Grievance Debate

PUBLIC SECTOR LEAVE ENTITLEMENTS

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:31): It is the end of the first week of the new parliamentary year and what have we got? A divided, shabby, secretive and tricky government, and that is no better illustrated than by the events of today and the events of this week. The government has gone through a hatchet job in cabinet. It is trying to sell it as a cabinet reform and a bloodless coup, but the Red Cross was on standby at the caucus meeting on Tuesday. They have gone through the cabinet with a hatchet, and the divisions are there for all to see—and they have been there for a long time.

Today we saw how these divisions impact on the state. We had minister Weatherill taking his submission to cabinet, minister Foley not even aware of its implications, and we had Treasury saying, 'We didn't know about this. We didn't know the implications of this.' How is it that then deputy premier Kevin Foley's department did not know what was in the cabinet submission produced by Kevin Foley's arch-rival, the member for Cheltenham? Of course, we discover this happened just weeks before Jay Weatherill, as the member for Cheltenham, challenged Kevin Foley, then deputy premier, for that very spot. So those leadership tensions played out in the departments and played out in the cabinet, and cabinet—and this is where the government gets very shabby—

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I note that the minister interjects. This is where the government gets very shabby. The cabinet signed off on a process, unaware of the costs, unaware of the implications on the state debt. That is the formal advice from the Treasury to the Treasurer: that it did not know the detail, it was unaware of it, it did not know the policy. How can a cabinet be so divided that, when one leadership rival brings in a submission, the other leadership rival does not even know what is in the submission and does not get it properly costed?

Treasury says that at that point the net debt could increase up to $130 million; that is if only 10 per cent of public servants take up the option. The long service leave provision is actually $1.3 billion, so it could be that Treasury had a different view that it may have gone over $130 million had public servants taken it up a higher rate.

This is a secretive government. We all remember the meeting that the Treasurer had to remember that he had forgotten. We all remember that, and how he misled the house, how he kept that secret from the state during the election. We all remember that. Well, guess what? We are back there again. The same government, the same treasurer, gets advice in the January before the election—just weeks before the election—that the state debt could have blown out by up to another $130 million because cabinet was not properly informed. That is what the Treasury minute says. This goes to the secretive government. They deliberately hid that issue from the public, just as they did the Adelaide Oval blowout. The former treasurer wrote to his leadership rivals saying, 'We should deal with this post the election.' They did not do this before the election.

Then we get the show today; we get the trickery of today. We have a potential future leader of the party, the member for Cheltenham, the Minister for Education. He gets asked a very simple question: did he know about this before the election? That was the question: did he know about it before the election?

The new Treasurer, wanting to impress everyone, stands up and says, 'Let me take it, I'm the new Treasurer. This is a money matter.' Well, how is knowing this issue before the election a money matter? Then the Treasurer says, 'Well, now I've got the question, I don't know the answer.' That is a disgrace. It is a disgrace, not because the Treasurer did not know—that is one issue—but it is a disgrace that it was a deliberate tactic to stand up and take the question, because then he could say, 'I didn't know, and I was protecting minister Weatherill from answering the questions.'

We went from someone who knew something but said nothing to someone who absolutely knew nothing and said nothing. At the end of the first week of this parliamentary year, this government is divided, it is shabby and it is secretive and, we can see today, it is still tricky.