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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-20 Daily Xml
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Private Members' Statements

Private Members' Statements

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:45): I rise to raise a couple of matters that have been brought up with me by local residents in my electorate. I have written to the relevant ministers and am yet to receive responses. There could be a range of reasons for that, but I did want to put them on the record here.

The first concerns a block of Housing Trust units located at 32 Fryer Street, Hallett Cove. Those units adjoin 30 Fryer Street, a privately owned residence. There is a retaining wall between the two, which is collapsing. Further, the Housing Trust, as the owners of the property, is failing to discharge stormwater from their property onto the street. Instead, it is flowing over the retaining wall and causing significant damage to the private property at 30 Fryer Street. This warrants immediate rectification.

The Housing Trust should aim to be an exemplar neighbour, in my view, with regard to these sorts of matters and this is far from the case in these circumstances. I am pleased the minister is here and I would really appreciate her following this one up. It is causing some distress.

The other matter relates to the child protection portfolio and the presence of a group care home in the Cove Point estate at Hallett Cove. I will not identify the location of the home. The home houses vulnerable children. I acknowledge these homes must be located somewhere; however, there appears to be behavioural issues with the residents there who have been committing significant antisocial behaviour in the community, including breaking and entering. This has reduced the amenity of this community.

I have written to the Minister for Child Protection about this matter. I have not yet received a response. I would really love this to be investigated so that I can put my constituents' minds at rest.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:46): I would hazard a guess there would be a great deal many people in metropolitan area who are not aware that we rely heavily on volunteers to staff our emergency services in regional South Australia, and that extends all the way through to our ambulance services. It is a wonderful thing and a huge impost that those volunteers place upon themselves to serve our community in what can be such a confronting space and we are especially thankful to them for doing that.

Having said that, the nature of volunteering is that it is becoming less and less prevalent and there are greater demands on people's time and that leaves them with less time to serve their community and that impact is being felt especially hard in the ambulance service.

To that end, I would like to commend the South Australian Ambulance Service for hosting a community meeting in Minlaton last week, which I had the great pleasure of attending, to try to develop a mud map for a way forward for our volunteer ambulance service. Unfortunately, it was probably a little bit of a sub-par turnout. There were probably not as many people there as they would have liked, but it was still a valuable opportunity for us to chat to the volunteers, those who turned up, and chat to the community members who use the service and try to chart a course forward so that we can have a viable functioning service in southern York Peninsula in the future.

We are down to 11 volunteers in the ambulance service for the entire peninsula south of Minlaton. That is an extraordinarily few number of people and I think that the future will be volunteers supporting paramedics rather than the fly-in fly-out paramedics that we currently have supporting volunteers. I think we will flip that script and hopefully have a fully functioning staffed ambulance service up and down the peninsula in the not too distant future.

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (15:48): The uncertainty for the South Australian defence industry continues with confirmation today that the Hunter Class Frigate Program will be cut from nine ships to only six, and this is after the federal Labor defence minister has sat on the review since September of last year. The defence industry has been racked by uncertainty and chaos over their future in South Australia for the last 18 months. What the announcement today amounts to is a cut to the frigates program and a verbal commitment to building a replacement to the AWD, but with the decision happening by 2035, 11 years away, and with no budget attached, just a promise.

On FIVEaa radio this morning, the Premier made the point that unless dollars are put in the budget then a commitment is not real. By the Premier's own admission, any announcement regarding the AWD replacement ship is not real until money is in the budget.

Australian Industry and Defence Network CEO, Brent Clark, has said publicly that six Hunter class frigates would not meet the federal government's promise of a continuous naval shipbuilding program in Adelaide. The Premier is relying on a verbal promise from federal Labor of continuous shipbuilding, when the reality is that the only announcement confirmed today is a cut to shipbuilding in South Australia. Unfortunately for South Australians, fewer ships mean fewer jobs and fewer skills. The opposition have long said anything less than the nine promised frigates would be a failure from the Premier, and today he and his Labor colleagues have let South Australians down.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:50): Last Thursday, Liverpool Football Club announced the expansion of its International Academy program to South Australia with the creation of a new partnership with Gawler Belt-based Xavier College in my electorate. This expansion will see Xavier College become the home of the first Liverpool Football Club academy in South Australia. Xavier College will be able to offer a high-performance soccer program delivered by the Liverpool Football Club International Academy in Australia from this year.

Besides the high-performance soccer initiative, the collaboration with Xavier College promises to deliver many opportunities for the Greater Gawler community. The college will become a hub for several Liverpool Football Club International Academy community training sessions and holiday programs, open to every budding player in the local area.

Xavier College's principal said that this collaboration between the Liverpool Football Club and the college is a wonderful one because they share similar values. He said:

This collaboration is not only exciting because of the programs and opportunities available for our students and the wider community, it's exciting because of the alignment in values between Xavier College, Liverpool Football Club International Academy and the Australian College of Physical Education.

I wish the partnership well and hope it raises the vision of our young people in our community.

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