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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-06-04 Daily Xml
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SUPPLY BILL 2013

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 16 May 2013.)

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:38): I rise today to support the second reading of the bill, which provides, I understand, some $3.205 billion to ensure the payment of public servants and the continuation of state government services from 1 July until the Appropriation Bill for 2013-14 passes both houses. As we know, the Supply Bill gives parliamentary authority to the government of the day to continue delivering services via public expenditure. The government is entitled to continue delivering these services in accordance with general approved priorities, that is, the priorities of the last 12 months, until the Appropriation Bill is passed.

Before moving on to make some comments on some particular areas, I note that the use of that money is for the work of public servants to service the constituents and residents of South Australia. Initially, I want to go to an area that is a great passion of mine, namely, suicide prevention. Throughout the work I do in the community of South Australia, including some recent forums that I have conducted, there is great evidence of a far increased community awareness and concern about the impact of suicide in our community.

While I acknowledge the vital role of mental health professionals—many of whom are employed by the state government—there is strong community support for a range of measures to assist in the overall effort in our society to combat suicide. These include:

resources for not-for-profit organisations with a proven history in self-harm and suicide prevention and other concerned community groups to apply for grant funding to deliver tailored awareness and risk assessment training. This will ensure rural and metropolitan community members improve their ability to identify the warning signs associated with individuals who are at risk of self-harm and suicide.

cooperation with tertiary and higher education facilities to seek inclusion of self-harm and suicide prevention training for medical and other primary healthcare students. This is something I have seen in action in Tasmania, which has been quite a leader in the area of community suicide prevention training and intervention.

the tasking of a dedicated self-harm and suicide prevention team within the South Australian Department of Health to improve communication and coordination across government so as to ensure a prioritised, focused and consistent whole of government approach.

support for the efforts of the National Committee for Standardised Reporting of Suicides. This committee brings together a wide range of stakeholders to ensure such reporting is conducted in a reliable, accurate and timely manner.

Simple measures such as these are domestically and internationally supported. The Australian Senate's Community Affairs References Committee inquiry, The Hidden Toll: Suicide in Australia, recommended the need to provide suicide prevention training to front-line workers in emergency, welfare and associated sectors. The committee also recommended that additional gatekeeper suicide awareness and risk assessment training be directed to people living in regional, rural and remote areas.

The World Health Organisation advocates for an innovative, comprehensive multisectoral approach, including intervention from outside the health sector. An increased focus on education, early intervention, communication and reporting in a targeted and proactive approach would have a positive impact for South Australian communities and allow us to start reducing the incidence of self-harm and loss of life through suicide.

There is no doubt that those measures are ones that are keenly sought by many in the South Australian community and many of those people also see that such an approach would have a positive impact on the increasing number of families who have become bereaved through suicide. Until you go and work in this area, you do not realise the enormity of the issue and I have spoken in this house before about seeing evidence of families who have been through suicide on more than one occasion. When you witness a woman who has had a father and a brother complete suicide and another woman who has had two sons complete suicide, it does hit home to you and so there is more we can do there.

There are some terrific public servants out there working in the mental health and suicide prevention field, and what I, and many others, want them to realise is that the large number of volunteers—people who are concerned about their community—are only there to assist, and the more we engage and arm those people, the greater the assistance that can be given to the professional services as they battle with such an enormous issue, and I would hope government takes this on board.

On that theme, it is probably an appropriate time to mention the concern I had recently when I learnt of the closure of what was known as Shop Front, in Salisbury. This was a service for young people at risk, largely battling mental health and drug and alcohol issues. I understand that this jointly-funded service, along with the City of Salisbury, has had to close because the state government can no longer find the money to continue that service. I understand that some substitute will be conducted elsewhere in the northern suburbs, but it will have a much narrower scope than that service previously provided, and I think that is a great shame for the young people of that part of Adelaide.

In my concluding remarks, I would like to move to some issues that reflect concerns from members of my own community around the Gawler area and from within the Riverland. The issues close to home, I suppose, are largely in the transport area, and specifically go to areas that concern people. People who travel on the Gawler rail line, who go up and down every day on that line, some less frequently, are completely perplexed by the lonely poles placed along that line, which were put there to have put on them electrification for that line—and there is no promise of that happening in the forward estimates. It is a ridiculous state of affairs that the government went to the expense of putting those poles there and it cannot fund the wires to go on them, and it is not likely to happen in the near future. It is quite a ridiculous set of circumstances.

There are other people in that area who like to access public transport and who were attracted, before the last election, to the promises made by the current member for Light about a bus network for Gawler, something a lot of people have looked for for a long time. It was carefully worded, and it never actually said that that bus network would be connected to the metropolitan bus network, but that is what a lot of people imagined it would be. What we have is a series of circuitous networks running around the town of Gawler—large, very old buses going around streets that are unsuitable for those large buses—but, more to the point, those buses are very empty. Very rarely do you see more than one or two people on them, and very often they are completely empty.

The local member for Light promised a review of that situation earlier this year, some many months after the member for Bragg in another place and I promised the same thing by an incoming Liberal government. I have yet to see what has resulted from that review, which was undertaken, I think, probably in January or February this year. Certainly, it is a major concern for the residents of the locality in which I live to see these buses, all hours of the day and night, going around with no-one on them.

There are two other matters that people in my area are concerned about which involve state government expenditure. One is the long delays in the roadworks at the intersection of Main North Road and Tiver Road. This is a $14 million project. It is one that seems to have been delayed and delayed. One would hope that it is not delayed like the recently opened Willaston roundabout, which was first promised by this government on 31 July 2002 at a cost of $110,000 and was completed last year at a cost of well over $2 million. One would hope that the Tiver Road intersection does not take that long.

I would like to conclude my remarks by expressing the concern of many people who live in the Riverland and, I think, many from a broader area of the state, in relation to the rising number of fruit fly outbreaks that we have had in Adelaide this year. This is a matter that I have raised in this place for many years, with questions and in speeches such as this. The government has a focus on the roadblocks that we have, in particular at Yamba and Ceduna, and we have seen some issues at different times when there has been some suggestion that there might be cutbacks in those areas.

The current government has not done that and I commend it for not doing so. However, I think we must be far more vigilant in the way that we examine the travelling public as they go between Adelaide and the Riverland with the potential to take this very dangerous fruit fly into the Riverland. I think the enormity of the damage that could be done to our horticultural industry in the Riverland is something that is beyond the comprehension of most South Australians, and that is a great shame.

I have argued for a long time that, as well as the existing permanent roadblocks and the occasional long weekend roadblocks on the Sturt Highway, we need to have more of a random nature of roadblock on a number of other major roads between Adelaide and the Riverland. I know that when the current government was first elected, I raised these matters with the Hon. Paul Holloway as the minister for agriculture. At that stage, negotiations had been done by the previous government to work with industry, and industry agreed upon some support for extra roadblocks, particularly the one that was operated at Blanchetown for some time, but this has not continued. The government seeks more money from industry to support such roadblocks and such inspection.

The other thing I think we have seen in this place and about which the minister has brought back answers to us is the very small number of the people who have been detected as having fruit in their vehicles who have actually had any penalty. This is a situation that alarms me, and it alarms many other people who recognise the value of our horticultural industry to South Australia and the value to that industry of its reputation overseas. I think it is the only completely fruit fly free region in this country, and that is of great value to us in our export industry. With that, I once again indicate my support for the bill as it does provide that $3.205 billion that enables the work of public servants in their service to South Australians to continue until the Appropriation Bill passes both houses. I support the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.S. Lee.

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