Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (11:28): Firstly, I would like to welcome the new members of parliament. There are many from the class of 2022 who I think are going to be here for a very long time. In the years to come, their photos on the wall in the members' area may actually look like Tom Koutsantonis's photo, which is almost unrecognisable today. I thoroughly enjoy the energy and the sheer joy the new members bring to this parliament. When you have been beaten around a little bit, and get a little bit cynical, new members really do bring vigour, life and renewal to these chambers. It is a real joy to be part of that and see their progression over the next four years.

The tradition of maiden speeches is really important. It gives everyone a chance to get to know the new members a little bit better. I have listened to every maiden speech. It is good to get to know people's backgrounds and the people who have helped, and for those members to thank those who have helped get them to this place. No matter what someone's political persuasion, nearly everyone I have met who comes into this place does so with the intent of trying to make the lives of South Australians better and the future brighter for those who come after us.

Mr Speaker, I would also like to congratulate you on your reappointment, and I want to reaffirm the importance of the independence of the Speaker—an important change that was made last year—and upholding the Westminster tradition. I would like to reflect very briefly and give thought to the members who are no longer here and the contribution they have made over their years of service, particularly, as an Independent, the members for Florey and Waite, who contested the last election but were unsuccessful.

The member for Florey obviously had a distinguished career in this house. From my point of view, having recently worked with the member for Florey, she had a real commitment to her community. Many times, we were right next to each other sharing an office and I would hear her talking to constituents on issues that mattered to them. She fought for Modbury Hospital and made vigorous efforts to bring in real-time pricing, trying to get the government to commit to that not in a superficial way but in a way that would actually reduce the price of petrol for consumers and put downward pressure on costs of living. I was very impressed with her efforts around that. Of course, her Muriel Matters women's suffrage efforts kept a torch burning on that important part of our history.

Sam, the member for Waite, had a lot of involvement around health-related issues but, in particular, kids with epilepsy. He tried to get the government to look at medical cannabis, or CBD, oil to help families whose kids suffer juvenile epilepsy. He was also a great supporter of mine, as I was of him, around the lymphoedema garment subsidy that ended up with the state government committing $4 million to the subsidy of those garments for many people in South Australia who suffer from lymphoedema. There was also, of course, his vigorous defence of the gatehouse in his electorate of Waite. I wanted to mention those things because the wheel keeps turning and if we do not reflect back, even just briefly, they do not go unrecognised, but it is good to reflect on them in an Address in Reply speech.

I want to thank the candidates who contested the seat of Mount Gambier. I honestly believe that our community had a wonderful choice going into this election. Ben Hood worked tirelessly for the Liberal Party. He would knock on doors and spent a solid nine months campaigning very, very strongly. I know this because I would get phone calls day and night from people saying that Ben had knocked on the door and where was I?

It is a bit harder when you are still doing your day job and working with lots of constituents coming in the door, but it is a real credit to Ben. He put in a superb effort and campaigned really hard. He has an IT background. His social media was excellent. I know this because he was on my campaign team for the last election in 2018. He has a very bright future. If he chooses to continue following a political path, I am sure he will end up, in some form, contributing to this great state.

Katherine Davies, the Labor candidate, was an unbelievably tireless worker. She has real compassion and care for our community and was backed up superbly with very good policies so she could go out and communicate with our electorate on what state Labor was offering to the people in the seat of Mount Gambier. She really showed great commitment to the cause, and it is the first time in my living memory when the number of people taking Labor how-to-vote cards was on par with the rest of the candidates, myself included, so it is a real credit to Katherine and the effort she put in.

Sometimes these public debates and community forums are quite daunting, particularly when you still have your day job and you have to get your head around policies and tricky questions coming from the crowd. I thought both Ben and Katherine did a wonderful job of communicating with our community and, as I said, I think we were blessed with great candidates. No matter which way people wanted to vote, they had a very good candidate to represent their views at the 2022 state election.

Peter Heaven was the other candidate. He came on the scene very late, and I did not get to know Peter very well, but I thank him for putting his hand up too. Of course, it was not just doorknocking, it was giving up your weekends and your mobile number going out to a whole range of people who would ring on it with myriads of issues. I used to see Katherine and Ben doing street-corner conversations out the front of shopping centres. They both worked very hard. I also want to thank their supporters, those people who give up hundreds of hours to support the candidate or the party they believe in.

Obviously, families get dragged in, whether willingly or reluctantly, and it was a real pleasure to get to know the candidates' families as well. Many mornings, Katherine's partner, James, and I would set up the pre-poll booth with Katherine. Jenny, who is James's mother, was there most of the day and also helped out on a forum around housing that we convened—because our issues are not political issues: they are community issues. I wanted to make sure that all the candidates were involved in addressing the issues our community faces.

Rick, Katherine's dad, was there, as was Julian Scriven—this young bloke, I tell you, is the hardest worker I have ever met. He had the Labor shirt on and he was there from the opening of pre-poll to the closing of pre-poll most of the days. He is a really engaging individual and I wish him all the best for his future too.

Mark Pretlove is one of our favourites and my team supplied cans of Solo to Mark. Mark has been there through thick and thin, through the dark days and the good days, but he is always handing out how-to-votes. For the Liberals, and I know most of them personally, Barney McCusker, Dianna Wiseman, Mark and Julie Peucker, Neil and Kris Howard and many more are just stalwarts of the Liberal Party.

To my own helpers I wrote thankyou letters—and there were 95 thankyou letters, so if I start mentioning individuals we will probably be here for the rest of the day. I wrote to each and every one of them to sincerely thank them. We had an amazing pre-poll and we would have three or four people for every two-hour slot. Most of the time, we were not turning people away but trying to reconfigure when they might want to come.

It was a really incredible effort, and when you have people there like Margie Winterfield or my mum, who knows every second person in town, you have to have two or three extras because they start talking and everyone slips past them, so you need to have someone mopping up behind to make sure that they get a how-to-vote card.

As a family, we have tried really hard to keep separation between politics and our family. It is a personal decision that we have made, but of course that gets thrown out the window when elections come around and the dining room table becomes campaign headquarters. I really do not want any of my kids to come into politics. They will obviously do what they want to do, and if I say one thing they will do the complete opposite anyway, but to have four expert advisers around the dining room table can be challenging.

My eldest daughter, Jordan, and her mother, Michaela, my wife, normally argue with each other about the correct course of action. Bridie, our youngest, wants to go for the kill every second she can, and then Jackson, my son, and I just look at each other and say, 'What the hell do we do here?' It was pretty nice when all the views lined up, but that was not always the case. Jackson and I are a little bit more laid back and just let it flow, whereas the females in our house certainly are more combative. Watch out if any of the Bells come in here, particularly Bridie because, I will tell you what, they will be interesting times.

In terms of our campaign, the really disappointing thing for me was about 12 months ago, when the state budget was handed down. The entire Limestone Coast got $2.3 million, and that is from Keith and Bordertown right down to Port MacDonnell. I decided that, instead of sitting there and whinging about it, we would do something about it, and we put together a document called the Future Mount Gambier and District Plan. It is about a $100 million plan or road map going forward and it really spelt out what type of investment our community was looking for.

It was developed in consultation with stakeholders. Obviously, our two councils are our major stakeholders, and they had a fair bit of input and I thank them for that. It really tried to address the issues that we were looking at—that is, health, including ambulance; housing; and investment in trades, particularly our TAFE, which has seen a lack of real investment. We launched this document in August last year. I invited the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition and SA-Best to come to the launch.

It probably surprised a fair few that the Leader of the Opposition made the effort to come down. He heard firsthand what the community wanted and that it was a united plan and not just a Troy Bell wish list. I made sure that I shared it with all the candidates so that, if I was unsuccessful and they were successful, they had not only a road map to go forward but also a road map to campaign on because this is bigger than just one person holding a seat: this is for the community's future. We had over 100 people. We were capped at 100, so I was quite nervous that over 100 people turned out on a pretty wintry night in August last year to launch the plan and also look at ways going forward.

What I was really pleased about were the election commitments from the Labor team, undoubtedly fuelled by Katherine and her hard work with the then opposition. They really sought to address many of the priorities that we had put down. I put in $20 million over the next four years for forestry, with well spelled-out initiatives around fire protection for our community, water initiatives and growing manufacturing. I put in $20 million and state Labor committed $25 million to our Forestry Future Initiatives. There is the Housing For All Initiative, with 400 homes being built in South Australia, 150 in regional South Australia, for our most disadvantaged social housing program. We expect a fair chunk of that in Mount Gambier.

The government has committed $5 million to our TAFE, $35 million for a technical college to be built in Mount Gambier and $35 million for health and our hospital, and that includes mental health. All of this is addressed in the Mount Gambier and district future plan. I do thank them for that commitment and look forward to the state budget this week.

There was one issue that did surprise me that I did not pick out, and that was the Adelaide 500. I did not think that issue would affect the community of Mount Gambier the way that it did, but I am still staggered at the number of people—and I would have to say the majority were Liberals—who would come up to me and speak passionately about the reinstatement of the Adelaide 500 and what it actually meant to them as people living in Mount Gambier.

Many tradies would come up and say that was the one weekend they would get away with work colleagues—there would be corporate support for them to get up to Adelaide, whether a big building company or a supplying company—and just how passionate they were about making sure the Adelaide 500 was reinstated. I will not go into many of the comments, but it is fair to say that was an issue that surprised me. The rest pretty much fell out of the future Mount Gambier and district document.

We are very keen to work with the current government over the next four years to make sure that this plan is implemented in full, and so far there is no reason to give any doubt that it will not be. I think the future for Mount Gambier and the district is very bright. With those words, I will conclude.