House of Assembly Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2) 52 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time State Budget STATE BUDGET The Hon. I.F. EVANS House of Assembly Davenport STATE BUDGET The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:09): My question is to the Premier. Why has the government been unable to control its expenditure and why has the government overspent this year by $637 million? The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL House of Assembly Cheltenham Premier Minister for State Development Minister for the Public Sector Minister for the Arts STATE BUDGET The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (15:09): We do not accept that we have been unable to control our expenditure. Indeed, expenditure has fallen to extremely low levels. New expenditure since the global financial crisis came to pass has been very constrained. We have seen over 3,000 full-time equivalents shed from the Public Service, which has assisted us to continue to fund our priorities. We have had very modest growth in our expenditure, and we are forecasting further modest growth in expenditure over the forward estimates. In the particular year that has just gone past, there are a few elements that bear on the deficit. One is obviously a very sharp drop in revenue, but also some of our spending actually was concluded in this financial year instead of being carried over in the next financial year. That was a substantial contribution to the increase in the deficit. Some of the savings initiatives that we chose, that we were proposing to make in some areas, have not been able to be achieved, so they will be achieved over a longer time line. Some of those have been dealt with in the Mid-Year Budget Review in the health sector, and there have been further ones undertaken in this state budget. One of the reasons you can have confidence in these numbers is that, in some of the savings initiatives which we have sought to make and which have proved to be difficult, we have altered the time line, or changed or even abandoned some of them. So, the savings that we seek to make, which we do not pretend are easy, are ones that are realistic; so that these are numbers that can be relied upon. For each of the four years of the forward estimates we are projecting an improvement in our budgetary position, such that by the end of the forward estimates there will be strong surpluses and a reduction in debt—$450 million reduction in debt—without hacking and slashing into the South Australian public sector. I note the leader talked about this 'bound' now, somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000. No doubt he will tell us what not a massive cut is in that bound, somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 people to be lost from the public sector. We look forward to him revealing to the South Australian people what its intentions are.