Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

About the only thing that we can remember of Mr Champion, over the six years he was in government, was his call for the state Premier to introduce a minister for the northern suburbs, because he could not affect any change in that area. He was unable to influence any change. I do not need to remind you, Mr Acting Deputy President, of the assertions which Mr Champion had made prior to last year's election, saying that he had actually saved Holden until 2022. They know no bounds, across the other side, in what they will represent. It is like an eraser has been put across the six years of government—that Senator Cameron and his government, in which he was a minister in. They do not understand the drivers of manufacturing, which has driven a lot of manufacturing away from this country. A carbon tax drives jobs offshore.

Let me get back to the electorate of Wakefield. It covers an area of nearly 6½ square kilometres from Salisbury in the northern suburbs of Adelaide to the Clare Valley, 135 kilometres north. Wakefield is named after Edward Wakefield, whose theories of colonisation had a great impact on the formation of settlement in Western Australia and South Australia. The electorate covers industries ranging from commercial retail, technology-based industry, defence, manufacturing, cereal crops, sheep, cattle, market gardens and viticulture. As you can see and hear, it is indeed a very diverse electorate. As I said earlier to the interjections, it has the highest youth unemployment rate for not only South Australia but nearly the whole of Australia. I, for one, am not going to sit back like the member for Wakefield and his Senate colleagues like the former minister, Senator Cameron, in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. That probably gives you some idea of the dysfunction that presided over these increased levels of youth unemployment.