Grievance Debate

MINISTERIAL STAFF

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (15:07): How ironic it was that, when the public sector workers were rallying here on Tuesday against the government's decision to axe 4,000 public service jobs, parliament was suspended from just after midday until 2 o'clock, as the Rann Labor government had run out of business. With only 32 sitting days this year, it is appalling that the government could not find anything to put to the house. It is yet another demonstration of how arrogant and lazy the Rann Labor government has become.

It is so arrogant that the Premier and his government thought that they would get away with hiding 200 spin doctors across various departments. These 200 staff are in addition to 298 spin doctors and other ministerial staff employed in the 15 ministers' offices, with a total annual salary bill (for these 200 public relations and communications staff) estimated at $17.4 million. That brings the total wages bill for the whole spin team to $28 million, plus perks. That is appalling. This is at a time when the Premier is slashing hospital and school budgets, axing public sector jobs, and reducing funding to the agricultural sector but still increasing fees and charges.

What are these people employed to do? They have to try to make an unpopular government popular again. Let us look at the some of the messages the spin team has tried to sell for the Rann government over the past year or so:

the construction of a new rail yards hospital, which the public does not want;

the infamous Water for Good Plan spruiking that the Rann Labor government is working to reduce our reliance on the River Murray—how many adverts have we seen about this and at what cost to the taxpayer; and

construction of the desalination plant—another project that has been splashed across the television but we are still to receive any benefit from it.

I could not believe it when I read that in South Australia the lowest-paid ministerial adviser—and there are 18 of them—receives $99,540, plus home phone rental and broadband connection, two-thirds of calls; reasonable use of a mobile phone—and it is a pity the Treasurer cannot be made to show similar restraint; internet costs and city car parking. I wonder what the total salary package would add up to. If the ministry were reduced, there would be no need for 18 of these ministerial advisers and the money saved could be better used elsewhere.

We heard the Minister for Health in the house yesterday defend the government budget cuts to the three private hospitals at Keith, Ardrossan and Moonta. These hospitals are vital to the small communities they service, and to see the government withdraw the $800,000 they get in total as grant support—only $150,000 for one of them—that is only one wage in this spin team.

What about pulling money away from our food-producing industries? How can any government that has any credibility savagely cut crop research—crops for food—and yet today we hear that Australia is a net food importer? How can they cut this valuable work and still keep in place a massive PR spin team to make the government look good? What hypocrisy. What totally double standards.

This morning, in an interview on ABC radio, the Minister for Health was justifying the cuts to the three hospitals due to the economic crisis. What a lot of rubbish. How much credibility is there when they waste $28 million on this massively oversized spin team? What credibility have you got when you are happy to get on the radio in all sincerity and say, 'It's all about the economic downturn,' yet you know you have $28 million in your pocket that you are throwing away on a spin team. Did the spin team suffer the same cuts? No way, did not touch it.

Also, in last week's Advertiser we saw, 'Chief of staff's hidden $80,000 windfall: Rann's top man paid in secret.' It goes on to say:

Taxpayers paid the Premier's chief of staff Nick Alexandrides about $80,000 more than the Government reported in its yearly salary reports.

It goes on and on. I am sick of hearing the crocodile tears from the Minister for Health and others that all these cuts are about the economic downturn when you have $28 million there that you do not need to be spending. If you were a good government you would not need to have a spin team at all. In the old days of Sir Thomas Playford you barely had one adviser per minister. It is high time you were credible and axed it too.