STATE GOVERNMENT

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:32): My question is to the Premier and Treasurer. How can the public trust the government to deliver on its promises when it has promised 100,000 jobs but delivered 17,000; promised a 50 per cent debt-to-revenue ratio ceiling but broke it; and promised jobs over a AAA credit rating but delivered more unemployed?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:32): They can trust a government which has grown school retention rates from 69 per cent to 89 per cent. They can trust a government that has grown the number of police officers by 800 during the life of the government.

They can trust a government that has increased the numbers of areas under wilderness protection by many thousands of hectares, when not one extra blade of grass was offered under the previous government, despite the whole of the period of that government having the opportunity to use the Wilderness Protection Act, passed in the last days of the Bannon government, to do something and they did absolutely nothing. They can actually trust a government—

Mr MARSHALL: Point of order, sir.

The SPEAKER: Yes, the point of order from the leader?

Mr MARSHALL: It was debate, sir.

The SPEAKER: The question was: 'How can the public trust?' That is a pretty open-ended question. Premier.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: They can trust a government that has rebuilt the state's infrastructure, its public transport system, and its leisure and sporting facilities in the Adelaide CBD; that has rebuilt virtually every public hospital in the state; that has actually delivered more doctors and nurses per capita than any other state in the nation and more police officers than any other state in the nation.

It has an excellent outcome in terms of elective surgery and emergency waiting times; it has actually, in terms of the national averages, had extraordinary results in year 12 retention rates for Aboriginal people who are completing year 12; and it has, for the first time, gone to the APY lands and grappled with the conditions there in an area of the state that was utterly abandoned by those opposite during the last 10 years of that government.

There were no sworn police officers on the lands; TAFE was completely obliterated from the lands; there was very little by way of support in terms of child protection or support for social welfare workers on the APY lands; and there were appalling conditions in terms of public housing on the APY lands. All of those things were grappled with by this government, a government I am proud to have been a part of.

The SPEAKER: I warn the leader for the first time for his interjections.