Charlotte Varcoe
THE Liberal Listening Party has officially wrapped up its tour of the MacKillop electorate.
Member of the Legislative Council Ben Hood toured the region alongside Member for Barker Tony Pasin and chairperson of the Liberal Party Rural and Regional Council Nicolle Flint spoke with members of the community, businesses and held forums to hear the issues of regional South Australians.
Mr Hood said it was great to get out to the regions stating MacKillop welcomed them all with “open arms”.
“We have gone into each business in town, as many businesses as we could, handing out our contact details and asking our business people what the issues are,” Mr Hood said.
“Of course it is the cost of doing business, it is labour shortages and it is power prices as well.
“People are struggling to keep the lights on in business and we are hearing a lot of that from our community forum in each of the towns.”
He said health, roads, education and the cost of living was also high on the agenda at the public forums.
“We also have to address the issue of not being able to get general practitioners into our regional centres, in terms of roads everyone in the South East knows the state of our roads is pretty abysmal and are not care worthy,” Mr Hood said.
“In terms of education we are hearing the fact that regional schools are struggling to get math and science teachers and the kids who want to do hard math or hard science are having to open access which is only one lesson a week.
“It is really hard for our kids to be able to get that quality education when there simply are not enough teachers teaching math and science.”
Moving forward, Mr Hood said the feedback would now go towards producing policies for the State Liberal Party to present at the 2026 election.
“We begin to form the policies for the regions and test those policies,” he said.
“The Listening Tour does not stop once, we will go back out into the regions and hold community forums on health, on roads and we will test the things we have learned.”
Throughout the entire listening tour, Mr Hood said there were more than 60 attendees in Naracoorte, about 30 people in Meningie, Robe and Kingston and Millicent.
“It has also been a real opportunity for us to be able to walk the streets of these towns and meet up with the businesses, hand them our contact details and let them know if they do have an issue they have someone who is there and ready to listen,” he said.
