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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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ELECTION MATTERS

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (15:29): I am a Liberal. Many of my friends are in the Liberal Party and many of my friends vote Liberal, some vote Labor and others are apolitical. All of us were repulsed by what the ALP did last election. In several seats, most notably the marginal electorate of Mawson, the ALP cheated and rorted its way to victory through subterfuge and trickery. A little background first. Leon Bignell, the sitting Labor member, was as much a failure then as he is now. A Sunday Mail poll showed that only two in seven voters in Mawson even knew who their local member was. Bignell held Mawson by a handful of votes. Family First preferences were critical and Family First was directing those to the Liberal Party. So, if Bignell was not going to win the election by fair means he would try foul.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Ridgway has been here long enough to understand that he needs to refer to the member in the other place by his seat or his proper title. He is a minister.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Thank you for reminding me, Mr President. ALP members dressed in Family First T-shirts stood at polling booths and handed out how-to-vote cards purporting to come from Family First, telling supporters to give their second preferences to Labor. It was reprehensible. It was immoral. It was outrageous. It was no isolated incident: it was run in four seats.

The member for Mawson defended his then partner, Sandra De Poi, who handed out how-to-vote cards in that electorate. De Poi was a director of the WorkCover Corporation. WorkCover gets its legal work done by the law firm Minter Ellison. The member for Mawson's then factional mate, the member for Elder, the Hon. Patrick Conlon, is now a part-time member for Elder and a three-day-a-week, $100,000 a year, employee of Minter Ellison.

In Hartley, the Hon. Grace Portolesi, now state cabinet minister, sank to the bottom of the ethics barrel by employing the same tactics. The Hon. Tony Piccolo, the member for Light, who himself has been involved in questionable land deals while mayor of Gawler, did it in his northern suburbs seat of Light. He too now sits at the cabinet table.

Respected Flinders University scientist, Professor Dean Jaensch, described this cheating as the worst example of its kind he had ever seen in his 40-year career. Preferences can win or lose elections. In every seat that matters, the Greens preferenced Labor. Not far from Mawson is the seat of Kavel, held by my friend and colleague Mark Goldsworthy, a passionate fighter for Mount Barker and its families. He had a lot to fight about. The ALP had fallen into bed with developers in a madcap plan to quadruple the population of Mount Barker, a charming rural township in the Adelaide Hills. The plan was to expand Mount Barker's boundaries by swallowing productive farmland and creating housing estates without infrastructure, libraries, proper sewerage planning, public transport or local jobs.

The Greens campaigned against such development, and I commend them for it. Quite rightly, they, like the Liberal Party, opposed the developers' land grab and the process that allowed it. However, on election day, which party did the Greens preference? Mike Rann's Labor, the member for Mawson's (Hon. Leon Bignell) Labor, the planning minister's (Hon. Paul Holloway) Labor Party, the party that wants to mine uranium, build superways, bulldoze St Clair, despoil Port Adelaide and sacrifice Mount Barker to development.

Not long after the election, which Labor won on Greens preferences, information came to my office which suggested grave misconduct surrounding the process which developed into the 30-year plan. That is the plan which allowed urban sprawl and unwanted development in Mount Barker. Specifically, I heard that a firm of planning consultants, Connor Holmes—a firm for which I have the highest regard, by the way—had been involved in preparing something called the Growth Investigation Areas Report. At the same time, the firm was also working for developers which had much to gain. In fact, the dollars they stood to gain were counted in millions, from this report.

Together with the member for Kavel (Mr Mark Goldsworthy) and the shadow attorney-general (the Hon. Stephen Wade), I visited the Ombudsman and spoke with him about instigating a formal inquiry. Back in parliament I formulated an amendment requesting such an independent ombudsman's inquiry. Labor wanted none of it and neither did the Greens. The Greens suggested that I scotch proposals for an independent inquiry and allow the Mount Barker affair to be handled by a parliamentary committee controlled by the Greens' Labor mates. Mr Parnell wanted Labor to investigate Labor. He wanted the government he helped elect investigate the issue he helped promote.

On this side of the chamber we said, 'No way.' Finally, seeing they were not getting support for their parliamentary inquiry, the Greens, kicking and screaming, finally backed the Liberals' move for an ombudsman's investigation. Infallible Hansard on 30 May 2012 shows the truth: Mr Parnell supported the Liberals' motion to set up an ombudsman's inquiry 'with a great deal of disappointment'.

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