STATE FINAL DEMAND

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:06): A supplementary: given that the Premier has said that the quarterly figures are volatile and my question actually asked 'year to date', can the Premier confirm, indeed, that three quarters of the way through this year the state final demand has actually declined by 3.7 per cent, against his own government's planned forecast increase this year of 2.75 per cent?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:06): I have seen the remarks that have been made by those opposite about the significance of state final demand but, just to intrude a few facts on the debate rather than the hysteria that those opposite go in for about these matters, unlike gross state product data, which is the better measure of economic performance, state final demand doesn't take into account economic flows outside of the state. When you are a large state with a small population, you rely upon the flows of goods and services outside of the state. That comprises a very good part of your economy.

For those who happen to be farmers, they might appreciate the fact that a very substantial part of our economy actually involves things going outside of the state rather than things that are just produced in the state. People use state final demand plus international goods exports minus international goods imports as a proxy for GSP, and if you include some of those export figures, you might have noted that there was a strong rise in exports of 10.9 per cent during this quarter.

True to form, those opposite selectively quote the piece of data that suits their purposes, which is to talk down the South Australian economy, but when another rich piece of data (that is, exports, that they've been very keen to point out when they go down) goes up by 10.9 per cent we hear shrieks of silence from them. But, even if you take into account exports and bring them into account, which obviously changes and improves the picture, it still doesn't take into account international imports and exports of services, interstate imports and exported goods and services and changes in inventory levels, all of which bear positively on our economy. The better measure of the health of our economy is gross state product, and that comes out yearly. We grew last year and we expect to grow again this year.