Capital Works

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:23): Supplementary, Mr Speaker

The SPEAKER: Supplementary.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: In relation to the accelerated capital works I referred to in the earlier question, isn't it true that the capital works were done through invitations to tender based on the companies with the greatest need?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business) (14:24): This goes to an ideological argument that we have had with the opposition. We believe we spend money on productive infrastructure in our economy to create and sustain jobs. The government makes no apologies for building productive infrastructure, upgrading infrastructure that helps grow our economy and upgrading infrastructure that needs to be upgraded that may have been decaying, so I point that out to the opposition.

Again, I have said I will go back and check to see what the policy was for those tenders and get a more fulsome answer to the member. But I will say this, Mr Speaker: we were providing a stimulus and we said so, and that stimulus for the construction industry—whether it be road maintenance, road construction, bridge construction—whatever the infrastructure was—was to keep South Australians working, because the Premier said time and time again that we didn't want to see people queuing around unemployment centres for benefits. We wanted them queuing up for work and that meant investing in infrastructure.

We did harm to our budget, deliberately, because we wanted to keep on building South Australia, and we wanted to keep investing in South Australia. People are now seeing the benefits of that investment. They are seeing the investments we did on South Road for the Superway; they are seeing it through the duplicating of the Southern Expressway.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Mr Speaker, you are also going to see it in your electorate with the construction of the Torrens-to-Torrens project—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —a project that members opposite promised to cancel if they were elected, and I welcome the investment of the commonwealth government into Darlington and maintaining the investment in the Torrens-to-Torrens project. Investing in infrastructure is the right thing to do for South Australia. We do it prudently and we make sure that we keep South Australians working and we keep building infrastructure that will be productive and will create more jobs and help our economy.

The SPEAKER: The members for Chaffey and Heysen are called to order. Is this a supplementary, member for Davenport?

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Yes sir.