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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-14 Daily Xml
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Port Augusta

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:15): I rise today to talk about a number of topics regarding Port Augusta. I want to start on a positive note, because there are some serious negatives when it comes to Port Augusta and the level of crime and antisocial behaviour in the community.

On some of the positive notes, we have made a number of commitments to the Port Augusta community and those commitments are now rolling out. One of the really good ones is that for the first time the Arid Lands Botanic Garden has received state support, and a couple of gardens here in Adelaide have also received state support. Over the four-year term $3 million has gone towards the botanic garden, which will seriously help the Port Augusta council. In fact, that contribution had a very dampening impact on the need for a rate rise in this financial year.

We have also committed $32 million to a tech college in Port Augusta, and that is rolling out smoothly. Construction has not yet started but it is not too far away. There is $8 million committed to the hospital, and I hope that is going to be just the first of the down payments on that hospital, which does need a bit of work. It is also exciting to see the new ambulance station taking shape as well as the additional ambulances and officers who are going to be employed in Port Augusta. That will have a really positive impact.

Moving on to one of the issues that is a short-term, mid-term and longer term strategy being employed to address the level of antisocial behaviour and crime in Port Augusta, we see the Department of Human Services taking a lead role and there is now a far greater degree of collaboration in the community to address some of these issues. The council has been very constructive, and there is a very good relationship with SAPOL. They fully realise that we cannot arrest our way out of some of these situations but, at times, arresting is something that does need to happen.

That is one of the things I want to talk about. Just the other day SAPOL put out some information to indicate what they are doing. During the summer months they would increase resources into Port Augusta to address some of the issues around the growth in numbers during that time of the year. What they have also done for the first time, given some of the numbers in Port Augusta, is that in late May they applied a lot of additional resources in Port Augusta across the police force. As well, the commissioner and deputy commissioner have been up there, and there have been a lot of high-level meetings about Port Augusta and meetings with a whole range of organisations in the community.

As I said, the police have recognised that they cannot arrest their way out of the situation in Port Augusta, but it is interesting that since the commencement of those additional resources in late May—and that is being reviewed on a two-weekly basis—there has been a very significant increase in arrests, almost as a direct result of those additional resources. There have been 66 arrests and 18 reports, and of those 66 arrests 42 have been adults and 24 have been juveniles.

One of the issues we have in Port Augusta is with juvenile crime and antisocial behaviour. Some of the responses to that are going to be complex and they are going to be long term. We did have a lot of success with a program we introduced in November, the Community Outreach program, which was a replacement for the City Safe program. As a result of that program, over 450 people have been assisted to return to country, and of that 450 around 90 were minors, so that has been relatively successful.

We came to the party on that because we believed it was not the council's responsibility to fund it and the opposition when they were in government would not fund it. This was a simple thing to do to address some of the issues in Port Augusta, but there is a long way to go, and I fully recognise that in Port Augusta antisocial behaviour and crime for many people is the number one issue.

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