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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-08-30 Daily Xml
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Joy Baluch AM Bridge

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:52): I want to start by saying that you can have a quote, you can have a joke and then you can make some observations. My quote is this: whatever good things we build, end up building us. The joke has no punchline, but nonetheless it is worth saying: a former chief minister, a current Minister for Infrastructure and four ambulance officers walk into a cafe. My observations are these: thousands of people crossing a bridge—crossing a bridge—hundreds of people attending a trade expo, 48 submissions to a regional community art exhibition and thousands of people attending a racing association's cup day.

These general observations, this joke and this quote really could not apply to too many regional towns in South Australia, but in the last few weeks every single one of them has applied to the City of Port Augusta. We saw, not very early on this year but more recently, finally, the great Port Augusta Bridge opened, and thousands of students and members of the community wandered across that. We saw 48 artists from across the state all contributing to the Port Augusta Malka Aboriginal Art Prize. We saw thousands of people, I think 1,700 in fact, attend this year's Port Augusta Cup—with some level perhaps of future vision—to see Shiny Rock win. I was one of them. It was a fantastic day.

All of these things seem to lead us to believe that something is happening in regional South Australia. At the Trade Expo over 700 private attendees came along, with businesses such as GFG, BHP, Santos, Fortescue Metals and Hallett all attending, all talking about something, all talking about South Australia's hydrogen plant, where this government is going to build a 200-megawatt hydrogen power station, hydrogen electrolysers and a storage facility.

What is the purpose of all this? It is to create the jobs, the kind of jobs that are bringing hundreds of private investors to come to South Australia to look at what we are doing. We are going to see 1,200 jobs that are possible through construction and also through possible export, not to mention the thousands, up to over 10,000 jobs, which could be created in the $20 billion pipeline of renewable energy in this state.

The fact is that by doing what this government is doing, we are seizing the first-mover advantage. What does that mean? We are seeing strong global interest in South Australia's hydrogen jobs plan. We had 29 proposals from across the world—from Europe, from Asia, from North America, from South America—all coming to South Australia to bid on what we are building here. This is a major coup for our state. It is about major renewable energy projects. It is about equipment manufacturing, and it is about bringing technology providers here.

What is this government doing to support the jobs that are going to be created here? We are investing in health, we are investing in a new ambulance station in Port Augusta, we are investing in hospital upgrades in Port Augusta and, of course, we doubled the travel amount in PATS. We are investing in education. As early as this week, Port Augusta is going to be one of the 20 communities named to take part in the trial for out-of-school care. Obviously, we have seen investment through the new technical college which is being put into Port Augusta. We are seeing housing being put into Port Augusta, as one of the sites where we are going to see the key regional housing projects take place.

What we are seeing in Port Augusta is quite exciting. What we are seeing is the result of the kind of activities that take place when a government invests in communities, when private sector can see that investment and rewards that investment with interest and coming along to take part in what you are doing. What you are seeing in the community is people responding to that. They are seeing Port Augusta as a place to be.

More than just having a great time when I am there, the Upper Spencer Gulf is a community that I am proud to spend time in. Whatever good things we build end up building us, and you can see it in Port Augusta. People are proud to be there. People want the kind of investment we are bringing. I am proud to be a part of it and I am proud to see them being proud of their community, and I hope to see more of it as this government continues to take shape.

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