put on the water entitlement into South Australia of 1,800 gigalitres.

Steele Hall fought very hard. He played hardball and he managed to increase that to what we now experience on a day-to-day basis, which is 1,850 gigalitres. That was the start of a new phenomenon in the basin. In South Australia, we were capped and so we had to make better use of every drop of water that came into our state, every drop of water that was allocated to the returned soldier settlement, those soldiers who came back after fighting the war, those people who came in to build those irrigation properties.

They had to enforce a new management regime. They had to reduce the amount of exposure, reduce the amount of evaporation. They were forced to make those efficiencies, as I said, and make every drop count, but in the meantime every other eastern state continued on their own merry way, and that is when it really did become quite murky.

What we saw was that in 1969 South Australia was capped, and the Eastern States were not capped until 28 years later, in 1997. By then, Peter Arnold, the member for Chaffey, had been re-elected. He was the water minister and minister for lands and mines. He came back and he was given a standing ovation for his stand on the Chowilla Dam. The former local mayor of Renmark also was a vocal supporter of Don Dunstan and having that Chowilla Dam built.

As I said, however, it was later realised the destruction it would have caused. The champion of that was Jack Seekamp, Jack 'Salty' Seekamp. He was a renowned Riverlander, champion of the river, and he just continued to bat on about the destruction that would have caused. Also, the wall that would have been constructed is now the Stoeckel property at Bunyip Reach. I am sure Mark and his family—Luke and Suzanne—would be horrified to think that that dam would have been built on their property.

It would have flooded the Chowilla game reserve, the regional reserve, the Murray-Sunset National Park. It would have destroyed all the reaches below that bank, including Renmark, including much of the Riverland that we all take for granted today as being a premium food bowl of the state. The salinity that would have been caused by the Chowilla Dam was averted and the project was halted, but there were positives.

A 23-kilometre rail line was put there, but that was pulled up, unused. You can just imagine the conversation that would have been had in today's world. The positive was that we saw a fully sealed road from Paringa out through Murtho, right out to the border, as well as a significant power supply upgrade. What that did was create an opportunity to open up that land and to put high-class irrigation properties at Chowilla, and what we now see there is state-of-the-art food production. What we have seen over time is diminished floods and fewer high rivers due to deregulation in the upstream states. That really has taken its toll.

I will touch a little on my introduction to irrigation. I purchased my first irrigation property in 1989, and I always scratch my head about the potential unrealised supply we had always had. In the nineties, I became a director of the Renmark Irrigation Trust, which is the largest inland irrigation scheme in the country and was engineered by the two Californian brothers, the Chaffey brothers—hence, the name the electorate still bears today.

I then joined the South Australian Murray Irrigators, an allied committee to the trust, which I eventually became chair of, and I was able to bring people with me. We needed advocacy in Canberra, as we did here in the state parliament. I was able to grow a voluntary paid-up membership base of over 6,000 members. I must say that the early claim to fame was successfully lobbying for weekend power tariffs, which was something in its very early days.

We then were part of the formation of the National Irrigators' Council, which was a very strong voice into Canberra. One of those defining moments was in the early 2000s, when I visited and met with the environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull. I gave them a spreadsheet of how I did it, although it was more a mud map than a spreadsheet. The consumptive pool outweighed what was actually in storage, and we saw that more water was promised to communities along the river than was actually in storage.

What we have seen over time is the Howard administration put the proceeds of Telstra T1 and T2, about $10 billion, to fund the reform needed to bring the basin back to health. It was talked about, with many hundreds of meetings, many sleepless nights, by a lot of people trying to form something that was robust and that all the states could agree with. From 2007 to 2010, we saw a huge amount of public outcry, but in 2012 the plan was finally given the nod.

I want to commend probably two of the best federal water ministers I worked with: Tony Burke—a Labor water minister, and he was very good; you could have a conversation with him, meet with him regularly and he made himself available—and Simon Birmingham. They were two credible water ministers across their brief, and they actually got it.

I must say that I was very disappointed in a number of water ministers in the South Australian parliament. They were all Labor. I will not name all of them because they know who they are, but I can say that not once did I ever swear at other ministers, use pretty bad language, like one particular former Labor water minister who still resides in this place.

I am running out of time, but it is very visual that we need a basin plan. What we need to do now is look at how we can achieve the 3,200, how we in South Australia will be leaders of that innovation. South Australia has led the way, and irrigators and food producers have been the eyes and ears of the basin. In 1969, we were the first to cap. We have been innovators of water efficiency, we have shown initiative on water savings programs, we have been early adopters of environmental conservation and the list goes on. We have done significant work with salt interception schemes and metering—you cannot manage what you do not measure.

What I would like to say to the current water minister here in this parliament is that the 450 gigalitres is not for South Australia: it is the southern connected basin. I want to make that perfectly clear to Albo—because he came to South Australia and wanted to announce his five-point plan about giving 450 back to South Australia. It is not true, sir: it is the southern connected basin. How does South Australia achieve its 32 gigalitres as its contribution to the 450 in the southern connected basin?

I have much more to talk about, and I will potentially use grieve time so that we can go ahead and talk a little bit more about South Australia being a leader in water efficiencies, being a leader in the basin, showing the way in how the basin plan can be achieved and how water efficiencies can be achieved. South Australia has been a leader since 1969, showing the rest of this Murray-Darling Basin community just exactly how important the Murray-Darling Basin is to this nation.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (17:44): I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill, and I want to take this opportunity to narrow in on the election commitments for my electorate of Enfield.

We went into the state election with a clear vision for the future, particularly in my electorate and for the people who live within Enfield. This was a vision I had developed in consultation with my community in the three years prior to the election, having gone in, in 2019, in the by-election. Labor has committed to a number of projects across the Enfield electorate with a vision of addressing some of the inequities and providing a pathway forward for a number of community groups. I am very pleased that this was roundly supported by my constituents at the last election.

Some of the commitments I look forward to being able to roll out include commitments in relation to female change rooms. To many of the young women in my electorate, this is a commitment to improve access to sporting facilities and to open up new opportunities for some of these communities. The Enfield electorate is home to a number of proud local sporting clubs, and Labor has committed to constructing female change rooms at the Duncan Fraser Reserve and the Blair Athol Reserve.

The Duncan Fraser Reserve is home to the Gepps Cross Football Club and Gepps Cross Cricket Club. Both clubs have rapidly expanded over the past few years, with new Australians flocking to join the Gepps Cross Cricket Club and young women pulling on football boots for the first time. The influx of new members at these clubs has brought with it great success, with the Gepps Cross Rams women's footy team winning the women's division 5 premiership in 2021—and I congratulate them.

The Ghan Kilburn City Football Club and the Kilburn footy and cricket club call the Blair Athol Reserve their home. The Ghan football club, also the soccer club depending on which side of the fence you sit, started out 20 years ago with just 22 players, and I am very pleased to say the club now boasts more than 150 members making up seniors, youth and women's teams. The Kilburn Football and Cricket Club have had their challenges over the past few years but, under the leadership of its board, they have managed to put itself in a strong position.

The addition of female change rooms will provide greater opportunities for the club to grow and encourage the development of its already strong women's team. This commitment will not only encourage more girls and women to get involved in their local sporting clubs but assist in building stronger, safer and more cohesive communities in those areas.

When I was first elected to this place, one of the most common concerns raised with me by my local constituents was the lack of car parking and public transport services in the suburb of Lightsview. I had been fighting for three years to get better bus services for the residents of Lightsview and Northgate. In December 2021, I started a petition calling on the former Liberal government to improve public transport for these residents. That petition was signed by more than 700 residents.

As a result of the petition, I was able to successfully secure a commitment to improve public transport services for residents of Lightsview and Northgate going into the election. I am pleased to say that shortly a Go Zone route will run from the city to Lightsview via the O-Bahn. This will help households by reducing the need for them to rely on multiple motor vehicles, and it will provide students, workers and seniors with greater and easier access to the CBD and Tea Tree Plaza.

The existing service that travels through Lightsview does not in fact operate at the moment between 9.34am and 3.30pm, resulting in a public transport system that is not suitable for shift workers or students and has made it almost impossible for seniors to utilise the free service. Labor's commitment will improve access for residents and provide more cost-effective transport solutions.

The suburb of Walkley Heights is new to the Enfield electorate. It was established in the early 2000s and the public facilities in the area have really not been revamped since. I have been holding regular street-corner meetings in Walkley Heights and a common complaint is the condition and amenity of the open space within the suburb. So, to encourage the City of Salisbury to progress its plans to upgrade the R.M. Williams Reserve, I secured a $125,000 commitment to reduce the cost impact on the council of upgrading that reserve. These funds will contribute to updated play equipment and improved access to the community's open space for families to gather and play. I look forward to working with residents and the council to develop the best outcomes for the future of the R.M. Williams Reserve.

In planning for the future, I have also ensured that plans are in place for improvements to be made to the intersection of Main North Road and Regency Road. Main North Road is the road that welcomes travellers from the north into the CBD. Sadly, that intersection does not showcase the best of what Adelaide has to offer. With more than 70,000 vehicles using this intersection each day, it is long overdue for improvement.

Don Shipway is a local small business owner of Sports Locker and he raised this intersection as a concern for me very soon after I was first elected. While Don and many others would like to see traffic move better along this road, he said to me that it is not just the traffic flow but that he was concerned about pedestrian safety too, having witnessed far too many near misses between pedestrians and vehicles over the years, particularly as there is a bus stop very close to the intersection. I look forward to being able to review the findings of the traffic management plan that we have committed to for that intersection and to be able to work our way forward into implementing better outcomes for this intersection and the motorists and pedestrians who use it.

We all know that the former Liberal government planned to close three major Service SA centres. When I first stood for the seat of Enfield in 2019, I promised our community that I would fight to keep Prospect Service SA open. After a strong community campaign, I was relieved to see the former government reverse its decision on closing Prospect and Modbury Service SAs. We on this side of the chamber know the importance of these centres and have made commitments to make Service SA centres more accessible for South Australians and expand the services that they provide.

We will ensure that major Service SA branches are open on Saturdays from 9am until 5pm. We will expand the services available through these centres to make them a one-stop shop for all government services; include all government services, from registering cars and boats through to registering births, concessions and grant applications; and deliver an easy to navigate government-wide one-stop shop online platform as part of that as well.

We on this side of the chamber want to make it easy for people and businesses to transact with government. The former government's plan to close the three Service SA centres was a cruel attack on seniors, people on fixed incomes and, in particular in my electorate, people who have English as a second language. Our commitment aims to ensure that all South Australians have access to the services they need to make their lives easier when transacting with government. As part of our election commitments, we have committed to giving $10,000 to the Regency Men's Shed that operates from the Enfield Community Centre. I look forward to being able to see the improvements that they make to that very important community facility.

Another significant election commitment was the Roma Mitchell Secondary College upgrade. Following the former government's decision to move year 7s to high school, without ensuring that high schools had sufficient capacity, Labor had committed to funding an expansion of Roma Mitchell Secondary College in the Enfield electorate. Labor has committed to investing $21 million, which will increase capacity for an extra 300 students at the school. This expansion will ensure that the school can continue to accept students at this increasingly popular school. Roma Mitchell Secondary College has gone from strength to strength under the leadership of principal Toni Carellas. I look forward to working closely with Toni and her team to secure the educational future of students in the Enfield electorate.

I am truly grateful to be able to represent my community in this place and to work towards putting in place measures that improve my electorate and ensure a better future for the people of Enfield. With that, I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Basham.

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