Question Time

TRANSPORT, ENERGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE DEPARTMENT

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): My question is to the Minister for Transport. Why did the minister tell the house yesterday that he was announcing new decisions about restructuring and reorganising TransAdelaide and the Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure when the changes were, in fact, announced in June this year?

The minister's statement to parliament yesterday led the house to believe that the government was announcing new measures to deal with community concerns about public transport safety, reliability and standards. However, in June this year, in Budget Paper 1 (page 6 of the 2007-08 budget) the government stated that 'ownership and control of all metropolitan transport rail assets will be integrated into the Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure'.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (14:23): It was absolutely clear that, when we commenced this review work in April, one of our key objectives was to remove that corporatisation the Liberals had created to lead to privatisation. It was not clear how we were going to do it.

What the Leader of the Opposition needs to acknowledge is that that was not the only thing announced at the end of the review. I will not go through it at great length; I will simply refer him to the ministerial statement made yesterday. However, I did refer to new executives going into TransAdelaide and a customer focus, and I foreshadowed some further changes—and there will be more to talk about that in the future. So, if this is the first question from the Leader of the Opposition—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Let me tell the Leader of the Opposition, I have come back from Alexander Downer this morning, and he was a lot sharper than this bloke. If I were the Leader of the Opposition, I would be very, very afraid, because he is a lot sharper than he is. I have got to tell you this: he asked a lot tougher questions than that.