Joe Scalzi
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Joe Scalzi is a former Australian politician. He was a Liberal Party of Australia member of the South Australian House of Assembly between 1993 and 2006, representing the electorate of Hartley.
Scalzi was a high school teacher before entering parliament. In 1993, he was elected amidst the Liberal landslide victory that year, which saw Dean Brown become Premier. Scalzi very narrowly retained his seat despite an 11.7% swing at the 1997 election reducing him to a margin of 0.7%. At the 2002 election, Scalzi had to defend the most marginal Liberal seat in the state, but managed to increase his margin to 1.3% [1].
Despite this Scalzi remained a "fairly low-key figure"[2] only obtaining a position as a parliamentary secretary in April 2004 when he became secretary for training[3].
Scalzi took an interest in multicultural affairs. Joe Scalzi criticized South Australian premier Mike Rann for describing a Labor candidate, and future Member for Hartley Grace Portolesi, as coming from a "good Italian family" asking "What is the Premier actually implying? ... I say to the Premier: you are not Don Dunstan; you are the great pretender, and you can no longer put smoke over people's eyes." [4]
He was also one of a small number of Liberals to support a bill the cut the number of pokies in South Australia by 20%[5].
Joe Scalzi was a member of the public works committee that in 2001, made the deeply unpopular decision to sell the Payneham Civic Centre to JPMorgan Chase [6] whereupon it was demolished and the land was used as the site for offices for financial services despite protests by residents[7].
Scalzi lost his seat in the 2006 election landslide to the ALP. This now gives newly elected member for Hartley, Grace Portolesi Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney General, a margin of 4.6%[8]
After his loss he returned to work as a high school teacher, now teaching at Glenunga International High School where he teaches SOSE.
His son, Joel Scalzi, a member of the young Liberals, is a contestant on the 2007 season of Big Brother. When asked how far his son would make it on Big Brother he replied, in reference to his own short stature "I always knew my son would make it on to the shortlist".
