Tuesday, 15 October 2019

 Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:13): My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Small Business, and the action I seek is for the minister to join with me in visiting and speaking to concerned business owners in Victoria Street to hear their concerns and provide solutions to their problems. I do so because the Leader of the Opposition, who is also the Shadow Minister for Small Business, joined with me and met with a number of traders who have been severely affected since the opening of the injecting room in North Richmond. I do so because it appears that government ministers and local MPs have not shown any attention to the plight of these small business owners. The Minister for Mental Health does not want to listen; he organised a public meeting and then did not turn up. The Premier is not concerned for the welfare of residents and business owners; he has avoided them all. The local member, Richard Wynne, avoids the area. The Minister for Police and Emergency Services does not believe there is a problem. Local upper house member the Minister for Health is not across this issue at all and in fact does not understand the impacts on those people she supposedly represents, and I think that is an absolute disgrace.

So I ask the Minister for Small Business a reasonable request: for us to work together, along with the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Small Business, Michael O’Brien, to support these struggling Victoria Street small businesses that have been so significantly impacted by the introduction of Labor’s drug injecting facility in North Richmond. They told us that some of their businesses have been impacted by up to 70 per cent declines in revenue. Some have been closing, and others are fearful that they will have to close because of the lack of trade that they are undertaking and the declines in revenue. These are serious issues that this small business community is experiencing but that the government MPs that I outlined have completely ignored. So I again request that the small business minister joins with the Leader of the Opposition and me and makes a time for us to jointly visit these businesses so that he can hear their pleas and hear what is happening on the ground, the reality that they have to face each and every day and their declining income because of the impact that the injecting facility is having on their businesses.