House debates

Thursday, 28 November 2019

Constituency Statements

Sturt Electorate: Magill Village Precinct

10:26 am

Photo of James StevensJames Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise to report to the chamber on another great election commitment fulfilled by the Morrison government in my electorate of Sturt, that being the funding for the Magill Village precinct that was secured during the election campaign. Just last week I was able to join with local government representatives to launch that project and confirm that funding. For the benefit of members of the chamber who—unlike the member for Boothby, who is also from South Australia—have not been to Adelaide: largely thanks to the fact that we don't have the same sorts of timber trees in South Australia that other parts of the country have, in the early days of electricity some chap happily invented a way of carrying our electricity lines by getting two pieces of railway track and filling the middle with cement, which is effective but it doesn't have the best visual aspect when you drive around the streets of Adelaide. So we have an excellent scheme in South Australia to underground our powerlines. This is going to take a very long time to do in the affordable way that we'd like to, but happily in Magill Road, for the Magill Village precinct, we've undertaken this project to underground the powerlines and commensurately undertake a complete relandscaping of that section of road.

That part is just commencing now, but the outcome is going to be the undergrounding of powerlines and a dramatic improvement of the visual aspect of that area. We're also planting trees and we're going to develop a lovely canopy and have a great outcome for the local community. It will be excellent for local businesses in the area. It's a retail commercial precinct, but the principle is to make it into, as the name indicates, a real village for the surrounding suburbs—Kensington Gardens, Kensington Park, Magill et cetera. We've put in $2 million, and each of the two councils have put in $2 million. It's a $15 million project. I'd like to fight for more of these types of projects in my electorate going forward, because I'm very much a strong supporter of planting trees and improving the local amenity for residents, not just in the Magill area but right across my electorate. Planting trees is a great practical way that we can achieve so many benefits. If we do it coupled with projects like this, we improve the local amenity and improve the support for local small businesses and make it more appealing to go and spend money locally in our economy. It's been a great outcome. I was very pleased to have been there to confirm the Commonwealth's support for it just last week. It is going to engender a lot more of these concepts coming from local government. It is exactly the sort of thing that we should be investing in. I look forward to fighting for more of these projects into the future.