QUESTION - Mining Tax - Wednesday, 23 June 2010 Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (2:16 PM) —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to Penrice Soda, which employs over 300 people at its Angaston mine and Osborne manufacturing plan in South Australia. In the last five years, this company has invested over $130 million in capital projects. I refer the Prime Minister to a letter from Penrice Soda that states: … the new proposed tax would have a major and immediate impact on the competitiveness of our mining and chemical manufacturing operations … local communities will also be damaged. Instead of the minor backflips and political fixes that the Prime Minister will announce in the coming days, when will the Prime Minister listen to real people in real businesses and provide real jobs and just dump this tax? Mr RUDD (Griffith) (Prime Minister) —I thank the member for Mayo for his question. Part of his question dealt with the competitiveness of the Australian mining indus... more

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENT - Norton Summit Primary School - Wednesday, 23 June 2010 Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (9:54 AM) —This morning I rise to talk about a very important issue to a small local school in my electorate, which is the Norton Summit Primary School. It is having extreme difficulties with getting the federal government to understand the need for some reconsideration of the out-of-school-hours care program which was defunded some time ago because of an appalling bureaucratic classification decision. The bureaucrats have decided from lines on maps to put Norton Summit in with the Adelaide metropolitan zone for the purpose of considering funding for the out-of-school-hours care program. What they failed to recognise on their maps is that there is a cliff between Norton Summit and the city. It is not part of the city; it is quite clearly a part of the Adelaide Hills community and has been unfairly treated in that respect. Today I will be tabling a petition before the Petitions Committee ... more

STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS - Mr John Coombe - Monday, 21 June 2010   Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (6:52 PM) —I rise tonight to pay tribute to the Chief Executive Officer of the Alexandrina Council, Mr John Coombe, who on 7 June this year announced that, as of 22 December, he will retire from being the CEO of the Alexandrina Council, a position he has held since its establishment in 1997, at which time he had been CEO of one of its precursor councils since 1988. This adds up to 22 years, which is a substantial effort, as I am sure you will realise, Mr Deputy Speaker. The area the Alexandrina Council is responsible for includes a large part of the Lower Lakes, Milang, Clayton and Goolwa in addition to Strathalbyn. In recent times the area has faced the very worst of the Lower Lakes crisis. John Coombe, as the CEO of the council, along with the mayor, Kym McHugh, has worked very hard along with me and Adrian Pederick, the state local member, to ensure that this issue remains at the forefront of p... more

QUESTION - Apples and Pears and Agricultural Land, Thursday 18 June, 2010   Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (11:46 AM) —I think you would agree with this line of questioning as well. I also rise to speak on the very important issue of apples and pears to my electorate of Mayo. The Adelaide Hills probably produce the finest apples in Australia. My apple and pear producers are extremely worried. I wrote to the minister yesterday on the Chinese import risk assessment that the shadow minister so eloquently put in his question to the minister. I am interested in that answer. In particular, is the department looking at possibly reopening that risk assessment given this new bug? I will not try and pronounce the name of the bug—you may be able to assist, Minister, in that respect. I am interested in the New Zealand aspect and the more pressing issue of the risk assessment of the Chinese situation. The second issue which was raised by the member for New England relates to prime agricultural land. In ... more

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENT -  Local Roads - Thursday, 17 June 2010 Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (9:55 AM) —Firstly, I will speak briefly on a couple of points that the member for Hindmarsh made. Generally he is a good man, but it was of course John Howard and the member for Wentworth who initially came up with the idea of a national takeover of water in this country, so it is actually a Liberal Party initiative that remains our policy. We are the only people who are interested in saving the Lower Lakes. We are not interested in getting front-page headlines about fake water which does not exist to mislead people to win a state election; we are interested in actually fixing an environmental crisis in that area. The reason I have risen today is to speak about local roads in the electorate of Mayo. Unfortunately, in South Australia this year we have seen an extraordinarily high road toll, particularly in the earlier parts of the year, with 65 people having died. About half of those people have... more

ADJOURNMENT - Murray-Darling Basin - Thursday 17 June, 2010 Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (4:50 PM) —I rise again in this place to talk about the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin and the catastrophic conditions faced by the communities in and around the Lower Lakes in my electorate and that of the member for Barker. I apologise, Mr Speaker, as you have heard me speak on this issue in this debate on many occasions. However, I think the issue is so significant that we should continue talking about it so that we do not forget how damaging and catastrophic the conditions are in and around the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin. I know this place cares deeply about it. In the last few years, the issue of the Murray-Darling Basin has been addressed in this parliament, thanks to the work of the former Prime Minister John Howard and the member for Wentworth, who was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources at the time. He launched groundbreaking reforms in January 2007 to deal w... more

  MAIN COMMITTEE - QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE - Morgan Stanley Report - Wednesday, 16 June, 2010 Mr BRIGGS» (Mayo) (2:29 PM) —My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the respected economic analyst Morgan Stanley’s latest research report, released this morning, which finds that under the Prime Minister’s proposed great big new tax on mining the Olympic Dam expansion has no economic value and now is unlikely to proceed. Given the importance of the Olympic Dam expansion for the economic future of my state of South Australia and for the nation, will the Prime Minister stop dismissing concerns about this project as exaggerations, concede that the concerns about the future of this project are real and dump this tax that is putting this project at risk? Mr RUDD (Griffith) (Prime Minister) —I thank very much the member for Mayo for his question. He raises in particular the Olympic Dam project in South Australia. The member for Mayo will be aware of the fact ... more

MAIN COMMITTEE - QUESTION - Building the Education Revolution - Tuesday, 15 June, 2010 Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (6:27 PM) —My question to the Deputy Prime Minister relates to the Building the Education Revolution program, or the school hall program, that she is administering. I have written to her on several occasions about this. It relates specifically to cost shifting that the South Australian government is engaging in, which the Deputy Prime Minister quite clearly ruled out when she first announced this program, specifically in relation to the bushfire tanks in Yankalilla, Macclesfield, Basket Range and Stirling East and also in Eden Hills, which is in the member for Boothby’s electorate. Schools got initial quotes for buildings. Those quotes were changed post fact by the state Labor government, which were putting their requirements, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of spending, on each of these bushfire tanks. My question to the Deputy Prime Minister is: will she ens... more

SPEECH TO THE MAIN COMMITTEE -  Electoral Reform Act - Tuesday, 15 May, 2010 Mr Briggs» (Mayo) (7:58 PM) —I also rise to speak on these four bills: the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. These are very important bills to ensure that our democracy remains strong, that the integrity of our electoral roll remains and that we can continue to have successful and corruption-free elections—and we face one in the very near future. I think we should be very proud of the system we have built in this country over a long period of time. As Parliamentary Secretary Shorten talked about in his contribution before me, we do have a proud history in Australia of having an elector... more

Main Committee - ADJOURNMENT - Building the Education Revolution Program - Thursday, 3 June, 2010 Mr Briggs» (Mayo) (12:30 PM) —Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon on adjournment in relation to a very important issue in my electorate: the waste and mismanagement of the Building the Education Revolution building program which we are seeing in my electorate—massive waste, massive mismanagement and examples of cost shifting by the incompetent Rann state Labor government. It relates to possibly the worst scheme ever implemented in the Australian parliament’s history. Estimates of up to $5 billion of waste have been suggested in recent days in this program alone. In particular, in my electorate we have now seen several examples of different types of waste and mismanagement and the failure of this Deputy Prime Minister to implement a program properly and coherently in Kangaroo Island and eastern Fleurieu schools last year: three schools on Kangaroo ... more