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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-07-06 Daily Xml
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Lockleys Riding Club

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:39): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Will the minister meet with the representatives from the Lockleys Riding Club? If not, why not? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: The Lockleys Riding Club recently wrote to the minister to request a meeting to discuss their lease arrangements at Breakout Creek. The club has not received a direct response as yet from the minister but has received verbal advice from SA Water that the minister would not meet with them.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:40): I am pleased to be asked this question because it has been a matter of some mystification in my office this morning when we had heard that Lockleys had both asked to have a meeting with me and were disappointed not to receive an appointment. I have not been aware of any such request and I have asked my office to look through and they haven't been able to find any such request.

So it would be perhaps useful if I could speak the member after question time and see whether perhaps the letter was directed to SA Water rather than to my office. Something will have happened, and I by no means mean to suggest that Lockleys Riding Club is deliberately misleading, and it may well be yet that the administration in my office has missed an invitation. Nonetheless, any suggestion that I have refused to meet with them is not the case. I am happy to meet with them.

The issue that they are raising, of course, is that they have until now had access to free water in Breakout Creek. The project that was initiated under the previous administration is starting to near its completion and involves moving where the riding club is located. SA Water has indicated that they weren't providing the free water previously and that they have no remit within their terms to provide free water to sporting clubs. The council, which we think probably had been either knowingly or unknowingly providing the free water through the riding club having access to an access point in the council's water supply, has declined also to provide continued free water.

So we are at rather an impasse, where there is a sporting club or a community club that would like to have access to free water, as I am sure many sporting and community clubs would like, and no obvious way in which that could happen. I understand that Lockleys Riding Club has been aware of this for some years now that that was a likely situation the upgrade of Breakout Creek would provide.

But if there is some confusion still, as I say, I am very happy to meet with any community group, and there is absolutely no intention or expectation that we would have not had a meeting. I understand the club wrote sometime last year to my office but has not been in touch since July last year, so in the last 12 months. As far as I understand, I have had no request from them to meet with me.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

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