SUPPLY BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 March 2011.)

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (11:03): As the lead speaker on this bill for the opposition, it gives me some pleasure to speak to the Supply Bill. The Supply Bill is the mechanism that provides the government with its money between, essentially, 1 July and when the Appropriation Bill is passed some time later in August or September, and it gives the house an opportunity to comment on matters financial and economic generally. It is in that regard that I want to address the house in relation to the state of the budget, the state of the state's finances and some of the carry-on from the government opposite.

The only real thing that has changed between the debate about the budget and the debate about the Supply Bill is the fact that the treasurer has gone, both as treasurer and as deputy premier. The treasurer has gone because of a number of factors: part of it is the community backlash against a very unpopular budget delivered by a very unpopular government. I have never seen the number of protests following a state budget that we have seen in the last 12 months—protests virtually weekly, if not fortnightly—across a whole range of issues, whether it is cuts to the public service, whether it is selling the forests, whether it is the Adelaide Oval exercise, whether it is the cuts to community hospitals or whether it is Ward 4G at Flinders Medical Centre.

So many protests have happened on a continual basis since the delivery of the budget, but nothing has changed, except that the treasurer position has changed. There has been not one policy by the government—not any major policy; a couple of minor backflips—but not one major policy change in relation to the budget delivered last year.

The other reason why the former treasurer is gone, apart from the unpopularity of the budget and the budget measures—and, by the way, the former treasurer kindly reminded us that all the cabinet, including the member for Cheltenham (Jay Weatherill), the member for Playford (Jack Snelling) and the now Deputy Premier John Rau, all those people (and all of them leadership hopefuls, of course, on the other side of the house) all backed the decision unanimously.

That was kindly given to us by the former treasurer in a contribution to this house, just to put on the record that the budget that is so unpopular is not just the budget of Kevin Foley (the former treasurer, now Minister for Police), but it is a budget of the Labor caucus. It is a budget of the Labor cabinet. And there were media reports, of course, that, when then treasurer Foley presented the budget to the Labor caucus, there was applause and, indeed, some even suggested a standing ovation for this particular budget.

Now, Madam Speaker, I do not hear too many Labor MPs clapping, I do not hear too many Labor voters clapping, I do not hear too many unionists clapping and I do not hear too many South Australians clapping for what has been a terrible budget for the state—and, indeed, it is an unpopular budget by an unpopular government.

The other reason, of course, why the former treasurer is now no longer treasurer (the one change since last year) is that this government is bitterly divided; and this government is bitterly divided along personality lines and it is bitterly divided along policy lines. What the unpopular budget did was to open up these divisions within the government.

You had the issue of recent weeks of the Minister for Industry and Trade (Tom Koutsantonis) talking about the need for a nuclear debate. You had the Minister for Police backing him in that particular line of argument in a direct contradiction to what the Premier had been saying for eight or nine years. This is the Premier, of course, who, in his former days, worked for then premier Dunstan as an adviser and who wrote that famous leaflet about why uranium mining should not happen in South Australia—in fact, why Roxby Downs should not go ahead—and that no credible economic commentator would back Roxby Downs.

Now, of course, the Premier runs around sprouting it as the saviour of the state. However, the division between him and the want-to-be leader, Tom Koutsantonis (who sees himself as further progressing up the chain and undermining the current Premier), was stark. There was the clash in cabinet between the then leadership rivals, the member for Cheltenham (Jay Weatherill) and the then treasurer (Kevin Foley), over whether cabinet was properly informed about the impact of the long service leave and annual leave changes that the government announced.

Through freedom of information, we revealed the rather terse memos sent from the then treasurer to the then minister for public sector reform about the impact of that particular reform. It was about a $300 million extra debt figure, if I recall properly, and it was just another example of the bitter divisions playing out in that case at a cabinet level.

Then we had, of course, the rather unsavoury exchange right before the cameras during question time between minister O'Brien and then treasurer Foley when we asked treasurer Foley whether he agreed with the Minister for Forests' explanation to the South-East community that the state was borrowing to pay its wages and that it was selling the forest to keep its AAA credit rating; and, when given the opportunity, rather than be conciliatory, the then treasurer essentially poked the Minister for Forests in the eye with his answer.

So, when we asked the Minister for Forests whether he would like to respond to the then treasurer, the Minister for Forests said that of course what the treasurer said was 'bloody nonsense', to quote the minister. What we have had since the delivery of this very unpopular budget is the Labor divisions slowly but surely opening up. Even on the public sector cuts to entitlements we had members from the left faction from the government out the front of the chamber, out in front of the parliament during the protests, walking around to the unionists saying that they individually did not support the cuts to public sector entitlements. The member for Ashford was even quoted in the media as saying that she did not support the cuts to entitlements.

So, what has changed since the last budget is this: the budget has been so unpopular and the government has been so divided that the treasurer has gone from the portfolio—nine years as treasurer have now gone—and what you have is a government that is divided, a government that is looking over its shoulder to see who is leaking on who next. Only last week, there was a leak from cabinet regarding your electorate, Madam Speaker, and the explosives factory at Whyalla.

This government is internally divided. It has lost its direction and it is on the nose with the South Australian public. The other issue that has come out over the last 12 months since the budget—

The Hon. S.W. KEY: I rise on a point of order. My understanding of this particular debate is that we have to directly address the issue of supply. I do think the member for Davenport—entertaining as it may be—has taken some licence with that, so I would ask you to rule on that matter, please.

The SPEAKER: Member for Ashford, normally these supply debates are fairly wide ranging. I will listen carefully to the member for Davenport. I will not uphold your point of order at this stage but I will listen carefully and remind him.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Let me explain it to the member for Ashford in these terms. The reason this is relative to the supply debate is very simple. The money we are about to agree to supply to the government is going to fund the very issues to which it is divided about. It is going to fund the Treasury department, which is setting about cutting the long service leave and annual leave of public servants. It is going to fund the forestry department, which is helping to sell the SA forests on behalf of the government. It is going to fund the cabinet office; the cabinet office (or whoever) that happened to leak the cabinet document to do with the Whyalla explosives plant. It is ultimately going to supply state government funds towards that explosives factory for the planning process, or whatever. So, the supply debate is about any government action that is funded by government money. That is why, by definition, it is a wideranging debate.

Apart from the division, the other things it is going to fund are all the issues that the government was not honest about with the public before the election—the deception. So, we have had the division, let us now talk about the deception. This government is deceptive of the public. It simply has not told the truth. One of the biggest issues that will be funded by the Supply Bill is the Adelaide Oval project. We remember, of course, the former treasurer calling a press conference on the very day we were being briefed by the Stadium Management Authority, and suddenly admitting that he knew before the election that there was going to be a blowout in the Adelaide Oval project.

We have now discovered that cabinet misled the people when it went to the election saying that the cost of the hospital would be $1.7 billion, when it had already agreed in November, prior to the election, that the public sector comparator should be adjusted to $1.8 billion. Another deception of the South Australian people.

There was the issue of pensions. Low income earners were given increases by the Gillard government, and they were not to be touched, but straight after the election this government dipped its hand into the pockets of the pensioners. Another deception on behalf of this government. There is the most recent issue of drinking water. It has now come out that the government had information that it is safe to drink properly treated stormwater, but for political gain it deceived the public on that particular issue. So, this is a government that is divided. It is deceptive of the public and, as a result, it is a deeply unpopular government.

I will touch on some of the key issues relating to the budget and the spending that this Supply Bill will fund going forward, and make some comments on the Adelaide Oval project, just so that the house is clear as to what is being contemplated by the government in relation to the Adelaide Oval project.

The opposition was given a briefing in the last two weeks by the Stadium Management Authority about the Adelaide Oval project, and it was an interesting brief. South Australians need to understand a few things about the Adelaide Oval project. The first thing they need to understand is that we were advised by the Stadium Management Authority that it will be built to last 50 years—so Adelaide Oval will be a 50-year stadium.

I also understand that, under the divorce clause, as I call it (that is, the clause in the agreement between football and cricket that tells them what happens if football and cricket cannot get on in 10 or 15 years' time), all the assets go to cricket if football leaves Adelaide Oval. If AFL football leaves Adelaide Oval, my understanding is all the assets go to cricket.

What that means for South Australia, one would think—that is, if football leaves Adelaide Oval and all the assets go to cricket—is that would lock in football to the Adelaide Oval for the 50-year period of the agreement, so that Adelaide will never have, or is unlikely to have, a covered inner city stadium—unless, of course, SACA is contemplating at some date in the future covering Adelaide Oval. If football loses its assets by leaving Adelaide Oval, how will it ultimately fund a brand new, inner city covered stadium? I think it is important to realise that there are some big questions to be answered in the next few weeks when the South Australian Cricket Association members take their vote.

The Stadium Management Authority this week sent the opposition a copy of the economic development model that was given to the Sunday Mail about a week earlier and which received wide coverage in the Sunday Mail. It is interesting to go through that document and see the economic modelling for the Adelaide Oval project. The Adelaide Oval project looks like it will deliver around 125 new jobs in the city, made up of the 405 jobs that they claim will be created in the city and taking off the 290 jobs that already exist at West Lakes, giving a net of around 125 extra jobs. At a $535 million cost, those 125 jobs come out at about $4 million a job, off the top of my head, so that is quite an expensive exercise in job creation and not something that is highlighted in bold in the economic report.

The report also makes it clear that future Adelaide Oval attendances are modelled on a certain level of attendance. I note that on the weekend Port Power and Port Adelaide Magpies had their reunification game at AAMI Stadium, heavily promoted by the media in an effort to gain higher attendances, and there were a touch over 23,000 spectators at the game. The Stadium Management Authority's modelling shows that Port Power games will have to average 30,000 at Adelaide Oval (about a 26 per cent increase on what they are currently getting) to make it pay. It also shows that they are relying on maintaining the Rugby Sevens every year going forward with attendance at about 25,000, and there will be a rugby international game, apparently, every year, attracting 30,000 people as well.

Ms Bedford: The parliamentary cricket match?

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Not the parliamentary cricket match. Unfortunately, member for Florey, the parliamentary cricket match is not a big crowd puller.

Mr Pederick: Shame!

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: It is a shame. So, there are some rather ambitious targets in the economic modelling that goes with the Adelaide Oval project. However, the point I really wanted to make in relation to the oval project is that the state needs to understand what the deal is. As far as I can gather, the deal is that the agreement has been locked in: if football leaves, cricket will get the assets, and that, essentially, means football is there for 50 years. It is hard to imagine, without football, how one could possibly have another inner-city stadium.

The other issue is the question: where is plan B? The media have been somewhat interested in that question. Let me put this on the record: the South Australian National Football League has advised the opposition that it is not in a position to talk to the opposition about other options because it signed a legal agreement with the government some time ago to negotiate in good faith to deliver the Adelaide Oval project, and that therefore excludes it from negotiating on any other project.

It is difficult for anyone to suggest a plan B if you cannot negotiate with the income generator (which is football) to talk about that particular project. On this plan B that the media keep talking about, I think the media and the public need to be aware that the opposition is essentially locked out of negotiating with football until this matter is resolved by the government, SACA and the SANFL one way or another through the SACA vote and whatever flows from that.

However, there are many other options for venues for stand-alone city stadiums. Just because the Royal Adelaide Hospital site (assuming that project goes ahead) is gone, there are lots of other sites available in the city for an inner-city stadium if that was the state's wish. Of course, we should remember that it was only about two years ago that football itself went to the government and suggested a stand-alone inner-city stadium for football as its preference, but the government, for its own political reasons, knocked it back.

Another issue is compulsory acquisition. The government has never ruled out whether it will move down the path of compulsorily acquiring Adelaide Oval should the SACA vote go against it. If the government is not contemplating that, then any of the government ministers can come in and put that on the record or put out a press release at any time, but until a government minister rules it out (and it has been in the media for two or three weeks now), it is a fair assumption on behalf of the public that the government is seriously contemplating the compulsory acquisition of Adelaide Oval assets (SACA assets, if you like) to deliver this particular project. If the government wants to rule that out, it can do it at any stage.

Madam Speaker, just relax, because this is all going to be paid for, of course, by selling the state's forests—the harvesting rights for the state's forests. We know that for a number of reasons. First, the Minister for Forests went to the South-East and had that famous meeting that was taped (with his knowledge), where he said, 'We need to sell the forests to maintain our AAA credit rating.' If you go to the budget papers, it is crystal clear that the level of debt stays at around $7.3 billion, $7.4 billion, $7.5 billion in the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 years. That is despite the fact that we are spending $535 million on the oval, plus the bridge, plus all the add-ons that the house is well aware of. So, even though we are spending that $535 million, the debt does not go above the $7.3 billion, $7.4 billion mark.

Why is that, Madam Speaker? The reason is that the government has already factored it into its budget estimates. Kevin Foley (then treasurer) told the house he factored in the budget estimates in year 2011-12 whatever the revenue stream is—and we do not know what the revenue stream is—from the forest sale. If you look at the debt figure in the budget it is crystal clear that the forest sale comes in, the Adelaide Oval expenditure goes out, and the debt level hardly changes over that three-year period. So, it is a fair summary that we are, essentially, selling the South-East forests to help deliver the Adelaide Oval project.

Many South Australians are concerned about whether the state actually has the capacity to afford the Royal Adelaide Hospital project, the Adelaide Oval project and the high cost of government under this government's reign at the moment. However, you need to relax, Madam Speaker, because the current Treasurer says that he was only joking when he said across the table at a lunch on the weekend that it would not be of too much concern to him if the SACA vote failed because it would make his budget a lot easier; he was concerned that he could not afford necessarily to do everything the government has promised.

Well, we all know on this side of the house that the Treasurer was not joking. There are leaks coming out of the government and leaks coming out of the Public Service, all to the effect that the government is in trouble on its budget. On the first day of the Treasurer's reign, when he took over from the former treasurer, we did the Treasurer the courtesy of asking him some very simple questions about whether he would change any policies that were announced in the very unpopular budget announced by the previous treasurer, and the current Treasurer did us the courtesy of saying that he would not be changing any of the key policy settings.

So, nothing has changed, other than the Treasurer. The Treasurer has changed, but the cuts to the Public Service, the cuts to community services and the government waste continues, and what we have now is a Treasurer who is starting to see the writing on the wall—that what the government has promised is going to be very, very difficult indeed to deliver. It is interesting that there have been two announcements in relation to two key major infrastructure projects that are to be delivered by the money in this Supply Bill: one is The Royal Adelaide Hospital project; the other is the selling of the forests.

The announcement of whether the forests will be sold has been delayed past the SACA vote, and SACA votes on 2 May. The Treasurer announced recently that he was going to consult more. Having announced it in 2008—it is now 2011—the Treasurer has suddenly discovered that he should consult the Chamber of Commerce in the South-East. With due respect, I suspect that it has already been consulted; this is just a delay tactic to put the decision on the sale of the forests back past the SACA vote.

In relation to the other issue, the Royal Adelaide Hospital project, we have been asking the government to come clean with South Australia about what is the total cost to build—the construction and finance cost to build—and then the ongoing costs to the South Australian public over the 29-year contract period after it is built in a five or six-year period. The government has promised that it will put all of those financial details on the record but—surprise, surprise!—the Minister for Health, John Hill, said that that will be announced a lot closer to the June budget than the original time frame, which was about now.

It has put those two issues—two big, key infrastructure issues—back behind the SACA vote issue, and you can interpret that only as that the government is somewhat nervous about its budget position and that it is somewhat nervous about what the SACA vote may ultimately do to the Adelaide Oval project. Essentially, none of the key economic data has changed since the budget debate back in September, so I am not going to sit here and regurgitate all of the same debate we had in the budget debate back in September, but the level of debt is going up about 75 per cent over the next three years.

The government intends to collect about $1 billion extra in taxes and revenue—and that is, of course, before federally we get a carbon tax and before we get a national disability scheme levy. So, the cost of living is starting to hurt ordinary South Australians out there, and you really have to wonder whether this government is listening at all to that message. All of the key economic data that was presented as part of the budget in the opposition responses still holds true today: our debt level is growing and our tax level is growing.

There have been three independent reports in the last 12 months, all confirming that South Australia is the highest-taxed state in the nation. We are also the highest spending government per head of population in Australia. So, we have a typical Labor government here: we have deception to the public before the election, we have the highest-taxed state in South Australia and the highest spending. High tax, high-spending government—welcome to the Labor government.

I want to conclude with a simple story that summarises the state budget pretty well and the supply that will be feeding it at the next state budget. I go back to the discussion I had with my son when the budget was originally brought down in September. I was home reading the six or seven volumes of the budget papers and my 26-year-old son came in and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I am reading the budget.' He said, 'That would be exciting. It won't affect me much.'

I said, 'Well, actually it will because the government is putting up water prices by 100 per cent again. They have just put them up by 100 per cent; water prices are going to go up 100 per cent again. They are going to collect about $1 billion extra in revenue which means all of our costs of living are going to go up, so we are going to have to start charging you rent.'

He said, 'Well, that won't happen. I will move out and buy my own home.' I said, 'The problem with that is, mate, this government has actually cut the First Home Owners Grant scheme, so that makes it hard, and they are going to collect $20 million extra through stamp duty.' So buying a home for a university student or someone just out of uni is actually going to be very difficult.

On that, he scratched his head and said, 'I'll tell you what: I will go and live at grandma's.' I said, 'You can live at grandma's if you want, but understand this: you will have to use public transport more there than you will where we live.' Public transport costs are going up above CPI, car registrations are going up, speeding fines are going up—he does get one or two occasionally—and, of course, compulsory third party insurance is going up. So, moving to grandma's is actually not going to solve his problem.

Then he came up with this brainwave. He said, 'I will tell you what I will do. I will move to the country, to the South-East, and move in with a mate of mine who is a teacher, whose wife works for the Public Service.' I said, 'That will be interesting for you, but bear in mind that the South-East could be struggling a bit in the future because this government is going to sell the forests and the local mayors think that could cost up to 3,000 jobs. There may actually be fewer teachers needed in the South-East, so how secure your friend's job is in the South-East, I am not sure. They are also going to cut the housing subsidies for country teachers; that is under threat, so your friend might not be too happy with that. They are also, of course, cutting the 3¢ a litre subsidy for country petrol, so it is going to be more expensive to live, and whatever you do, don't have an accident.'

The Hon. S.W. KEY: Point of order: I am not sure where this particular contribution is going, but the member for Davenport having his son—whatever his age is, 25 or 26—listening to all this advice is miraculous. I would just ask him to perhaps come back to reality because it seems like a bit of a fantasy to me that a twenty-something person would actually take all of this advice.

The SPEAKER: Member for Ashford, I am not sure what your point of order was. I think I will allow the member to continue and go back to the substance of the debate.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Madam Speaker, it is leading to a conclusion. The 3¢ a litre fuel subsidy was cut, so petrol will be more expensive. I said to him, 'Whatever you do, don't have an accident in the country because they are cutting funding to the Keith, Moonta and Ardrossan hospitals, and be careful what you eat because the border watch for fruit fly is being cut after midnight.'

With that, he scratched his head and said, 'Look, I think I am going to go to the pub for a drink. This is all too hard.' I said, 'Go to the pub, but just be aware, mate, you will need to take a bit more money because the government is actually doing cost recovery on the hotel industry. They are going to have $4,000 a year in extra costs at least, so all the prices of beer are going to go up.' He said, 'I am a bit cleverer than that. I will go to the cellar door and grab a wine.' I said, 'Sorry, they are cutting the cellar door subsidy by $50,000 as well.'

With that, he said he thought he might go fishing. I said, 'You can't go fishing because of these marine parks and the no-take areas.' With that, he said, 'Well, under this government, you might as well go and hide under a rock.' I said, 'You can do that if you want to, but bear in mind, mining royalties are going up 5 per cent.' So, that was the impact of the budget.

This Supply Bill gives the government an opportunity to change its policy and change direction. The great tragedy for this government is that it said after the election—now, let's remember this—it was going to go out and reconnect with the community. It was going to reconnect with the community. Having reconnected with the community, what major policy has it changed? The Adelaide Oval policy remains. The Royal Adelaide Hospital project remains. The 'selling the forest' project remains. The desal plant is a debacle financially. It is a basket case of a government. It is a divided government, and we are poorly served by this particular government.

As is the tradition in the house, the opposition will support the Supply Bill, but we just bring to the house's attention that we have before us a divided government that deceives the South Australian public, and we are the poorer for it.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:35): How disappointing that it appears that nobody from the government is going to stand up and defend the position that the state finds itself in.

The Hon. S.W. Key: How do you know?

Mr WILLIAMS: Well, you just had an opportunity.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: The convention of the house is that we take turns.

The SPEAKER: Order! I give the call to who speaks.

Mr WILLIAMS: I was just pointing out, Madam Speaker, that nobody from the government seems to want to speak.

Ms Bedford: We were shocked that the member for Davenport finished so early.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: I think he covered a fair bit of territory and, unfortunately, I have a fair bit of territory to cover too, and I only hope that I have the ability to get across most of it. One of the hallmarks of the most recent budget and the matters that the government is going through with regard to the finances of this state is that obviously the budget is out of control.

The former treasurer had lost control of the expenses in the budget, and he admitted that himself—not that we needed an admission from the treasurer, but he did admit that the expenses were out of control—but we find ourselves still desperate for cash. When I say 'we find ourselves', the state and this government finds itself desperate for cash and is doing whatever it can to increase revenues or to bring forward cash revenues.

The proposal to forward sell the forests in the South-East is the biggest example. It is an outrageous plan of the government to even contemplate bringing forward rotations to the forest, and I do not think that the government has really thought the policy through at all. The current Treasurer has announced that he is sticking with all the former treasurer's policies and the policies that the government has had and announced to date—and I will not labour the point anymore; the member for Davenport has already canvassed that issue that there has been no change—but in relation to the proposal to forward sell the forests, the government announced that it was not selling ForestrySA. It will retain ForestrySA.

I do not think the Treasurer understands what ForestrySA does. It actually manages the forests on a day-to-day basis. If we have sold all the revenue stream from the forests but we are going to continue to have ForestrySA as the government agency, what revenue stream will we have over the next 60, 80 or 100 years to pay for the management of the forests, to pay for those people who work at ForestrySA, to pay for the materials etc. that they utilise to manage those forests? ForestrySA will become a burden on the public purse. Instead of creating a revenue stream for the government, the forests in the South-East will become an annual economic burden to the budget. It is just nonsensical.

ForestrySA returned to Treasury revenue of $43 million last year. If we capitalise that at 6 per cent, we get $716 million. To have a positive effect on the budget, we would need to get at least $716 million for the forward sale of the forests. If you capitalised it at 5 per cent—and I think that is probably closer to the rate at which the government could borrow money—that figure rises to $860 million, so you would need somewhere between $700 million and $850 million for the sale to have a positive impact on the budget, and that is without taking into account the ongoing cost of paying to maintain the ForestrySA agency.

I would argue that we would probably need, depending on how many rotations we forward sell and how many years we are going to maintain ForestrySA in this budget negative fashion, at least $1.5 to $2 billion. That is probably what the forest is actually worth, but I doubt very much whether we will get anywhere near that. That ignores the other potential economic impact of selling the forest, and that is the economic impact of losing thousands of jobs in the South-East. The tax revenues from those thousands of jobs are probably much, much greater than the $43 million that the Treasury receives directly from ForestrySA.

So, the government needs to put the business case on the table. It needs to come clean. Treasury has obviously done the work, but what the government wants to do is grab the cash now, because it is spending it and its expenses are out of control. It wants to grab the cash now, and to hell with the future. That is the problem with the proposal to forward sell the forests, and the people of the South-East have seen straight through this proposal and have demonstrated on the steps of parliament in the city of Adelaide and will continue to fight to have that decision overturned.

I do wish to talk briefly about the Adelaide Oval proposal—again, a pretty dumb proposal, in my opinion. I will say, I am actually a member of SACA, so I will get to vote on 2 May.

The Hon. R.B. Such: How are you going to vote?

Mr WILLIAMS: How am I going to vote? I think I'll be voting no, Bob. I think I will be voting no, but at least I am declaring that I am a member. There are a whole heap of commentators out there having lots to say about this particular policy decision who do not have the guts to declare that they are SACA members, and for one reason or another they are putting one side of the story. We read in the morning paper that we might consign ourselves to mediocrity if we do not support the Adelaide Oval redevelopment.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: I think that was Alexander Downer.

Mr WILLIAMS: I do not care who it is, Tom. I do not care who it is. The member for Davenport pointed out that this deal locks us in to this position for 50 years. That is what we were told by the Stadium Management Authority last week, I think it was. It locks us into a deal for 50 years. So, football, which is the big money generator for any stadium that is going to be built in this city into the foreseeable future, will be locked in to Adelaide Oval. So, we will be locked in for 50 years to be a one oval city, a one stadium city.

For somebody to come out and say that we consign ourselves to mediocrity by not supporting this development, I do not think they have looked beyond the next couple of years. I do not think they have realised that in 2025, 2035 and 2045 we will still be watching football in Adelaide sitting in an uncovered stadium, because there will be no choice. We are locked in for the long term to Adelaide Oval. I am not too sure that spending $535 million of taxpayers' money to achieve a net gain of 12,000 seats is actually good value for money. That is what we would be getting: 12,000 seats more than we have today.

The finances are predicated on Port Power getting 30,000 spectators to every game they play at the Adelaide Oval. I think that is a stretch; I think that really is a stretch. The reality is that the disastrous situation we find ourselves in on this whole debate has been brought about because of the conflict between the SANFL and the AFL over who controls the two football licences in this city. It is quite clear to anybody who has studied this that the AFL wants to regain control of those football licences. The SANFL obviously does not want to relinquish them. In the meantime, the AFL is quite happy to see the SANFL bleed, and bleed profusely.

Just think for a moment of how much money the AFL is pouring into the Gold Coast and into Western Sydney—both cities that do not have football as part of their long-term culture—to develop new clubs in those cities, yet it turns its back on Australian Rules Football in Adelaide. The AFL has been very coy in coming forward and putting its money on the table in Adelaide.

The suckers in this whole debate are the taxpayers. I suspect the taxpayers will be screwed, will be the losers, and we will end up in the long term being a one-stadium city with a substandard stadium that we are obliged to use for the next 50 years. I will not repeat all the things that my colleague the member for Davenport said, but that is what we would be locking ourselves into.

The Hon. S.W. Key: Do you have a son?

Mr WILLIAMS: Do I have a son? I have a grandson.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.W. Key: What are his thoughts on the budget?

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: One of my sons is a member, too, and I think I know how he will be voting. I will talk for a moment about the Royal Adelaide Hospital. We know that the former treasurer inadvertently let slip the $1.8 billion number when the government keeps claiming that it is a $1.7 billion project, and it was not until after the election last year that it was revealed that in fact cabinet did sign off on the extra $100 million in November 2009. So, the government has been very tricky with the numbers. We know that that same former treasurer inadvertently let slip more recently 'the $2 billion hospital'. We know from experience that the former treasurer does have a problem with Freudian slips and he has obviously done it again.

We do not know exactly what the taxpayer is going to be up for with the move of the Royal Adelaide Hospital from the east end of North Terrace to the west end of North Terrace. What we do know is that it is going to cost a hell of a lot of money. We do know that it is $2 billion and going northwards. We do know that accessibility is going to be an issue. We do know that fewer services will be delivered from the new site than are currently delivered from the existing site. We do know that this will be a great waste of taxpayers' money.

Similarly, we have seen a great waste of taxpayers' money in things like Shared Services. Already the budget to develop Shared Services has blown out from $60 million to $100 million, and last year the Auditor-General pointed out that the projected saving is falling short by $100 million, as well. What we can take from this sort of data is that this government just is not capable of managing the state.

The member for Davenport also briefly mentioned the desalination plant. What a crazy decision it was to double the size of the desalination plant from 50 gigalitre capacity per year to 100 gigalitre capacity per year. In the five years before level 3 water restrictions were instituted in Adelaide, the average water use in the city was 168 gigalitres. A 100 gigalitre capacity desalination plant will provide between 60 and 70 per cent of our total water needs, without water restrictions. I think that is absolute overkill, and it comes at a cost of $1.1 billion. The original desal plant was going to be $1.1 billion; now we are facing a cost of $2.2 billion. The government claims that it is a $1.8 billion project, but it overlooks the fact that it is also necessary to build a $400 million series of pipelines to connect the northern and southern systems of the distribution network simply so that we can use the water. It is an absolute disaster and, again, a billion dollars ill spent.

The opposition took a proposal on stormwater to the last election. That billion dollars would be about double what we believe it would cost to have a comprehensive and integrated stormwater harvesting and recycling system across metropolitan Adelaide. The government likes to cover its backside with all sorts of policy issues, and the government is claiming that it is doing great things with stormwater and will be harvesting 20 gigalitres of stormwater by 2013. It is very easy to collect stormwater, and it is relatively easy to store it; it is almost impossible to use it if you do not bring it up to drinking standard. If you do not bring it up to drinking standard you have to build a second pipe network to distribute the water to use it. The government keeps ignoring this fact, but the former minister, the member for Cheltenham, divulged that it would cost $6 billion to duplicate the pipe network across metropolitan Adelaide.

The reality is that the flawed Water for Good document shows that only 15 gigalitres of water would water all the public parklands, gardens and playing fields across metropolitan Adelaide; so where are we going to use the 20 gigalitres of stormwater that we harvest each year past 2013? The reality is that it will not be used. We are spending good money to harvest some stormwater, but we are doing only half the job. We will not be able to use it. It will not replace the potable water supply.

We are building a desalination plant and wasting $1 billion which could have provided a comprehensive, integrated stormwater harvesting and recycling scheme that would have provided water that could be used, as well as solving the environmental problem in the coastal waters off our metropolitan beaches, as identified in the Adelaide Coastal Waters Study. Again, stupid decisions; decisions made because of the promise of $228 million from the federal government to support the additional cost of the desalination plant.

However, the opposition revealed later on that that was coming at a huge cost to our GST revenues. The former treasurer kept getting up complaining and making announcements that our GST revenues were falling. The reality is that the only reason the GST revenues keep falling is because we get these special grants, like the promise of $228 million for the desal plant. When you take into account the reduction in GST, the net benefit from the federal government supporting the desal plant is only $16 million—a mere $16 million. So, it was a very stupid decision to double that.

We have seen water prices doubling, and they will double again—and this is even before this government's federal colleagues introduce a carbon tax. It was revealed earlier this week that would add $863 to the average household's energy costs. I wonder how many dollars it will add to the average water bill. This government has been a supporter of some sort of carbon tax—whether it be a carbon trading system or a straight-out carbon tax—but it has not been overly honest with the people of South Australia on what the impacts of that will be on the costs of running their homes and businesses.

I started off talking about the government using a user-fees system to recover costs or the government being hungry for revenue. I want to finish off by talking about the government's penchant for applying a user-pays principle right across the board. This impacts greatly in rural South Australia, because it is supposedly quite easy to separate a public benefit from a private benefit. This has been applied in areas of biosecurity, in particular, with property identification, where suddenly we are seeing new charges being imposed on our farmers and agriculturists across the state and charges being applied to fruit growers in the Riverland to maintain border security; as I said, charges for all sorts of biosecurity.

I fail to understand the argument that this is all of a private benefit to the particular growers. I think there is a huge public benefit to provide for biosecurity in Australia, I think there is a huge public benefit to ensure that we have food security, to ensure that we are self-sufficient. It horrifies me as a practising farmer to see this nation import so much of our foodstuff. We import a huge amount of foodstuff into this country, particularly horticultural product, mainly because of stupid political decisions—and this decision about biosecurity is another one.

There will be another impost on the farming community. I was at a public meeting last week where another impost is going to be imposed on our horticulturalists and agriculturalists in the Adelaide Hills through water levies. There is a plethora of taxes and charges placed on our agricultural industries which is driving people out of business and driving our food supplies offshore. It is an absolute disgrace that this country imports any foodstuff at all. We have a huge range of climates which allow us to produce a huge range of food right throughout the seasons.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:55): The Supply Bill is always an interesting piece of legislation that comes through this place. You would have thought that the budget process would enable supply to continue on, and that parliament's time would not be taken up with discussing the Supply Bill. Given that, though, we have this bill before us, it is for many billions of dollars, and it is up to the opposition to ensure that those billions of dollars are being put to the very best benefit of all South Australians. In my portfolios of health, mental health and substance abuse, and veterans' affairs, I have many issues that I am aware of that need more and more money.

Unfortunately, what do we see from this government, and what do we see from the health minister? We see classical crisis management. It is deflect, deflect, deflect and, when you cannot deflect it away, you deny, deny, deny, and then you deflect, deflect, deflect with some spurious claim to have achieved so much, or to be promising so much. Unfortunately, we know what Mike Rann said in 2002 on his pledge card—better hospitals, more beds—and after nine years of this Labor government we are seeing hospitals in crisis, and a health system in crisis in South Australia.

Go out and ask any nurse, doctor or person who has had experience in our health system in South Australia what they think of it. There are some good parts, sure, but it is in crisis, and we need to make sure that it is going to be managed in a way that is going to have long-term benefits—not, as we have seen from this government in so many areas, short-term solutions to long-term problems. I was interested to hear what the minister had to say in his introductory statement in the estimates committee. He introduced his advisers at the time. They were the then chief executive, Dr Tony Sherbon, and the director of finances, Mr John O'Connor. Interestingly, both of those men have gone. Tony Sherbon has gone to Canberra, and I do not think that there were too many mourning his loss. It is interesting that the director of finances, Mr John O'Connor, left and went into consulting elsewhere.

They are not the only two senior bureaucrats who have left the health department. There are a number of them: Dr Karleen Edwards, the head of Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, as it was then, left to take up a job in Victoria; and Mrs Cathy Miller, who was the head of the Southern Adelaide Health Service, left and is now doing an excellent job at Minda Home as the chief executive. They all left while Mr George Beltchev was the head of Country Health SA. There are three regions—Central Northern Adelaide, Southern Adelaide, and Country Health—other than the Women's and Children's. We have had senior bureaucrats leaving left, right and centre. Mr David Miller, the general manager of the Lyell McEwin Hospital, left and went back to Queensland, I understand. These people are not rats deserting a sinking ship—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: No-one said they were.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Dr McFETRIDGE: These are well-known and well-credentialed bureaucrats and they are leaving this system because they do not see a big future for themselves other than lots of headaches in South Australia. The health budget is huge. We were told during the estimates committees that it is $4.46 billion—about one third of the total state budget. We are told how much that has increased since the government came to office in 2002, and so it should, just to keep up with health inflation, which is a far, far bigger index than the normal CPI. In terms of health inflation, it depends who you ask. It is anything between 8 per cent in some areas; 9.3 per cent is a broadly accepted average. Certainly, former treasurer Kevin Foley told FIVEaa radio last February that, in some areas, it was up to 12 per cent. So, with those sorts of health inflation indices, you would be very surprised if there was not significant spending just to keep up.

In relation to country health, the minister was saying that we have put in $430 million (I think) extra in the time they have been in government. If you index that up, using the health inflator of 9.5 per cent, I think they should have been putting in $650 million. I think those figures are right, I am going from memory, but I know they should have been spending more than they have.

The thing that we need to make sure is happening is that not only is the money going in but it is going into the right areas. We heard the minister talking about expansions at various hospitals—Modbury, Lyell McEwin, QEH, Flinders Medical Centre, the Women's and Children's and, of course, there is the monolith down the road that is still on the books. We do not know how much and when it is going to happen, but we will talk about that in a moment. It is good to see that money is being put into recurrent expenditure for doctors and nurses, and there are still many, many issues where doctors and nurses are overworked and under-resourced.

It is good to see that we are having some capital expenditure, but let's not forget that this government has been here for nine years. What we are getting now are promises of redevelopments in the next two to three years' time—2012, 2013, 2014 and sometimes even further out than that. Of course, the new hospital is due in 2016 by some estimates, but it could be as far out as 2018 or 2019 if you go back to the estimates and the Budget and Finance Committee record and look at the discussions there, and I will talk about those a bit later.

The need to make sure we are building modern hospitals and refurbishing hospitals is something that we have to be aware of. It is happening, but it should have happened a long time ago. The demand has increased. This government has been here nine years, we are seeing our hospitals in crises. The need to make sure that all our hospitals are getting something in a timely fashion is something we would support on this side, but it is difficult to sit back and not say anything when all the government is doing is saying, 'We're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this.'

It really is quite a difficult position to be in opposition and not be able to say, 'Well, this is what needs to be done now,' when you have a government that does not listen—it just does not listen. It does not consult—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: And there's a long time to go.

Dr McFETRIDGE: I will talk to you about that later, Mick; that's not quite right. The government needs to start consulting. Let me just read an email from a doctor who spoke to me. He is involved in one of the doctor associations, and he said:

Generally our [doctors] will support changes that will realistically produce sustainable efficiency gains and better ways of doing things if this improves access to services and the care able to be delivered and they are properly consulted—even when they personally have to make small sacrifices to facilitate this. To become a doctor they are used to doing this and providing good care is very rewarding in itself.

Ownership of any change process is critical to doctors as it is to most people so when something is imposed without consultation by a centralist, disconnected bureaucracy/government with a forward understanding of how the system operates our members will not support it and they call us. These types of [Department of Health] management failures are generating a substantial workload for [this association] at present and have been for some time.

Knowing people need a health service and can't get it is distressing for most people...with doctors in a position to know the scale of this happening far more than other people in the community.

This is doctors speaking. This is not just the opposition going on about issues that they see, this is doctors at the front line speaking about this. They are very concerned about the lack of consultation, and we see it time and time again. We saw it with country hospitals.

It is good to see spending in city hospitals. It is too little too late; it should have been planned many years ago. You do not build a hospital in a day. You cannot go down to Bunnings and buy all the bits down there. Mind you, having said that, you should go down to Barwell Avenue in Kurralta Park where there is a mock-up of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital rooms. I think it is called the state health demonstration facility, or some similar name. It is in a block of units there, and I understand that, in the three or four years that it has been there, only two groups of people have ever visited it, and I can understand why.

I visited it after about eight phone calls, emails and pressuring the minister to let me have a look. It looks like somebody has gone down to Bunnings and bought some pine framing, a bit of cladding and whacked up these rooms. There is nothing in these rooms but an old barouche and a hospital light—I had a better version in my veterinary clinic—and there is an old bed in another one. It is to give doctors the perspective of how big the rooms are going to be. I do not think you need to do that.

I will backtrack a little bit. I asked to look at this facility after having seen the government spend over $200,000 on the Royal Show stand. I wanted to know what was happening to that demonstration facility. I was told at the time that it was going to be taken down to another area. There were going to be technical suites built down there so that doctors could come and see what they were working with, where they were working and what a wonderful facility the new Royal Adelaide was going to be. They could imagine themselves having these beautiful views over the river.

But what do we see? It is like something from Bunnings. It is a bit of pinus framing banged together—they got the nail gun out, whacked it in there and put a bit of cladding on it. It is nothing like the stand we saw at the Royal Show. I do not know where that Royal Show stand has gone. I do not know where the beds, the toilets and the pretty pictures have gone. They certainly were not down there, so I imagine that is $200,000 down the drain.

That said, how much would that $200,000 do for hospitals like Moonta, Ardrossan, Keith and even Glenelg hospital, where they are providing an excellent service supplementing the public hospitals with good community hospitals? To keep denying them their worth—and giving them not subsidies but enabling them to continue what they are doing to assist the public health system to deliver a better service—is a crazy thing to do. I will never understand the logic of it: there is no financial logic, there is no social logic and, certainly, there is no triple bottom line logic with any of it.

The crisis in the South Australian health system is not just rhetoric coming from the opposition. You do not have to go very far at all to be able to see what is going on in our hospitals. I have been getting access to the inpatient dashboards—and I should say it is getting harder. These show the number of occupants in the various beds, in various departments, in various hospitals. These numbers are put out regularly and they are in living colour. They have a traffic light system with an extra light: green for okay, yellow for maximum capacity, red for overcrowded, and then white, as in white-hot. It is just jam-packed; it is crush capacity in there.

All our metropolitan hospitals are over capacity much of the time on any day of the week. You will find, if you look at these dashboards, that just about all our hospitals are over capacity. The accepted percentage of occupancy for a full hospital worldwide, but particularly in Australia, is 85 per cent capacity. That allows for surges in admissions and variations in discharges, but this minister said, 'No, 90 per cent is fine, 90 per cent is okay.' He is denying the truth, so we have emergency departments and hospitals that are overcrowded much of the time. For nine years we have had promises, promises, promises, but all we get is overcrowded hospitals.

I will go through some of the hospitals and look at one dashboard for one particular day. Glenside has a capacity of 184, there are 167 in there, and it was over capacity; general beds were 95 capacity, and there were 96 patients. No patients were waiting for beds at that particular time, so it was well above the 85 per cent. If you go down the list, you don't need to go very far at all to see the Lyell McEwin Hospital, which was well over capacity: for general beds, 151 patients is the capacity; 159 were occupied, so they were in barouches and on chairs around the place, and three patients were still waiting for beds. In the Royal Adelaide Hospital, there is a 622-bed capacity. There were 686 of those beds occupied. How you can do that is wizardry to me, but there were still 10 patients waiting for beds. They must be pulling out barouches, couches, hammocks—I do not know what they are doing, but they are doing a very good job under very trying circumstances.

This is there for the minister to see every day. It should be there for the public to see every day. In Western Australia, the Western Australian Public Hospital Activity statements are put up every day for everybody to see. The IP dashboards were out there for everybody to see in the department. Now what do we see hidden up in the left-hand corner under the IP dashboard? It states, 'Unclassified but not for distribution outside SA Health'. We are trying to bury our mistakes, and we are trying to hide our faults. This is a recent addition. What is the government trying to do?

These are there, in living colour, for the minister to see every day. He can see what is going on in our hospitals. He should have been able to see, for the last nine years, what is going on in our hospitals. It is a crying shame that is going to continue for many years to come because we see a government that is saying, 'Well, in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 we might have something done.' Even then, it is not enough. We know that, when stage C of the Lyell McEwin Hospital redevelopment is finished in 2013-14, it will be full. It will be full; they should be planning for a stage D already.

What is the government doing to try to overcome some of these issues? It is trying to outsource some of the services, so it wants to outsource outpatients. We have 1.2 million outpatient appointments a year in South Australia. Phase 1 is to outsource 10 per cent of those, so we are going to outsource 120,000 outpatients into private specialist rooms. How is that going to happen, minister? The minister could not answer that question in estimates, and I bet he cannot answer that question now, because he has no idea.

Just this morning, I spoke to a friend of mine who is waiting to see her orthopaedic surgeon to revisit an operation. She cannot get in until the end of May this year. That is early; that is good. Most orthopaedic surgeons have a three to six-month waiting list. Most specialists, in their private rooms, have months and months to wait. How many people are on the waiting list? The minister said, 'There are no hidden waiting lists. There are GPs who are referring to the outpatients department.' These referrals mysteriously disappear; we do not know how many are out there. The minister does not know how many are out there. The hospitals know that there are thousands of patients waiting on these hidden lists to see specialists in the outpatient department.

In phase 1, the government is going to try to outsource 120,000 of those patients to specialists who cannot see them on time because they are so busy already. Then, because their private rooms are really a lost part of their enterprise—they make their money when they are doing surgery—they are going to have to charge a gap. The gap can be up to $280, so those patients who would have gone to an outpatient department in a public hospital and not paid anything (other than the Medicare levy out of their wages) will have to pay that gap. How are they going to afford that, minister? How are they going to do that? Tell me, please, minister. If you have a magic wand, tell me how.

That is phase 1. Phase 2 of outpatient outsourcing is going to be another 40 per cent. There are 1.2 million total outpatients, we have 10 per cent going out already and a review is going on now, but we have another 40 per cent. So, what's that? 600,000. There are 600,000 outpatients who are supposed to go into the private sector every year. I wish the private practitioners could look after them because they can often do it cheaper than in our public hospitals. That is a continuing puzzle to me because we have very hardworking doctors and nurses in our public hospitals. It is a real issue, and the waiting lists and cost to patients are a real burden for everybody; not only ministers.

In the last part of my speech, let's just whizz down the road for a few moments to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital which, according to the government, is all well and truly costed out: it has the business case. I put in FOIs to get the business case, and this government wanted to charge me $150,000 for the FOIs, for freedom of information on the business case. If it is such a good business case, minister, show me why it is such a good thing to do; do not hide behind 150,000 reasons. What did we hear from Dr Tony Sherbon, the departed CE of health, at the Budget and Finance Committee of the other place on 9 August 2010? He said:

Once we have reached financial close in February 2011, we will then have an intense process of hospital design, and so hospital construction will not commence until early 2013.

It is not going to be February 2011. It was going to be March and, now, it is going to be June. So, how much will it cost and when will it start being built? We do not know.

The minister said in estimates that it would be a five to six year build time; Tony Sherbon said that construction will not commence until 2013, so that makes it 2018, 2019. When are we getting the hospital? How much is it going to cost? What services are going to be there? There are more questions than answers, and this minister will not front the public, he will not consult. This bloke is in complete crisis. He will deny, deny, deny; he will deflect, deflect, deflect all the time—'We're going to do this. We're going to do it in 2013, 2014, 2016, but we're going to do it.' I do not believe this minister. You cannot trust this government.

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (12:16): It is my great pleasure to be able to speak on the Supply Bill. Before getting under way on my comments on this bill, I thought I would take just one minute to reflect on a comment made by the member for Ashford, who interrupted the shadow treasurer during his comments because he was talking about his discussion with his son about the budget. The member for Ashford seemed to think it was unlikely that this young man, at 25 or 26 (I think Staten is 25 at the moment) would have been so interested and would actually have been taking notice.

In defence of Staten Evans, can I say that this is quite an unusual man who at the age of 19 became president of his local Apex club and, at that same age, when his parents came back home from holidays—I live in the hope that my children might ever do this—not only had he not destroyed the house with wild parties, but he had the house cleaned. He had cleaned out his younger brother's bedroom, painted it for them and put food in the fridge ready for their homecoming. Where you could find criticism of Staten Evans—

Dr McFetridge: He takes after his mother.

Mrs REDMOND: Someone suggests perhaps unkindly of the shadow treasurer that he takes after his mother. In defence of Staten, I say to the member for Ashford—although she is probably just listening in the distance at the moment—that he is one young man whom I would have every confidence was indeed listening to what his father was saying about the budget, and well might he listen because, of course, this government is in disarray as the taxpayers of this state pay the price of its economic incompetence for yet another year. The sad thing is that I am told time and again when I am out in the communities all day every day, every weekend, that people are so unhappy that they have to now wait another almost three years until we can get rid of the government.

For nine years this government has been telling us that it is a good economic manager. It keeps boasting about a mining boom but, in fact, we have fewer jobs in mining now than we had in 1985. We have fewer jobs now than we had then. The government keeps boasting about how many new jobs will be created—it has this attitude of, 'We're going to have 100,000 jobs way off in the future'—but the reality is that both in agriculture and mining we have had a downturn in the number of people.

Indeed, on the very day the government released its Mid-Year Budget Review, the Australian Bureau of Statistics put out information to say that mining and agriculture jobs were at 26-year lows. That is the lowest since they had begun keeping records—that is where our jobs were in those two sectors. So, far from having the right to boast about how many jobs the government has got, what it never addresses is the fact that, were it to actually just keep up with the national average, we would already have 40,000 more jobs in this state than we do.

Once upon a time, of course, South Australia was the third largest state in terms of the size of its economy and the size of its population. Our share of the national economy has declined under this government. We now have a smaller proportion of the population and, although at last our population has started to grow, it is growing more slowly than the rest of mainland Australia. The only place where it is growing less is in Tasmania.

In addition, we have housing approvals, which have been going backwards for 11 consecutive months. In February this year housing approvals dropped 2.1 per cent lower than they were. The government in the last week or so, I seem to recall, had to adjust its own budget because it has realised it has counted on getting in money that is now not going to come in from stamp duty. So, that is $60 million they have had to wipe off. Talking to people in the real estate sector, they are actually saying that that is a big underestimate and that in fact we actually expect to have a lot less money coming in. The downturn in the real estate sector is a lot worse than what this government has acknowledged by making a $60 million adjustment just in the stamp duty area.

It has been long known by those who study these things that this government's problem is not that it has not had the income because it has; the problem is that it overspends. What is more, it does not overspend on things that are worthwhile. It overspends on ridiculous things like lots of ministerial office rearrangements, it overspends on sending and having envoys from Puglia, it overspends on all sorts of things, but not on actual major infrastructure and the things we need to see this economy start to go. The former treasurer himself, in Estimates Committee A on 7 October last year, said:

There is no question that the blowout in expenses is our problem...There is no question expenditure overruns are the biggest threat to public finances...

Is it any wonder then that we are in strife in the economy of this state. The fact is that we actually have more money coming in. Despite the treasurer's claims, the budget revenues for this state for the 2010-11 year have increased by $52 million. That should see us in a pretty good space; the only problem is that his spending has gone up by $156 million. That is where the problem lies with this government: it keeps spending more than it can possibly expect to have.

Business knows—as the shadow minister mentioned in his address—that this is the highest taxing state. We have high taxes across a range of things, not just stamp duty. We tried to alert the government before the last election to the problem with land tax in this state. The treasurer's instant response at the time was 'land tax is not a problem because it only affects rich people'. He failed to realise two particular things: firstly, nearly every business in this state—the backbone of the economy of this state—is a small business, and by and large those small to medium enterprises run out of rental accommodation, and that means that land tax is being paid by a landlord and, ultimately, even if not directly, that land tax expense is passed on to the tenant and thereby affects not just every person running a business but every person who deals with that business, and it ends up coming back to the taxpayer.

Secondly, a whole sector of the community has not had the benefit of public sector jobs or secure employment. They have made their own way in life, unlike the treasurer who said, in his own admission in an article, that he did not have the intestinal fortitude to go into business for himself—

An honourable member interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, 'courage' might have been the word he used. They have gone out and had the courage to make their own way, take their chances and put their house on the line, but in order to secure their futures they often invest in properties they can rent out to provide for their superannuation, because they are used to providing for themselves and they have done that, but are finding now that they cannot even afford to keep their properties in this state because the land tax burden has become so bad.

We had the WorkCover debt down to an unfunded liability of, I think, $59 million prior to the 2002 election. This government came in and has blown it out to $982 million and, when you add on what they have done in the public sector, because the Public Service has a separate public sector WorkCover system, that is about another half a billion dollars. So, it is roughly $1.5 billion. From where we had it at $56 million, it is up to $1.5 billion in unfunded liability.

What is more, for all that and for all its taking rights away from the workers—and I know that there were members over there who were very keen for us to do something about it, and they voted in favour of reducing the workers' rights and entitlements and voted in favour of those reductions in order, they said, to get WorkCover back in line—what has happened? It has just gone from bad to worse because of the failure of management. I know it is the failure of management because in this state on average our WorkCover levies are 3 per cent; in every other state and on a national average it is 2 per cent. So it is 50 per cent higher in this state, and we also have the lowest return-to-work rate.

Now, why am I able to say that it is not just about the WorkCover system and that it is the management and the way in which it is being managed by the people who have been put in charge? I can tell you why. I can tell you that it is because there are people called 'exempt employers', which are these big organisations that actually run their own workcover system, but they run it under exactly the same piece of legislation.

So, it is not the legislation that is the problem. They have an average, I think, of about a 1.3 per cent levy that they pay. They are paying much less than the national average, running a more efficient system and having higher return-to-work rates using exactly the same piece of legislation. How is that possible? Because this government does not manage things properly. That is how come.

Then, of course, we have payroll tax. Now, we did suggest to the government and it did take up one of our policies from the election—

Mr Williams interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: Well, they took up a lot of our policies, but payroll tax in particular has always seemed to me to be rather a disincentive for growing anyone's business. But one of the things that we suggested—just a little tweak that would make a big difference to a lot of people—was to remove the payroll tax impediment on trainees and apprentices. What they did was to say, 'You have to pay it but then you get an 80 per cent rebate,' and we said, 'Well, why not make it a 100 per cent rebate and then you don't actually have to do all the red tape stuff,' and they did adopt that policy.

So, congratulations to the government for having the sense to realise that it was at least a policy, because most of the good policies that we had the government, of course, did follow. But the big problem, it seems to me at the moment, is that I think there is a real risk that, given that we have this dreadfully high-taxing state where every impediment possible is put in the way of doing business (where we have got other states that have had significant problems; they have had floods, cyclones, bushfires and all sorts of things), what is the imperative for a business to stay here?

Why would a person who is in a construction industry, for instance, not say, 'Well, you know what, this is the highest taxing state. I have problems put in my path, I have red tape put in my path. Things are going from bad to worse. The debt of this state is getting worse, jobs are downturning, the population is downturning. Why wouldn't I go to Queensland where the government, obviously, in its particular circumstances is going to move every impediment out of the way, where they have a much higher threshold for payroll tax so I can grow my business?' Why would there not be a temptation to move elsewhere?

I do not want to see that happen, but the way in which this government has been running things that is what it is doing. Let us look at how it wastes money. Let us look, first, at the desalination plant. We, of course, first proposed the desalination plant way back in, I think, 2006 or 2007, and we had done a fair bit of research on it. Quite a number of us had been over to Perth. We looked at the desal plant and, indeed, asked the question: if we signed the contract today, what would it cost to have a desalination plant just like that one you are putting there now? The answer from the people building it was $400 million.

So, for the next 18 months or two years the government said, 'No, no, we can't have a desalination plant,' then, suddenly, as is its wont, it did a famous double backflip pike reverse somersault and decided that it needed a desal plant—not just any old desal plant but double the size. We had always said that the idea of a desal plant was just to protect us against a failure of rainfall so that we could secure Adelaide's water supplies for the population of Adelaide should there be a complete failure of rainfall.

We said 50 gigalitres was the amount, but, no, the government decides that it is going for 100 gigalitres. And, of course, with all the delays (and it is still not operating), what we have now is a $1.8 billion desalination plant, with $400 million (and, remember, that is the figure that we were going to be able to build one for, according to the contractors) just to connect it, let alone the disruption; and, on top of that, I understand in excess of $30 million a year just to run it.

Whether or not we need the water, we are now going to be paying $30 million a year to run our desalination plant. That is just one example of where this government is just unreliable in terms of anything that it touches, especially concerning money and the taxpayers of this state.

How about the oval? Originally, of course, the government's position was, 'No, the home of football is at Footy Park. No, the home of football is out there. We are never going to have it,' and then suddenly—

Mr Williams: We're not going to have two ovals.

Mrs REDMOND: Yes. It had another idea. It saw that our idea was pretty popular, so it had another idea and it decided that it would build the Adelaide Oval into its new stadium—$450 million, not are penny more. Only one slight problem there, there was a new western grandstand and a whole lot of other stuff happening, so, okay, well, not a penny more. It was not a penny more, it was $85 million more. I have not calculated how many pennies that would be, but it is quite a lot.

The $450 million, remember, was to do the whole job, and then we get to $450 million plus the odd $85 million plus we then have to build a footbridge, which is the equivalent of a six-lane highway across, plus we have to do the car park. So, it is actually about $600 million. You would have to say to yourself: why would a government give priority to spending $600 million on the Adelaide Oval to effectively increase the seating capacity from 38,000 to 50,000? So, an increase of 12,000 seats—$600 million for an increase of 12,000 seats. I keep asking myself: why would you do this?

There are a few things, you might suggest. I went to a fabulous Twenty20 match at the Adelaide Oval on a lovely night in summer, and even on that perfectly still, beautiful night—it was a beautiful night, it is a very popular match and people came along and had a ball; it was a great thing—we did not fill the 38,000 seats. So, why are we going to spend $600 million to put an extra 12,000 seats in? Where are these miraculous numbers of people going to come from?

I am not a SACA member and I know they are going to have a vote on 2 May, but if I were a SACA member I would be saying to myself: if, as Ian McLachlan keeps assuring me, it is the case that the SACA can meet its debt in relation to the new western grandstand—and I have to say that it is quite a nice grandstand. There is a question mark about where the architects have put the toilets and the bars, but it is a lovely view, and the oval is looking splendid at the moment. I was there on Sunday to watch the Rugby Sevens. Jack Snelling was across the table from me, as it happens.

Members interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: He was just having a general chat about things. So, there were all these people there, but 12,000 extra seats for the Adelaide Oval: why are we going to do this? Ian McLachlan assures us that the cost of the western grandstand can be met. If you are a SACA member and you are going to vote on 2 May, I would have thought that, if we can pay all of our debt for this oval then why are we being asked to give up absolute control of the entire precinct: naming rights, parking, all of the benefits and all of the money that flows out of the different franchise things around the place; why are we being asked to give that up to football for seven months of the year—that is more than half of the year—for this oval, which is almost sacrosanct, in terms of cricket lovers around the world and certainly others who I have spoken to in other states?

The other question is: what is football doing there anyway? Why does football want to come in? The reality of it is, in my view, and the thing that is not being talked about is Andrew Demetriou's agenda. Andrew Demetriou wants the AFL to control the two AFL licences in South Australia. He wants them to have control of it and he is prepared to let the Port Power team go completely rather than supporting it so that it can stay. The reality is—

Members interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: It is an absolute shame. This is really about a battle between the SANFL, which holds the two South Australian licences, and Andrew Demetriou, who wants them under the control of the AFL. That is what this battle is about. Fine; I do not mind; they can have that battle, but why would the taxpayers of this state be well served by spending $600 million to sort this battle out for them? Why would we do that? It makes no sense.

Members interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, indeed, and stuff it up. It is all political. Let us look at the hospital. The government went to the election saying, 'This hospital is going to cost $1.7 billion,' and yet it knew all along, and it had actually approved in cabinet $1.8 billion, but it was not honest enough with the people of South Australia to tell them that before the election.

Furthermore, let us look at what you get for your money, because that is what it keeps doing. Rather than saying, 'It has blown out,' it keeps down-scoping what it is going to do. I will just go back to the Adelaide Oval for a moment. At the SMA briefing the other day, it admitted that it cannot give us the final figure, even though $535 million is the final figure for what it is going to spend, so it admitted that. It cannot tell you whether what it is proposing is going to cost $535 million, and if it cannot build that it will have to down-scope it.

Similarly with the hospital. Remember the hospital? It was going to be 800 beds. Now it is sort of 800 something. There are some chairs in there, some recliner rockers and things. It was going to be all single rooms. Now there are some single rooms. They were all going to have ensuite facilities, and now there will be some ensuite facilities. They were going to have opening windows, and now we are not having open windows. They were going to have a railway station underneath but we are not going to have a railway station underneath.

By the way, what is a hospital without an outpatients department, because now they want the doctors to do their outpatients service at their private rooms? They have not twigged to the fact that most of these guys do their public hospital work almost as a goodwill gesture and as a training and teaching mechanism. The only appropriate place to do that is at the hospital, not taking up the time in their private rooms where they earn the money that enables them to do that work.

Government members have not quite cottoned to that because they have never actually had to be out in the real world earning their own living, putting their own houses on the line and taking the chances that people in the real world have to do day in and day out. Not only is the hospital a disgrace but the government also is a disgrace.

I close by reminding the assembled multitude that, under the government's own Mid-Year Budget Review, the 2010-11 budget deficits are on all three accounting measures. In 2010-11 we will have a cash deficit of $1,879 million ($1.879 billion) of the net lending, a cash deficit of $1.64 billion, and a net operating deficit of $493 million. They are our three figures for this year.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (12:36): I will cover a range of issues in addressing the Supply Bill. They are not necessarily in order of importance but they are all important. The first point I would make as a general comment is that the government is not selling its message. It has done, and is doing, some very good things but it is not getting that message across. Likewise, I think the opposition is not selling its message in terms of putting forward alternatives. I guess it would argue that it is too far out from the election, but I think it is dangerous to leave things to chance and hope that the government will fall out of office.

The government recently allocated money for putting lights in Happy Valley Drive in my electorate—something I have been seeking for more than 15 years, I believe, so I am delighted with that. I have written to the minister (Hon. Tom Kenyon) to thank him for that, and I am sure the previous ministers for road safety had a hand in it as well. The electorate is very pleased with that initiative.

One of the matters of great concern to me, and it is a very significant budget item, is our police force (SAPOL). I acknowledge that our police force, in terms of the vast majority of its personnel, is a very fine one, but I think it is time that there was an independent review of the police force in South Australia in terms of how it is structured, how staff are allocated and a whole range of related matters. The government says it does not interfere in operational matters, and that is true, but it does have ultimate responsibility for the way in which the police force operates and, despite the fact that we are told we have more police than ever, I see little evidence of them out in the field.

I think it is time that we had a look at all the operations of the police force, and that should be done by an independent review, probably a judicial review. We had some instances recently, and someone used the expression 'the wheels are falling off the police cart'. That might be a bit strong, but we have had concerns about response to issues and police being called out. I think it would be in the interests of the community, in particular, and even the police force itself, to have an independent review to ensure that the way it is operating is in the best interests of the community, that it is run in the most efficient way and staff are being allocated in areas of priority.

People come to me, as I am sure they to do other members at times, about various issues within the police force, and when you have thousands of employees you will always have some people who experience or allege bullying and other things. However, I think the issue is bigger than that. It is more about the structure, management practices and allocation of staff within the police force.

I am pleased the government is reviewing the Anti-Corruption Branch as it sits within the total anti-corruption structure. I think it is long overdue for reform and, hopefully, will be part of the new proposal announced by the Attorney. The Police Complaints Authority is not part of the police force but, likewise, it needs an overhaul. I do not believe it is doing its job. In fact, in many ways, I think it has become a non-performing entity. They tell me they are too busy to undertake a lot of inquiries and they are very selective in what they do inquire into, so I think it needs to be part of the overall review, as well.

Last week I visited the Riverland and went into New South Wales and Victoria, but I can assure the member for Chaffey that I do not have any designs on his seat. I meet with business people, irrigators and anyone and everyone I can talk to or who is prepared to talk to me. There is an unfortunate thing happening in this area—and hopefully the Tourism Commission will pick up on this. As we know, South Australia has fantastic regional areas for people to visit as tourists, and yet what are often local excellent destinations are ignored by people in Adelaide.

Part of the problem in the Riverland is the suggestion that the area might be under water. Fortunately, the river is carrying a lot of water and the lagoons and backwaters have plenty in them, but I can assure members that towns like Renmark, Loxton, Barmera, Berri and Lyrup are not actually under water. They are fantastic places in terms of tourism and people should make the effort to get up there. I hope we see a change in what is often conveyed as a high flood level when, really, what should be conveyed is that the river level is high. There is no danger to people in terms of camping and holidaying in areas like the Riverland.

When I was in the Riverland I met the people running a federal mobile information system, a giant pantechnicon with about nine public servants who travel with this unit visiting country areas. They have just been to Western Australia and they are now in South Australia and they also went to Victoria for the floods. They provide information to rural people about a whole range of issues, and I commend the federal government for that, because I think it is a good service. However, after talking to the team leader I think that service could contain preventive health messages as well, focusing on the usual villains like ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, melanoma and all those sorts of issues.

As we know, country people tend to suffer more as a result of inadequate health information and inadequate health services. I would like to see our Minister for Health (the Hon. John Hill) take this issue up with his federal counterpart and also the federal Minister for Human Services, because I think it is too good a facility not to fully utilise in terms of getting a message out to country people about health information. There is a bigger but related issue which we need to address, and that is that people in country areas often have to wait to get medical treatment.

Even in places like Murray Bridge it is not always possible for someone to see a GP in a short space of time. That suggests that the state, in conjunction with the federal government, needs to be supporting more scholarships and getting more young people trained to be doctors in rural areas. Of course, they need to get their clinical practice before they embark on any solo activity in a country area, but I think it is incredible that in this day and age people in country areas—not just the Riverland—do not have ready access to medical facilities in the way they should. That needs to be addressed, and I make that plea again to the Minister for Health.

As we know, the management of water has received a lot of attention lately regarding the eastern and western side of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and a lot of people have been making noise—some of it not all that rational. In that area, as with other areas of the state, water availability has to be managed, and one has to know how much is being extracted and used, otherwise the poor farmer or whoever is downstream is going to find that their water supply is cut off. I make a plea to the minister in charge that there not be a knee-jerk reaction because some noisy people make a carry-on about water management.

Water management is critical; water is money in our community. Other parts of the state seem to have been able to cope with a water management regime. I think it is critical, in the Mount Lofty Ranges especially, which supplies water not only for farms but also for domestic use as well, that it be properly and appropriately managed, and that means that the NRM boards have to come up with sensible and reasonable management strategies. However, it should not be decided simply by a few people making a lot of noise; it should be done on a more rational, long-term planning basis.

Another issue I have paid some attention to is that the government needs to allow more shopping in the metropolitan area on a Sunday morning. Someone responded to me on talkback and said, 'There are plenty of small supermarkets around.' There are not in my area. In Aberfoyle Park and Happy Valley, there are no small supermarkets; they have only the big operators—Foodland, Coles and Woolworths. At O'Halloran Hill, on the edge of my electorate, there is a small one run by a Chinese family, but it does not really offer the range most people would want.

A lot of people focus on food and say, 'Well, why don't they get their food the day before?' It is not just about food; supermarkets carry a whole lot of items. In my electorate, I have people queuing up at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning to get into the supermarket. There is no reason, as in Victor Harbor and other country areas, why the supermarkets should not be able to open up, on a voluntary basis, on a Sunday morning at 9am.

In due course, I will be introducing a bill that will protect the public holiday rights of shop assistants. I hope that the government would not go down the path of trying to deny people the basic opportunity to buy food and other things for birthday parties, etc., on a Sunday morning. Many people want to go to church or have a family picnic, and they should be able to buy things on a Sunday morning. As I have said, it is up to the supermarkets whether it is viable to open, and they can employ additional shop assistants. We do not want shop assistants being required to work extended hours, but there are plenty of young people who would happily work an extra couple of hours on a Sunday morning.

The GST issue has reared its ugly head. There is a review underway (members would be aware of that), but I think that could be costly for South Australia not only because we have, in essence, a bigger share than states such as New South Wales and Victoria get per capita. I think we are going to be clipped around the ears because the government here will be accused of not undertaking reform in a lot of areas, and I have just mentioned one—shopping hours. That will be one that I think will come back to bite this government because there will be an argument that the government has not reformed enough in that area; it has made some progress but not enough.

The other one that will sting this government is lack of reform in local government in the metropolitan area. You can talk to whomever you like in the other states—and I have just been interstate on this very issue—when they look at Adelaide and say, 'You have 19 councils in Adelaide?', they basically throw up their hands. So, I am telling the government: do not be surprised if, as a result of this review, South Australia does not get a whack around the ears financially in relation to GST funding because it has not reformed local government—and the government has not shown any interest whatsoever in reforming it. People within local government in the metropolitan area tell me that there is no interest in reforming it because they do not want to upset their own little patch. So, you will not get any reform in that area. However, when the GST allocation is cut, the government here might take this issue very seriously.

The other thing with the GST review is that I believe local government should get a share of a growth tax. Local government in this state, as in other states, is starved of money to do what it needs to do—that is, building bridges and repairing roads. Whenever I have raised this at the state or federal level, I have always had a knock-back, saying, 'We don't want to give councils any access to a growth tax.' Well, I think it shows hypocrisy and a double standard when governments say, 'We regard local government as an important tier of government,' when they are not prepared to adequately fund it or allow it to be funded adequately. Councils cannot run themselves and carry out their functions based on a property tax and parking fees. It is ridiculous, it is a nonsense and it is time that that issue was addressed, as well as simply how much money a state gets back from the GST formula.

In terms of public transport, I think this government has done a lot of good things. I do not think it has sold its message very well, though. I would like to—and I have been saying this for years, it is not new—extend the tram line even further out to Prospect, via North Adelaide, out to the eastern suburbs. The electrification of the railway is fantastic. Once again, the government is not selling that message. It is temporarily inconvenient to people who are in the south and north, but, in the long run, it is a fantastic initiative and one that I have been talking about in here, I think, for nearly 20 years.

A big area of government expenditure is the courts system, which, I think, needs a major overhaul. Basically, what we have got is a system run by lawyers for lawyers. It has been captured by lawyers in the same way as the medical system has been captured by medicos. Our hospitals are essentially run for the benefit of the specialists and other medicos who work in them, and the courts system is run for the benefit of lawyers and by lawyers, not for the public.

I think it is time that the public had more say, not in determining the outcome of a case but in the way in which the courts system is structured. There are many deficiencies, inadequacies and inefficiencies in the way the courts system operates, and I think it is time that there was a complete review of that, with input from people outside the lawyers' circle. That is no disrespect to lawyers, but, I think, the courts system belongs to the people, it does not belong to the professionals who work in it.

With regard to law and order, I do not know about other members, but I am sick of hearing about night-time robberies, break-ins and so on, often, but not exclusively, in the northern suburbs. Now, you cannot blame the police for that, but obviously there is a significant social problem underlying that. You have to ask the question: why it is that, nearly every night, we are getting people robbing service stations and breaking into houses? It is just an endless cycle of that type of crime.

I assume much of it is drug related. We need to front up and deal with these issues sensibly and appropriately. People who cannot behave themselves, I think, should be locked up. I do not support the conventional prison for most of those sorts of people. I would put them in a work camp which would be run at a much lower cost than the conventional iron bars approach. As a community, we should have virtually no crime in South Australia and in Adelaide, but after every night, on the following day, you hear of service station robberies and related crime occurring too frequently in our society.

I am not naive enough to believe that just improving literacy and numeracy will solve it, but I think we need to have a more concerted approach in terms of tackling some of the causal factors that lead to people becoming criminals. I do not believe it is inevitable. I do not think people are born with a criminal genetic make up. We create a society, or allow it to exist, in a way which creates people who end up being criminal in their behaviour. So, we need to address that. We do not seem to have made enough progress in terms of tackling the core issues of ensuring that people can have a meaningful and constructive life without having to resort to crime.

There is a huge problem in the Indigenous community and I have been saying it for many years. You have urban Aboriginal people who know nothing about their culture, which is a fantastic one based upon their traditional values. I do not know the figures, but I suspect that many of those people offending at night are probably some of those young Aboriginal lads. Talking to some of the senior people in the community, they despair at what is happening because these young Aboriginal people are on the road to nowhere.

Yet, when I look around in places like Murray Bridge and elsewhere, many of the young Aboriginal children—it is not only Aboriginal children, but it is particularly apparent there—do not even attend school. How do I know? Some of my family are closely involved with Aboriginal children. They foster them, they wanted to adopt them, but you are not allowed to in South Australia. So I know firsthand what goes on, and we have many of these young Aboriginal people in particular on the road to nowhere. We need some innovative approaches to ensuring that we do not just keep having more and more people in prison because that, in the end, is not the real answer.

In the short time left, I will say that I was in Queensland recently. There is a big debate going on up there about who should run parliament in terms of the resources and the funding. There is a big argument about whether the government or the parliament should run it. I believe we should have independent financing and management in the parliament, and I think the parliament should actually run the electorate office allocations as well, as it does in Victoria.

We need an annexe here. Despite what some people say, we need a proper annexe where staff can work in decent conditions to serve the people of this state. I know that money is tight at the moment, but we need to address that issue and not continue being apologetic for having second-rate facilities here for our staff in particular and for a parliament that should serve the people of South Australia.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (12:56): As I understand it, the Supply Bill provides for some $3.32 billion to be expended prior to the required appropriations being in place. I wish to start with some preliminary comments that are quite general in nature and, I suppose, give my perspective on what I understand the role of government is.

We come to this place, and those who sit to the right-hand side of you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have a responsibility for the receipt and expenditure of some $15.5 billion. That in itself involves some enormous challenges to get the priorities right, but there is an expectation across the wider South Australian public of 1.6 million people that that money will be spent in the areas where the greatest need exists and, indeed, for an investment in the future capacity of our state to grow, too.

I have great concerns about the fact that we do not appear to have in place a climate that provides an opportunity for effort to be rewarded, and that is my great frustration. South Australia has a predominantly small business based economy. With over 130,000 small-business operators, we have thousands and thousands of people out there who work long hours each day devoted to what they do, trying to provide the absolute best quality of service they can to their customer or to the person they are working for, and they expect governments to put in place an environment that allows reward for that effort to flow through financially to them.

That is my great concern because, when you look at the issues surrounding the cost of operating business and the regulation that surrounds business, it creates an enormous level of impost and, in many cases, a complete disincentive for some people to actually get out there and extend themselves, to grow the business, to give job opportunities to younger persons (and, indeed, older persons) who have the skills, and to grow our economy as it flows through.

It worries me. It worries the people I talk to. It worries the people who sit on this side of the chamber. It must worry the members of the government whose constituents come to them and talk to them about issues that they have problems with. They must shake their head in disbelief sometimes, because I know I do when I am told of instances where I think, 'This is wrong, this is the wrong principle, it's the wrong policy, it's the wrong mindset,' and, indeed, what is our challenge to get it right?

There would be those who argue that the Supply Bill is a rather useless debate. It is an opportunity for politics to come into the argument, for it to be recorded in history, for the facts to be altered, but it really is a great opportunity for members from both sides of the chamber to talk about things that are important to them, things they believe should be a principal policy for the government in future years going forward, areas that they are concerned about and areas where they acknowledge that a right decision has been made. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

[Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00]