Your Say SA 2020: South Aussie pollies aren’t listening to the people

South Australians politicians are elected to represent us but they’re failing in these three major areas, according to the Sunday Mail’s Your Say SA 2020 survey.

• YOUR SAY SA 2020 VISION

• It’s time for South Australia be bold
• You little beauty: The inside word on SA
• Just not enough jobs to go around in SA

State politicians are defying public opinion on a trio of contentious key reforms that have passed or stalled in parliament.

GAMBLING

Almost three-quarters of survey respondents say not enough is being done to stamp out problem gambling – a result consistent across age groups and regions.

An even greater proportion – 84.6 per cent – is opposed to the State Government’s move to fit poker machines in South Australia with note acceptors.

A major party deal forged last month means the machines will be, for the first time, able to accept notes and not just coins.

Welfare groups savaged the proposal, saying it would speed up losses, while the Government said note acceptors would bring South Australia into line with other states

SA Best MP Connie Bonaros said the Labor and Liberal parties had “colluded” on reforms which were the “darkest day in SA’s tragic history of poker machines since their introduction”.

The survey found females were overwhelmingly opposed to note acceptors, with 90.6 per cent opposing the measure and just 9.4 per cent in favour.

However, 21.5 per cent of males were in favour and 78.5 per cent opposed.

PROSTITUTION

More than two-thirds of survey respondents were, in principle, supportive of prostitution being legalised with appropriate community safeguards, while 21.4 per cent were opposed and 12 per cent unsure.

State Parliament in November last year rejected the latest push to decriminalise sex work in SA.

A vote that would have allowed debate to continue, and finer detail of the proposal shaped, was lost.

Opponents of legalising sex work won the vote 24 to 19.

The 13th attempt at decriminalising sex work in SA since the 1980s, the Bill by Greens MLC Tammy Franks was introduced into the Upper House in May, 2018, and passed last June, 13 votes to six.

Supported by Attorney-General Vickie Chapman and the SA Law Society, the Bill aimed to give sex workers the same human, legal and workplace rights and protections from exploitation and discrimination as other workers.

Sex work was decriminalised in NSW in 1995 and legalised – which means regulated – in Victoria, Queensland, the ACT and NT.

Support for legalising prostitution fell with age, yet 60.4 per cent of people aged 65+ were in favour, 24.3 per cent opposed and 15.2 per cent unsure. Males were more in favour than females – 75.9 per cent to 57.5 per cent – and were more certain in their views – only 8.6 per cent were unsure compared to 15.3 per cent of females.

EUTHANASIA

Overwhelming support for legalising euthanasia was revealed in the survey, a relatively common finding in gauges of public opinion.

The survey found 84.6 per cent of people in favour of the legalisation of euthanasia for terminally ill people who had given prior written consent, with just 8.1 per cent opposed and 7.2 per cent unsure.

Western Australia last month became the second state, after Victoria, to allow voluntary euthanasia. Under the WA laws, a terminally ill person must make two verbal requests and one written request, which must be signed off by two doctors independently.

SA Parliament’s End of Life Choices Committee is examining another legal push – the most recent was rejected in 2016.