Council Rate Concessions

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): My supplementary is to the Premier. Will the Premier commit to the house that he will not waste further taxpayer money on ongoing television ads regarding pensioner concessions in South Australia?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:17): I will commit to the house to keep the promise I made the people of South Australia at the last election—and that is to stand up for South Australia. I will use any and all means at my disposal to do that. Indeed, I think some of the changes that we have seen in the federal budget, as has been noticed by the Treasurer, have been as a direct result of the campaign of resistance that we led against the federal budget.

I remind those opposite that it is fashionable these days to say that the 2014 federal Liberal budget is friendless; it was not as fashionable the day after the last federal budget. Indeed, I can remember them all standing up applauding the budget, and those on this side were all part of the cheer group, but when it all started to unravel—when those of us actually stood up and pointed out the inherent unfairness of this budget—we began to build a community coalition, the Federal Cuts Hurt campaign, which was funded by this government, which reached out across South Australia and indeed across the nation, against these cuts.

When, of course, we had the examples of the resurgence of support for our party, most visibly reflected in a famous by-election, I think people began to realise that this was resonating around not only this state but indeed the nation. Are we going to continue to stand up and fight for South Australia? Of course we are. Are we going to use whatever means are at our disposal to do that? Absolutely, of course we are; especially when they are beginning to yield results. We would be enemies to ourselves if we chose not to do that.

I know there are those people who should be standing up for South Australia in the federal Liberal caucus who are not doing the sort of service for South Australia that we all expect. In the past, we had powerful representation in the former federal Liberal government: leaders such as Mr McLachlan, Mr Downer, Ms Vanstone, Mr Minchin and Mr Hill—powerful advocates for South Australia. Anybody who was on the inside of some of the key decisions about defence would know that federal decisions were powerfully influenced by the advocacy of those strong South Australian leaders.

We should be calling on our federal representatives to stand up for South Australia instead of us seeing a federal budget which has $900 million of cuts to automotive assistance—which you could probably forgive them for if they took it back to the bottom line and said that this is all part of their budget emergency. But the gall of them: making that cut from South Australia and then sending it up to the north of Australia on some basis that there are future growth prospects out there when they ignore the massive structural adjustment that is going on here in the very suburbs in the north of Adelaide which are going to be most dramatically affected by the changes to the automotive sector. So, this is clearly a federal—

The SPEAKER: Premier, I believe you have strayed into debate.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Thank you, sir; I will come back. The essential point is this: we will continue to stand up for South Australia, and we will continue to do that by whatever means necessary.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Before we get to the next question, I call to order the members for Mount Gambier and Morphett; I warn for the first time the members for Schubert, deputy leader and Morialta; and I am shocked to find myself warning, for the first time, the member for Flinders. I warn for the second and final time the members for Heysen and Mitchell. The member for Fisher.