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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-19 Daily Xml
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Motions

Regional South Australia

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. N.J. Centofanti:

That this council commends the Marshall Liberal government for recognising the importance of regional South Australia and its communities, noting their contribution to our economy worth more than $29 billion per year, through:

1. Investing $3 billion across more than 1,000 regional projects;

2. Upgrading hospitals, doubling country cancer services and upgrading about 4,800 kilometres of regional roads; and

3. Implementing the Our Regions Matter blueprint following extensive consultation with regional communities about what is needed to improve opportunities for the 29 percent of South Australia's population living and working outside the metropolitan community.

(Continued from 4 May 2022.)

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (17:10): I rise, without surprise to the chamber, to speak against this motion.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: I know. It is a surprise, is it not. As I have mentioned many times in this chamber, I am proudly from our regions. I grew up on Yorke Peninsula, an area where community is everything, the community my family still calls home. But you cannot have a strong community if you do not invest, listen and work with those communities.

The Hon. Nicola Centofanti has asked that this council commend the former Marshall Liberal government for recognising the importance of regional South Australia. I have the utmost respect for the Hon. Nicola Centofanti, but I find it confounding that the honourable member introduces this motion as the new Leader of the Opposition in this place as one of her first acts of the new session of parliament.

Clearly, the opposition have not done much self-reflection or learning about what went wrong for them in their short time in government. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words and, in the case of the opposition, the actions of ordinary voters in regional areas, our bosses, spoke louder than any hashtag or pat on the back motion ever could. These voters used their actions to be loud and clear at the recent state election about how they felt the former Marshall Liberal government represented and recognised regional voters. In Flinders, there was a 23.1 per cent swing against the Liberal Party.

The Hon. J.E. Hanson: How much?

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: It was 23.1 per cent—amazing. In Frome, there was a 10 per cent swing to the Labor Party. In Hammond, there was an 11.7 per cent swing to the Labor Party. In Finniss, there was a 13.7 per cent swing against the Liberal Party—a 13.7 per cent swing against the Liberal Party in Finniss. The reason I want to repeat that statistic is that is where the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development's seat is.

The Hon. C.M. Scriven: Former minister.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: Former, I should highlight, thank you. Finniss is now one of the state's most marginal seats at just 0.7 per cent. This former minister now sits on the backbench but only just. He only just clawed his way back into the parliament and sits there on just 0.7 per cent. I could not think of a clearer indication of disappointment, anger and frustration felt by regional voters towards a former government, that being the former Marshall Liberal government. The results were loud and clear in Finniss, but there was more. In Stuart, the former Deputy Premier of the former Marshall Liberal government, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, not only lost his position as Deputy Premier but his place in this parliament.

The Hon. D.G.E. Hood: That hurts.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: It hurts a lot, does it not. I do not know much about statistics, but in this place they speak very, very loudly. Voters in our regions spoke very, very loudly all the way from Port Pirie to Victor Harbor to Port Lincoln to Kapunda to Murray Bridge. They spoke loudly about how disappointed they were in the former Marshall Liberal government.

I agree with the Hon. Nicola Centofanti that members of communities around regional South Australia are not just hard workers but very smart, smart enough to know when they are being sold a dud deal and smart enough to use their power, their vote to help change their communities for the better, not just for the next election cycle but for the next generation.

During the last few years, the Malinauskas Labor team made it our priority to focus on what matters most. We hosted Labor listening tours, country cabinets and street corner meetings to ensure that our regional communities were given a voice, and we listened. We often heard from those opposite—and we have been hearing it recently—that they did not need to hold country cabinets because they have local members in the regions. Yes, they are 100 per cent correct. We have two Labor members in our regions across all the state—

The Hon. C.M. Scriven interjecting:

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: Yes; in the lower house—sorry, Clare—we have two of the seats across the whole state. We heard again and again the importance of investing in our regions, investing in housing, health and education, but obviously the regional local members for the Liberal Party must have been hearing over and over again from their regional members how much they really wanted a city stadium. That must have been what they were hearing, because that is what they were given from the former Marshall Liberal government.

On the ground I am sure they would have been hearing, 'We have problems in health, we have problems in education,' but what they got from their local representatives was a city basketball stadium, a $662 million basketball stadium. Perhaps if the Liberal Party had held a country cabinet they would have heard that is not what they wanted. Rather than just focus on hashtags or words like GlobeLink, or 'globlink', perhaps those opposite would have heard that they did not want a $662 million basketball stadium, they wanted investment in health—and that is what Labor did.

Importantly, we will not be investing in a $662 million basketball stadium. We will be investing that money back into our health system, and $100 million of that will be going into country health. We will also be investing in a green hydrogen industry in our regions, which the Hon. Dennis Hood has just outlined, that will unlock billions of dollars of renewable energy in projects across our state and will also set up our state for future generations and enable us to have secure jobs in our regions.

We will be following the recommendations of the 2019 Murray-Darling royal commission. We will be building two technical colleges in regional South Australia, because every young person, regardless of their postcode, has the right to be equipped with the skills for further study and employment. We have reversed the former Marshall Liberal government's decision to axe public government notices in our country press, because we understand the value and importance of our regional media. We will be creating 150 additional social housing homes in regional towns, because everyone deserves a roof over their head.

Growing up in a small regional community is a privilege. Being able to represent that community in parliament is an even greater privilege. The recent state election results show what happens when you take that privilege for granted.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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