Champion, Nick, MP

Mr CHAMPION (Wakefield) (22:13): Last week on 6 February I was reading my local paper, the Bunyip. The Bunyipcovers the areas around Gawler and the city of Playford. It is a very notable paper, has a long history and first formed out of the Humbug Society, where two members sued one another after one of their newsletters was distributed—so it has a contentious history as well. In the Bunyip last week, there was an article headlined 'Mayors ready for election' and it involved the Mayor of Playford, Mr Glen Docherty. I will say at the start of my speech that I have always had a constructive relationship with the mayor for the good of Elizabeth and places like Munno Para, Angle Vale, Craigmore, Hillbank and all the other towns and suburbs in the city of Playford. At the heart of the City of Playford is Elizabeth, which is a unique place, a great working-class community and home to Holden and the Central District footy club. It is a city with a great deal of strength but, of course, it also has its share of struggle streets. It needs all of its publicly-elected officials to be 100 per cent dedicated to the area. When Mayor Docherty was elected, he remarked to me on more than one occasion that the only job he wanted was the Mayor of Playford. That is why it was a bit of a surprise last week when I opened the Bunyip and read about his selection for the marginal seat of Newland for the Liberal Party. Newland is up over the hill on the other side of Adelaide. I do not think you can be mayor of Playford, which takes in the Adelaide plains—including places like Elizabeth—and then seek public office in another part of the city up over the hill, which represents places like Tea Tree Gully, St Agnes, Ridgehaven and Highbury. I think these are two fundamentally different parts of Adelaide. They have different outlooks. They have different demography and they service different people. Anybody from Adelaide will tell you that is the case. It has often been said that you cannot serve two masters, and I do not think you can serve two places at once. You cannot really be an independent, non-partisan mayor of one part of the city and a partisan party candidate of another part of the city. I think Elizabeth, with all its special needs, needs a mayor that is myopically focused on its needs and not distracted by a candidate who is only focused on their next political motive. Dr Southcott: Are you offering yourself? Mr CHAMPION: The member for Boothby asks whether I am offering myself. I can assure him I am not. I would avoid local government like the plague. But I do think Elizabeth deserves a non-partisan, full-time mayor myopically interested in its own affairs. Every day when I am back in the electorate, doing street corner meetings and shopping centre stalls, I hear from people about the footpaths, about trees that need to be removed, about local neighbourhood issues that they are concerned about. These are issues that I do not mind bringing up with the council, but they really should be attended to by mayors and by local councillors. I do not think it is appropriate to have a local mayor who is focused on the next move in state parliament. It is fair enough that that is what he wants to do, but it is completely unfair to the City of Playford. I think that, particularly after the big rate rises in the last couple of years, people are entitled to demand that all of their elected officials are completely committed to the local area and are not off campaigning in another part of town for a different group of people in a partisan way. I urge everybody in Elizabeth and Munno Para and places like Hillbank and Craigmore to express this view to the council and to the mayor to make sure that we get our money's worth out of local government.