Bills

Appropriation Bill 2015

Estimates Committees

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (11:28): I bring up the report of Estimates Committee A and move:

That the report be received.

Motion carried.

Ms BEDFORD: I bring up the minutes of proceedings of Estimates Committee A and move:

That the minutes of proceedings be incorporated in the votes and proceedings.

Motion carried.

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:29): I bring up the report of Estimates Committee B and move:

That the report be received.

Motion carried.

Mr ODENWALDER: I bring up the minutes of proceedings of Estimates Committee B and move:

That the minutes of proceedings be incorporated in the votes and proceedings.

Motion carried.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (11:29): I move:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (11:30): I rise to speak on the estimates committees in this place over the last week or so, and I also indicate that I am not the lead speaker for the opposition. I asked questions in my capacity as the shadow minister in the areas of employment, skills and training and also education, multicultural affairs, and also assisted my colleague the Hon. Mr Ridgway in the upper house, and handled questions for the opposition in the area of tourism as well.

What an introduction we had to the estimates process this year. Of course, the 8.2 per cent unemployment in South Australia is the highest unemployment in the nation and not just by a couple of points. The national unemployment level in South Australia is at 6 per cent and steady. It is now trending at a steady rate, and in some states it is reducing, for example, in Tasmania at 6.5 per cent. South Australia is at 8.2 per cent, the highest unemployment rate we have had in this state for 15 years. What is even more concerning about that figure, of course, is that over the last 12 months we have seen the disappearance of nearly 20,000 full-time jobs in South Australia and more than 66,000 South Australians unemployed. We have not had 66,000 South Australians unemployed for 20 years.

It is a shocking figure, and anybody who has children who are at the age when they might be looking for part-time or full-time work, will know just how difficult it is to even get past that first post, that interview, for any jobs advertised, or by putting in an application for a job or expressing an interest in a job by walking into a business and asking them if they have any jobs, or even having some interest from that business in calling them back a little bit later. They include those who are in the industries that are transitioning out of the South Australian economy, and have been transitioning for at least 10 to 15 years.

I know that certainly in the manufacturing area, an area where I got my start in life (in the furniture manufacturing area), we saw that transition start to happen more than 20 years ago, but it is news to this government that we have a transitioning economy. Apparently, this budget all of a sudden became a jobs budget after the May job figures were released showing another dramatic increase in the job numbers. We did not hear anything about jobs in the budget prior to the ABS figures that came out in May. Then, of course, when the figures came out in June, they showed that the trajectory for unemployment was still heading in the wrong direction in South Australia, and we were told that the focus was all about jobs.

Remember that there was an election promise by the Labor Party in 2010 to create 100,000 jobs in six years. That six years is due in February next year, so we are really only seven months or so from that end date target. So far, this government has produced just 1,670 jobs—all part-time. The transition that this government has managed in jobs over the last five years in particular is transitioning the South Australian economy to part-time jobs and higher unemployment.

When I asked the Minister for Employment in the other place (Hon. Gail Gago) whether the government was still committed to the 100,000 jobs promise that it made in the lead-up to the 2010 election, she said it was only ever an aspiration. That is simply not true; it is not true. There were documents released by this government in 2010, during the discussion paper for Skills for All, that said it was a commitment; there was no mention of 'aspiration' in the papers that were part of the Skills for All program. That program, of course, was released as part of the plan to generate more jobs here in South Australia; Skills for All was part of the plan to generate more jobs here in this state. If members read the material that went out both in the consultation process and then at the launch of Skills for All in 2012, Skills for All was to play a major role in transitioning the South Australian economy to create 100,000 new jobs in this state.

Of course, the jobs creation has been an absolute failure, and Skills for All was an absolute failure. It blew hundreds of millions of dollars, and there was not even a measurement mechanism put in place to determine just how successful that program was in delivering jobs. There were no job outcomes tied to funding. The types of courses that were offered were determined by students, not by industry, and consequently people were choosing courses that did not necessarily lead to jobs and choosing types of training where there are fewer job opportunities now than there were even five years ago here in South Australia.

As I said earlier, I was in the furniture industry, and during the period when I was in that industry, the last 10 years in that industry, 5,000 jobs disappeared from South Australia. The furniture industry seemed to be a major focus of this Skills for All program, giving false hope to so many young people, in particular, that if they did the training—Certificate I or Certificate II in Furniture Construction—there would be a job for them at the end. Of course, if the government had taken advice from anyone in the industry at the time of launching Skills for All, that precious and finite amount of money that was wasted in the Skills for All program could have been put to much better use.

Let us not forget that this government also said, in the lead up to the 2010 election, that it was going to remove the burden of payroll tax for those who took on trainees and apprentices. That lasted for about six months—another broken promise. What were the consequences of that in an economy here in South Australia that has been struggling for an extended period of time (it has certainly been struggling since 2010, in particular)? There is no doubt that the South Australian economy has managed the increases in the Australian dollar against the US dollar and has managed the financial crisis the most poorly of all the states in Australia.

Only recently we have seen that Tasmania has started to manage that situation more effectively and has got some results for those who are looking for jobs in that state. It used to be that South Australia was the worst state for unemployment in mainland Australia; now there is no qualification, South Australia is the worst state.

I have to say that I agree with David Penberthy on the radio this morning, when the Premier tried to claim that the embarrassment for South Australia is the fact that we are half an hour behind the rest of the nation and people laugh at us. He was right when he said, 'Don't you think that perhaps the embarrassment for South Australia is that we are a basket case with employment, with 8.2 per cent the worst unemployment rate in the country?' I am paraphrasing there, of course, but that is certainly what he had observed as the reason; that if the South Australian government is embarrassed, it should be embarrassed about its record unemployment here in South Australia and not the fact that we have a time zone that is half an hour behind the Eastern States.

I think it was also interesting in the estimates process that we learnt about the cuts in TAFE. We know now that, from 2012 when TAFE was corporatised to 2018, that there will be more than 800 fewer staff in TAFE. We have got nearly 500 already gone and the budget papers are telling us, and we learnt in the estimates process and also in the Budget and Finance Committee, that there could be up to another 500 going by the 2018-19 year.

Of course, we cannot forget the fact that one of the jewels in the crown of TAFE in South Australia was the Tea Tree Gully TAFE. Just two years ago, there were 2,500 students registered and being trained at Tea Tree Gully. There is a report in the Messenger press today, based on FOI documents, that tells us that, at the beginning of this year, fewer than 500 students enrolled at Tea Tree Gully. That is on top of the news of the secret meeting, the meeting in camera, that the Tea Tree Gully council held in June to discuss the offer made by TAFE to the council to take possession, either by sale or lease, of more than two-thirds of the TAFE campus at Tea Tree Gully.

What is shocking about that, of course, is that this decline in TAFE services at Tea Tree Gully started at almost the same time as the local member was the minister responsible for TAFE (the member for Newland). We saw that he implemented the changes to TAFE and, also, that is when we started to see the dramatic changes in what was happening to TAFE at Tea Tree Gully.

Tea Tree Gully TAFE has provided enormous support for middle Australia, those aspirational South Australians who want to get a good start in life by getting some vocational qualifications, whether that be through a trade such as hairdressing, for example, or whether it goes beyond that. I know that my wife, when she was a hairdresser, took on the course that they were delivering there called Train the Trainer so she could learn how to train hairdressing apprentices. It has a long history of getting very good outcomes.

Under this government, we have seen it virtually to the stage of being on the verge of closure—so much so that the report in the Messenger today also says that TAFE refused to give any further details of the future of the Tea Tree Gully TAFE, other than to say that they were not going to close it, but we know that this government also said they were not going to close the Repat Hospital and that is exactly what is happening.

I spoke earlier about the Skills for All program which has been thrown out because it did not work. It was replaced with the WorkReady program. I mentioned to the house that there was a consultation process for the Skills for All changes that was implemented two years after the consultation paper, but we saw that with WorkReady there was no consultation, that the non-government sector was immediately pulled out of the vocational training program (the program that supports vocational training with state government and federal government funding in South Australia) with one week's notice. There was no consultation whatsoever.

It is interesting now that TAFE is going out to consultation basically asking employers and stakeholders, 'What do we do now? We want to talk to you. We want you to tell us how we should be delivering our services.' I put it to the minister that that should have been sorted out before she pulled the rug on the non-government sector. And even the government's own report into Skills for All identified that the competition aspect that was introduced into funded vocational training, or supported vocational training, as it is known, delivered a direct outcome, and that was a reduction in the hourly rate of the cost of vocational training in South Australia.

Now the Premier is telling us that by going back to a TAFE monopoly it is going to help TAFE to become more competitive. I do not think that there is anybody outside the former Soviet Union who would believe a comment like that. It is just extraordinary that an organisation would get more competitive by eliminating its opposition.

Of course, we all know that services, whether they be schools—primary schools, high schools—or whether they be medical services work best for the community when there is a balance of the public and the private sector. We have non-government schools, and about 33 per cent, 34 per cent of our families choose non-government schools; and then in the medical sector you have private hospitals and you have public hospitals.

Again, it is that mix that enables services to be delivered in the best possible way in Australia. It is a system that works well—the balance of public and private schools, the balance of public and private hospitals; and, of course, that same theory was working well with the balance of non-government and government training providers in the vocational area.

I think that many of us sitting in the committee at the time and those listening were also shocked to hear that the public servant who was exposed as running her business in the Department of State Development from her desk had been suspended with full pay after the media report in June, but eight weeks later was still receiving full pay because the investigation was still ongoing. It is an extraordinary situation. I just think that it is a bit ironic that the investigation was happening on this issue at the same time that the head of public employment released a new code of ethics for public servants. It is pretty clear that eight weeks is just far too long for an investigation into a serious matter like that to be completed.

Then, of course, we also learnt that, despite the rhetoric from the government, we are still seeing people being brought in from interstate and possibly even overseas for the sorts of jobs that we need here for our engineering graduates for the South Road project. I have been told that over 100 engineers in various fields will be required to complete this project over the four or five years that it will take for the Darlington and the Torrens to Torrens project.

One local engineer and an Australian citizen was brought to South Australia several years ago, sponsored by the state government (because we had a shortage of engineers) to come to South Australia, worked on the Superway project as a South Australian and applied for an advertised position (advertised by Leighton) to be an engineer on this Torrens to Torrens project. When he applied for the position he was told, 'Look, we're not really looking for anybody because we have decided to bring our existing staff down from Queensland.' So, quite a shocking outcome. It appears to me that Leighton is going through the motions and the government is turning a blind eye to that.

It is extraordinary that the government would be borrowing so much money only to see that work being outsourced to others rather than to South Australians in that work. Of course, I also was involved in the education area. Not many things change in education other than the fact that, unfortunately, South Australia's education results are now, when it comes to the NAPLAN, the worst performing state in mainland Australia. We have seen that we were up there in 2008 with the rest of the nation—Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT—and now we are down there bouncing on the bottom, and every year the government simply gives us excuses for that.

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (11:50): I rise today also to speak on the estimates. It was another interesting experience, the estimates experience. I will talk specifically about my portfolio areas in transport and road safety shortly, but in an overarching view of this budget, and from what people are saying to me when I am doorknocking, at the supermarket, at local sporting events or just out in the community, there is a common theme to the questions I am asked, and it is: where are the jobs? They all know South Australia's unemployment figure—they tell me that it is 8.2 per cent, the worst in any state in the nation, they say. 'We're below Tasmania,' is another quote, and they ask me—and again I quote: 'What's going on?'

According to the Treasurer, this year's budget was supposed to be a jobs budget. Well, what a failure. By the Treasurer's own admission in the budget papers, he predicts employment growth of 1 per cent in 2015-16. Last year, in the budget he predicted employment growth of 1.25 per cent for 2015-16. So, the supposed jobs budget is actually predicting lower employment growth for 2015-16! It is quite amazing, and South Australians are feeling the pinch.

I mentioned the state's unemployment figure put out by the ABS in June—8.2 per cent; again, the worst in the nation. Slowly over the years, we have slipped down to the bottom of the ranking of this measure, but we are normally above Tasmania. Not this time, though: Tasmania's unemployment figure is 6.5 per cent. South Australia is 8.2 per cent unemployment; Tasmania, 6.5 per cent; Queensland, 6.1; Victoria, 6.0; and Western Australia and New South Wales are both 5.8 per cent.

Sadly, we are the standout state at the bottom of the table. As was pointed out by the member for Unley earlier, this is South Australia's highest figure in 15 years: 66,000 South Australian people are unemployed. The government sitting opposite did commit back in 2010 to provide 100,000 jobs in six years and, at the moment, they have created only 16,070 part-time jobs. Now they are calling this commitment of 100,000 an aspiration. That is shirking the issue if I have ever seen or heard it and, again, South Australians have had enough.

It is alarming and it has been coming for quite a while, and the Weatherill government has been sitting on its hands watching it happen and, to make matters worse, what does Premier Weatherill say about the matter when questioned in the media? He tells South Australians that it is going to get worse. After 13 years of setting a plan and direction for this state, this government has us on a downward spiral compared with every other state in the nation. This is a dire situation for South Australia. We all know that in government there are good times and hard times but, when you have a government which has been in power for 13 years and they have the state going backwards while other states are holding their own or moving ahead, you know that there is trouble.

As a state, we are in that trouble, and South Australians are deeply concerned. Let's return to what I like to call the people meter: what is our community saying? Everyone I speak with knows someone who is unemployed: a young person unable to get an opportunity; a middle-aged person who is having to look interstate because their industry has closed down or downsized in South Australia; a family struggling to stay together because one person has had to move interstate to earn a wage while the other is here with the children; grandparents forced to leave South Australia because their children cannot get work in South Australia. So, grandparents are leaving to support their family and to be closer to their children and their grandchildren. The stories are endless and, after 13 years, the Premier's only response is, 'It will get worse.'

As I mentioned earlier, the Treasurer, by his own admission, has no solution. His plan has always been to tax South Australians harder when times are tough. He tried very hard with the car park tax, and it has been suggested to me that he will have another attempt at this in another guise, and we should all be keeping a close eye on that to see what he does there.

He has also doubled the ESL by taking away the remissions that were in place: some ESL bills have increased by 400 per cent. The Treasurer tried for a land tax, but he could not get it over the line, so increasing the ESL twice in 12 months has been the next best option to get more money out of South Australians to prop up his mismanaged finances—and now the Premier is talking about raising the GST. On FIVEaa radio, he admitted to the entire state that his plan was for just another cash grab to take money from the pockets of hardworking South Australians.

On FIVEaa's breakfast radio, David Penberthy handed the line of questioning over to Lisa, a listener from Seaview Park. Lisa said, and I quote, 'My question for the Premier would have been along the lines, what other taxes will be reduced if the GST was going to be raised by 15 per cent?' A great question in the context of the proposed tax reform the Premier and Treasurer had been spruiking. The response was astonishing. Premier Weatherill was terse in his response. He said, and I quote, 'Well, none, it's about raising money, it's not about shifting.' It is about raising money. There it is, straight from the Premier's mouth. This is how this government fixes its mismanagement of our state's finances after 13 years in charge.

It is clear we have a jobs crisis, and from our side we say there needs to be an emergency response to stop South Australia slipping further behind the rest of the nation. Our suggestions include: bringing forward planned stamp duty relief to take effect this year to help business and to grow jobs; commit to reducing payroll tax, again to stimulate business and create jobs; reverse the $90 million hike to the emergency services levy that is hitting families and businesses so hard; commit to building the northern connector road, creating construction jobs immediately on a productive infrastructure project; finalise investigation into the Strzelecki Track upgrade; and create a state-based productivity commission. They are our suggestions.

Instead, what does the government want to talk about? Time zones. Remember, we are in a jobs crisis in South Australia. We need jobs now. So, whenever the government makes an announcement, I ask on behalf of the people who live and work in my community and across South Australia: where are the jobs now, Mr Weatherill? I have had a number of calls to my office on that same point, pointing out that time zones are a distraction. Interestingly, the government raised it when it was pushing its Transforming Health plan.

As the backlash came around issues such as closing the Repat Hospital, the government looked for a distraction and it talked about moving time zones to take the attention away from its poor policy. Now it has a jobs crisis in South Australia that is being felt across the entire state. Is it talking about that? No. Is it talking about generating jobs now? No. It has gone back to its diversion strategy and the Premier has put time zones on the agenda again. Premier, South Australians are smart, they can see the pattern, they can see through what you are doing. Premier, South Australians deserve better.

The estimates process does allow us to ask questions, but that does not mean you will always get answers. It does put the ministers under pressure and their responses are always interesting to watch. I noted on the TV news last night that Treasurer Koutsantonis got very testy and short when he was questioned on the state's poor performance and its high unemployment rate, as I have just outlined.

I have come to learn in this place that he and several of his colleagues are very easy to read when they are under pressure in questioning. They attack, they attack the person asking the question as a form of defence. It was highly amusing and even more predictable to see the Treasurer turn to personal attacks when he had no answers, and I know that is what a number of his colleagues do as well.

With that, I will look at some of the points raised in estimates and I will start with transport and public transport in particular because we know this government has spent over half a billion dollars in particular on the rail revitalisation program. A lot of people are coming to me asking questions about the value of this spend, and other issues arising from that spend, on our train system that is not fixed and is not complete.

The running of the trains: just yesterday, the figures put out by the government show that on-time running for trains is down to 91 per cent, not much more than when they were doing the works and the lines were being severely disrupted as the upgrade of the Seaford line was taking place. As I said, $500 million has been spent on this program, but it is the lack of maintenance to upkeep this investment that is causing concern to a lot of South Australians. It is having a big impact on on-time running, which has a big impact on the reliability of the train system, and that is impacting people's use of the train system. If we can guarantee reliability and on-time running then more people will use the system and we will get better return on the investment.

A number of the issues that were brought up with the minister—and, sadly, we did not always get an answer—were around the train system and things that needed to be done and upgraded as far as the train system is concerned. We talked about on-time running, and I asked the minister about the measures for on-time running because it was pointed out in the budget papers that these had been changed recently.

It has been brought to my attention, in relation to on-time running for trains, that trains can be five minutes 59 seconds late and still be deemed to be on time. However, I did ask the minister a question and he could not answer it. It has come to my attention that when a train runs five minutes 59 late coming into the Adelaide Railway Station, you would think the timing and the clock would stop when the train pulls up at the platform in the city, but I am led to believe that is not the case; in fact, the clock stops when the train enters the Adelaide rail yard.

Trains that are left in a holding pattern for four for five minutes, or even longer out in the rail yard trying to get into a station, are still deemed on-time running even though they might have got in inside the five minutes 59—five minutes 58, let's say—then they wait out in the holding yard for another five minutes before they can actually get to the station. They are still calculated as on-time running, which is a great concern. The minister would not answer the question when it was put to him. He did have a couple of advisers alongside, but he did not ask them directly; he did say that instead he would get back to us with an answer. We are very much anticipating that.

Some other things were brought to my attention. The minister pointed out that the new electric trains we have in service are 75 metres in length, and at times they are coupled together and run at 150 metres in length. I asked him how many stations along the Seaford line and southern lines (including the Tonsley line) were not actually 150 metres in length. Again, he would not answer that question. I am led to believe that it is seven or eight. So, there are seven or eight stations that cannot accommodate the double-length electric trains (EMUs) as they are.

A number of these issues were put to the minister but not answered. The budget papers talked about the 22^nd electric train coming online a little bit later this year. It is well behind schedule, but the 22^nd train is coming online. They were ordered at a time when the plan was to electrify the Gawler line. We all know that has not gone ahead, and it has been on-again off-again more times than you can count; still, 22 trains were purchased in the contract.

I am led to believe it only takes 16 and a spare to service the southern lines with the electric trains, so that is five extra trains at about $10 million a pop and we have an oversupply of what we need. That is $50 million just sitting there that is not needed because of the mismanagement of this project. Also tied into that is a 10-year maintenance contract, which again I am led to believe is in place to service all 22 trains as if they were working at capacity. Given that we have an oversupply of five trains, these trains are going to be serviced as if they were working in full operation and they will be very much underutilised—so, again, an overspend on the maintenance contract.

They were the questions I asked the minister. Again, he would not ask the advisers and senior department members who were sitting alongside him; he did say he would take those questions on notice. Equally, the diesel railcars are supposed to be coming off the Seaford line and moving across to the Gawler line. I have come to learn a lot about trains in recent times: we have the 4000 series class, which are the electric trains; we have the 3000 series class, which are the newer diesel trains; and we have the 2000 diesel class, also known as the 'jumbos' because of their cockpit, if you like, where the drivers sit up high on those cars.

They are well and truly over 30 years old; in fact, they are coming up to 36 years of age, I think, very soon. They were supposed to be taken out of service late last year, and then it was revised to March, but they are still running on the Gawler line because it has not been electrified. We have an oversupply of electric trains, as I pointed out just a minute ago, but we cannot use them on the Gawler line because it is not electrified. Therefore, these old diesel trains are still in service, even though they should have been retired some time ago. Not only are the people on the Gawler line missing out on the electric trains but they also have to use these 2000 series trains. I did ask when the 2000 series trains would be taken out service, and again the minister is getting back to us on that one.

One of a number of other issues that were talked about because they were outlined in the budget was the CCTV lighting on some of the stations. What happens with the new electric trains is that they have cameras on the side that shoot down the side and there is a monitor in the cabin for the driver to see. Unfortunately, some of the stations are actually on a little bit of a curve, which makes it alarmingly worrying for safety purposes, in that, as the train pulls up on a curve, the line of sight for the camera down the side of the train is obscured because the middle carriage sticks out a little bit. The driver cannot always see who is getting on and getting off.

Also, the poor lighting, along with glare, at some of the stations makes it hard for some of the drivers to see the monitor, and there have been some issues associated with that. I asked about a few of those, and again the minister is going to get back to us, so it will be interesting to see what the outcome is.

Another thing we talked about was maintenance—and maintenance is not sexy. Cutting a ribbon and opening a new train or doing something like that is always sexy, but maintenance is not sexy. We talked about a couple of things that were brought to my attention, such as the wheel lathe to align the wheels and make them run better on the tracks and to make sure that the investment you have put into a train has the most value by servicing it. As you do with your car, you service a train and make sure it runs well, and you have to lathe the wheels to make sure it runs smoothly on the track.

I found out recently that we do not have a wheel lathe that can accommodate our trams, so the tram bogies are actually put on a truck, shipped across to Melbourne, lathed in Victoria and then the bogies are sent back. We do have a very old wheel lathe out near Dry Creek that is on its last legs, according to some reports I have seen from the department, and it has been suggested that we get a new wheel lathe. As it is, the new electric trains are lathed there. If this lathe breaks down, the only option we have is to put our new trains on a truck, ship them to Melbourne and get the wheels lathed there.

You can see the inefficiencies and the cost blowouts in that, so it has been suggested that we get a wheel lathe. I asked if that was in any of the budget costings and the minister said pretty much, no, it was not. I know these things are capital investments, but they need to be looked at in relation to the efficiencies of running these systems because if it is not done there will be damage to the trains, and a lot of money has been invested in them, as we said, and it could be very expensive.

I also asked some questions about the Adelaide rail yard and the resleepering project, which the Premier has talked about in this house, saying that we are getting rid of the old 'wooden toothpicks', referring to the wooden sleepers, and replacing them with concrete sleepers. That is all well and good, but a lot of sections of the track have still not been done. I am led to believe that the Adelaide rail yard is one such part. Again, I asked the minister if that was going to be done and to the best of his knowledge he said, no, that would not be done.

Other sections of the track still have wooden sleepers, and that means that the trains are actually slowed down and speed restrictions are put on the track, which again impacts on on-time running and service delivery. That is not what we want for a project we have spent so much money on trying to get it right and make it efficient so that we can transport more people around the network. It really is quite disturbing.

We did ask about a couple of other things. A couple of years ago in the budget there were automatic train protections as a signalling issue. We do note that the government has put some money towards signalling, and we asked if that money ($6 million over two years) would fix the signalling problems. The minister did respond that this money really is just to help maintain the system and that it is not going to fix all of the problems.

If you look back over the history of the trains, even over the last couple of years since the rail revitalisation project has been completed and more than $500 million has been spent on this line, a number of trains have been delayed and there have been service disruptions because of the signalling system and the project that has been rolled out. Again, a signalling system is nowhere near as sexy as having extra trains—and we have extra trains, as I pointed out—but a signalling system means the trains will move smoothly.

We have three signalling systems, as far as I am aware. I asked the minister this question as well, but he still would not refer to the people alongside him and get a response. I am led to believe there are three, but I am waiting for the minister to get back with confirmation of that. There is one on the southern line, a different signalling system on the northern line and a different signalling system again in the Dry Creek depot. By not having these all working in unison does make for some real issues. We had a situation a few months ago when trains could not get out of the Dry Creek depot and into the city for peak hour because this signalling system was in a mess.

Tied in with this is the ATP (Automatic Train Protection) system which the government had in its budget papers a couple of years ago, stating that this system was complete. This was a multimillion dollar investment, and in estimates we asked the minister how it was going and he said that it should be switched on in another couple of months. It was complete two years ago, but it is still not up and operating now, which is also a little alarming.

The other thing to be pointed out, and it was discussed in estimates as well, is the stabling at Dry Creek, the servicing of cars there and having this extra number of trains. To service the trains, of course, now you have to take them out to Dry Creek, so they are towed out there by the diesel trains. The brand-new electric trains cannot get out to the servicing station and have to be towed by diesel trains.

There are a number of other issues I really could go on about, and I am sure I will discuss them in this house in time, but a lot of questions were asked in estimates but not a lot of answers were given.

Time expired.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (12:10): In my budget estimates response I first of all want to thank the CEOs, the senior advisers, the staff and of course the ministers who prepared pretty in-depth correspondence through that period which shone somewhat of a light on some of the issues, but of course there is never enough time to fully explore all of them. I also thank the Chairs—yourself, member for Florey, and the member for Little Para, who I must admit probably sat through all of it, but some of it scratching their head, and some of the behaviour of senior personnel left a little bit to be desired, in my opinion.

Budget estimates is a good time for us to ask the government questions, and of course the government is asking us to approve under the appropriation the moneys for the various portfolio responsibilities they have. But of course the purpose is for the parliament to convene a committee which is representative here in the House of Assembly by members of the house to ask questions.

I would like to put on the record that I think that there are some improvements that can be made in the budget estimates process. I think we could do ourselves a great service by looking at the federal system and how they do their estimates in the Senate. For those who do not know, it is presented to the Senate estimates and members of the department and senior personnel from Treasury attend and answer detailed questions about the expenditure or proposed expenditure. It is quite a forensic and long-term examination, whereas, of course, here it has become sanitised and, in some cases, a chore to get through, depending on the level of competence of the minister in question.

When it was introduced first by premier Tonkin, it was meant to be an opportunity to examine in depth the expenditure of the government going forward. With that, I commend many of the ministers I sat in on who did not throw to Dorothy Dixers and actually answered questions as honestly as they could, and I give great credit to those ministers who do that. Unfortunately, I did experience the other side of it, where I think we got about three questions in and, in all honesty, it was a waste of time.

I would like to touch on an area of great concern to me, that is, education. If we are serious about education—and the minister is certainly trying to grapple with this very large department—I think some concerning aspects are around our NAPLAN results. I acknowledge that NAPLAN is just one marker or indicator of performance but, nonetheless, you cannot dismiss it when results do not go your way. You need to examine them and try to work out where areas of improvement can be made and why certain indicators are perhaps where they are.

I will refer in particular to the percentage of year 3 students achieving the national minimum—and I emphasise that word 'minimum'—standard in reading. If you look at the budget papers, Budget Paper 4, Volume 2, page 25, for those strange enough to perhaps read this Hansard and want to refer to it, my great concern is Indigenous students.

In 2013 the number of year 3s achieving the minimum standard in reading was 76.7 per cent. Now, in 2013, if you compare that with all students, all students were tracking at about 94.3 per cent, which is where you would think we would be. However, go forward 12 months and that figure dropped from 76.7 per cent to 69.6 per cent. That is a massive drop for our Indigenous students in achieving the minimum standard in reading at year 3 levels.

I certainly had plenty of questions around that type of statistic. If you follow that group through, the percentage of year 5 students achieving at national minimum standard in reading for Indigenous students was only 65.6 per cent. That is quite alarming and, in fact, I think it is a disgrace in the state of South Australia and something that needs serious focus, bipartisan support and strategies to increase the level of Indigenous students up to where all students seem to be tracking in the 90 per cent range. I am assured by the minister that strategies are in place and I will be very interested in looking at these budget figures next year to see what improvements and early intervention has occurred.

Of course, our school system is quite complex. I do not believe it is about more money being poured into the system. I strongly believe that there are efficiencies that need to be made, efficiencies that can be made and we certainly need to alleviate principals and senior leaders within the school system of the bureaucratic red tape that seems to be swallowing their work day and drawing their focus away from core principles, which are reading, writing and arithmetic—to quote some bygone eras.

People who spend time in schools—and that is the area I come from—are finding less and less capable younger teachers aspiring to be school leaders. It is a major concern for me, particularly in country areas, where we have this stagnation. They get to a point in their career, normally around a senior leader position (which was the old coordinator level position) and many capable people who I have talked to have absolutely no intention of progressing further.

There are probably two or three underlying issues which they raise with me time and time again, but the main one is the time spent on red tape and bureaucratic processes, and the inability to manage their workforce in an effective manner. That is, when a principal has a poor-performing teacher (which is actually not as common as most people think; it is quite rare), the process to work with that teacher becomes agitated and it becomes quite personal and it takes a very strong toll on a principal's wellbeing in managing that situation. Many throw up their hands and say, 'Well, it's not a process once you have been through it once that you want to go through again.'

Of course, I see a number of principals entering retirement age and I think there is a wonderful opportunity for our school system and departmental system to support those principals who are targeted as high-performing principals to mentor and give back to future generations. There does not seem to be an easy way for that to occur, yet the benefits for our younger people, particularly our most at-risk people, would be tremendous.

In terms of the schooling sector, I would just like to explain to people that our NAPLAN results have deteriorated consistently over the last 10 years. It is a shame on our state that we do not have one primary school ranked in the top 100 schools in the nation for NAPLAN results. In fact, we only have one high school ranked in the top 100 secondary schools in South Australia. If this does not sound alarm bells, and we need to be intervening into these performance standards, I really do not know what will trigger that type of response. Of course budget estimates is not just about education, as perhaps I would like it to be.

I was also involved in the areas of forestry, where I led that questioning, and pretty soon there will be no need for a minister for forests. We could also term it now the minister for no forests—

Mr Gardner: And no minister for employment.

Mr BELL: That is right, or small business. I digress. Quite alarming was the fact that the day before estimates was an announcement in the South-East that the management rights for the forest would be handed over to OneFortyOne. This is despite having a five-year agreement, which was negotiated by the previous Treasurer, who is here at the moment, and many people give credit to that minister in handling that process as best as can be done.

One of the key parts to provide confidence for the South-East was this five-year agreement that ForestrySA would provide the management role for OneFortyOne to give five years' worth of security and then have the option of renewal. Of course 12 months ago we were hoodwinked into believing that 70-odd jobs needed to be cut from ForestrySA so they could become efficient, become leaner and more competitive and stand the best possible chance in 2017, when those management rights were up, of retendering. Here we are, nearly three years that into that agreement, and the government has caved in to OneFortyOne's wishes and handed over all management rights to OneFortyOne.

The real shame in this is the amount of intellectual property, the stuff that has been the built up of 100-plus years of modelling, forecasting, growth rates, mapping, thinnings and rotations. All of that data and computer-generated spreadsheets were just handed over. If we were in a totally commercial world, and the management of a forest organisation was told that on 1 October your contract will cease and we will take it over ourselves, then those computer programs, office staff, everything would be locked up and the organisation that owns the forest would have to retender to have somebody manage that forest.

If we just think about the mapping involved, where are these forests and what they actually entail. That would be millions of dollars worth of work. We totally underplayed our hand as a state government, seriously underplayed it, and now the management sits with OneFortyOne, with some looming questions to which I did not get too many answers in the budget estimates around what happens if the 60 staff of ForestrySA do not take up the positions of OneFortyOne. Will we see another round of forced redundancies; will they sit at ForestrySA and play computer games while some work is dreamed up for them? There is not much point having ForestrySA in the South-East if you have no forests to run or manage. So, it is a major concern.

Of course my greater concern is for my fellow South Australians, my family and kids. I am deeply concerned that this jobs crisis will turn into a jobs catastrophe. We are at 8.2 per cent unemployment at the moment, that is without Holden and the allied industries closing down, without Port Augusta, Leigh Creek—and ForestrySA jobs, dare I say it, are going. If some rumours are true, some other industries, I am reliably informed, may be shedding their workforce. I can quite easily see our state's unemployment rate hitting double digits, and that would be a tragedy for South Australia.

What we are going to see in South Australia is exactly what has happened in country areas for the last 13 years; that is, it will become an older demographic. It will become a demographic where younger people will leave to find opportunities elsewhere. Of course, when you have the whole state doing that, it will be interstate or overseas. The real tragedy there, like in country areas, is that it is normally the ones who have higher education qualifications who leave and in many cases take a long time to come back, if indeed they do come back. So there is a natural brain drain—is the term coined—leaving the state, which then puts the state in a more perilous condition.

One just has to look at country areas to see what the outcome of this is going to be. This will basically become an area with an ageing population, with fewer people paying taxes because more people will be retired, less innovation and less industry, which becomes a downward spiral. Believe it or not, I read something from Kevin Foley—and I never thought I would be up here quoting Kevin Foley—who essentially said that when a government abandons the target of having a AAA credit rating you are on a downward spiral of debt. That is exactly where we are headed right now. In fact, one of the great fallacies portrayed in this house was that the sale of the South-East forests was to keep our AAA credit rating. Quite interestingly, the day after the sale was announced, the renovation of the Adelaide Oval was also announced. Who knows whether or not that was a coincidence.

I always try to come to this place with some positives, some ideas to move forward, some bipartisan approach. I will just table a few areas where I think we can drive growth, and hopefully I will flesh these out in this place over the coming years. The one thing we have to understand is how businesses operate. What would it take for a person to start a business in South Australia? You have to get the fundamentals right. One of the things is the cost of borrowing. If you want to start a business, the cost of borrowing, particularly if you are a young entrepreneur, is quite prohibitive. I would like to see a start-up fund, with the vision that we would become like the silicon valley of California, where it becomes an area of innovation and entrepreneurship. To do that, people need access to cheaper finance.

One thing we could do is have the government set aside a portion of money, to have a lower interest rate on a start-up fund. It would still need to be approved by banks and it would still need to go through all the commercial-in-confidence and due diligence that we do, but instead of borrowing money at 6.5 per cent, which many people need to do for a business loan, you might be able to borrow money at 2 per cent, capped at a certain amount, of course. It might be $200,000. That would give younger people a reason to start that entrepreneurial journey.

Of course, there would be caveats around that. You would need to be a South Australian resident—so we would slug you with every other tax that we have here—and you would need to employ a majority of South Australian people, say 51 per cent. That would give an incentive for people to relocate to South Australia to start a business. They would still need to put their own capital on the line, but we could get a cheaper interest rate for them.

A local one would cost about $25 million; we need to relocate Finger Point. Finger Point is our sewage treatment plant. At the moment it is right near the coast, so what happens is that we pump the effluent out, treat it and then pump it into the sea. If we had that plant stationed close to Mount Gambier, we could treat the effluent like Bolivar and then put it to the market for cheap irrigation so that people could irrigate with that treated water, particularly during the summer months. The amount of water that just flows out to sea through our drainage system is quite mind-boggling, and if we had a system of capturing and re-using it, that would again go towards better productivity.

Deregulation is one topic on which we need to have a mature and sensible debate—not hyperbole, innuendo and misinformation—particularly in relation to deregulating Sundays and public holidays. Establishing a tourism precinct in the South-East or Mount Gambier with Sunday penalty rates not at their current prohibitive level, but at a level where people would open their business, employ more people and attract tourism, has some real merit.

I have spoken before about the Blue Card and I will speak more about that. There are other issues such as supporting our racing industry, and the big one that I picked up from Texas is partnering with Indigenous communities with tax breaks—a very innovative way of encouraging co-investment with Indigenous communities.

Time expired.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (12:30): I also rise today to respond to the estimates committee reports. I would actually like to commend the member for Mount Gambier for one of his latest ideas in regard to the start-up community. It goes without saying that this is an area that the government should definitely be doing more in. The start-up community in Adelaide is a very positive and energetic one, but they are calling and screaming and crying out for more assistance from the government. When you look at the amount of office space that is vacant in this state and when you look at the amount of money that is being wasted in this state, we could be putting it to much more productive use if some of that funding and some of that space was given to the start-up community.

The government does have a micro fund available to businesses. However, it was disappointing to hear, during the estimates period, that not very many companies actually took up the funding. It leads to many questions. Why are they not tapping into this funding? Is it because there is too much red tape to get to the funding? Is it because the government is making it too hard? I think we need to have a debate about what we can do to promote South Australian businesses and especially those in the start-up community.

This is at a time in South Australia's history—not just this year, I note, but also the year before—when there are more businesses leaving South Australia than are actually commencing business in South Australia. This is a massive concern. This exodus of small businesses is a huge issue and we cannot recover without an improvement from the small business sector. Let us not kid ourselves: the government can never tax a state to prosperity. This is going to be a small business-led improvement, if it is going to happen, and we need to get out of small business's way, so I commend the member for Mount Gambier for raising his idea.

I would like to thank all the public servants who took the time to come in and appear before the committees and who generally provided details regarding expenditure to be approved. It is a very important process, obviously. Unfortunately, because of the sometimes adversarial nature of what we do here, some people tend to lose focus on what they are here to do. We are here to represent the best interests of the people we represent in our seats and also the best interests of the people of South Australia. It was good to get to know some of these public servants a lot better—good hardworking people who are in it for the right reasons and in it for the greater good of the state. Estimates provides a good opportunity to get to know them.

Estimates is obviously very important for several reasons, but I wish to talk about just a couple. This was my second estimates. Estimates provides a good opportunity to allow Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and, also, the government to be satisfied, when they approve and support the government's Appropriation Bill, that money that needs to be spent is actually being spent well and is actually being spent competently. It is an important process in holding the government to account on those issues. It is also a very good opportunity to engage with various government departments about the future programs that the government will install in the future.

For me as a younger member of this place, I am always interested to see the difference between the more competent ministers and the ones who still struggle. I was extremely disappointed. I always come to estimates with high hopes, but it is disappointing that, given the army of public servants and advisers present, some ministers actually did not take many questions at all and had to take questions on notice. It makes you think; you would think that these ministers would be all over their portfolios, but some of them, I am afraid, were not.

As we have heard this morning, and time and time again, South Australia has the highest unemployment rate in all of Australia—8.2 per cent. It is well above the national unemployment rate, which is about 6 per cent at the moment. We heard this morning from the gallant member for Unley that there have been 20,000 full-time jobs lost in South Australia alone. I see many young people, as I am sure you do as well, Deputy Speaker, who cannot find jobs at the moment, and many of these young people are qualified, either in their trade or their profession. It is extremely concerning. There is market failure at the moment in our economy, it goes without saying. I look at the recent events of Tagara Builders, for example, in my own electorate. There is a lot of pain out there at the moment.

This government was called on to provide some answers for this dire jobs crisis, this dire job situation. Unfortunately—and it was evident in the estimates process—there was not enough talk from the government about jobs, and specifically about the detail of where those jobs will come from. We obviously all remember the 100,000 jobs promise that the former premier made. In the future this will prove to be but a distant memory. This will be proved to be completely false, and the government probably knew that the whole time.

We heard last week that we might actually have half a new Royal Adelaide Hospital at its opening. I really do want to embrace the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. However, we were told last week that when the new Royal Adelaide Hospital opens its doors it may have only half the number of beds that are currently available at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. We were also told that paper patient records will still be needed, due to the failure of the electronic patient system.

This is a bit concerning, given the amount of funds required to build this and given that when it does come onto the government books it is going to be quite a large asset and liability. Not only that, but the health minister believes that the 18 April opening date might even be called into question. These are real concerns and they affect not only the patients but also the workers.

Talk to the nurses out there, talk to the public servants who work at the Royal Adelaide, talk to the cleaners. There is much angst in the community at the moment and the least the government can do is stick to these timelines and say with confidence that things will be done when they were promised to be done, and on budget, and that competent IT systems will be available and working when the opening occurs, with an adequate level of bedding at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It is extremely disappointing.

Unfortunately, the government negative headlines dominated much of the week's media. I look at flights and travel that was undertaken. I note that the following ministers had undeclared travel: the Treasurer and the Minister for Health. It really poses some questions, notwithstanding all the might of their departments and the number of full-time employees they have with their own ministerial staffers. Seriously, how many staffers and how many public servants does it take to post one or two pages of details about each item of travel? Were they expecting the opposition not to pick up these things? It is extremely disappointing that the government comes through to estimates and, at the eleventh hour, has to discover that these things are not put on. It goes to the heart of transparency and it goes to the heart of the arrogance of this government that they cannot even post their travel details online.

The worst item of travel was the revelation of the member for Mawson—whom they are calling Boeing Bignell in some circles. He spent over an hour concocting far-fetched and ridiculous explanations as to why his travel was necessary, and why certain receipts about hotel rooms were paid for and bottles of wine were paid for.

You have to ask yourself: does the minister honestly think that the average South Australian believes that all this expenditure was needed for his portfolio? It is an absolute disgrace and it is arrogant. It reflects poorly not only on him and his government but also on all of us in this house, because the people of South Australia who pay their taxes and pay for us to do a good job and to represent the interests of our electorates and our area expect more. They expect more and it is extremely disappointing.

In regard to the budget overall, where was the new capital investment for my electorate? The government has certainly disappointed the constituents of my area. People in my area have real concerns about cost of living, about job security and about how they and their children are going to keep working in local jobs here in South Australia when there is such an exodus of jobs and work leaving South Australia and going interstate. There was no budget allocation for parking at Paradise Interchange. There was no budget allocation for the relocation of the Glynde substation to an industrial site, despite the Labor Party before the 2014 election making a written promise that the substation in Glynde would be relocated to an alternative site and that the government would provide alternative land.

There was a lot said about stamp duty and various fees and charges and how, for example, stamp duty will be abolished on non-residential real property transfers by 1 July 2018. There would be a phased abolition of conveyance duty on non-residential real property transfers between 1 July 2016 and 1 July 2018. Duty rates will be reduced by a third from 1 July 2016, a further third from 1 July 2017, before the duty is abolished from 1 July 2018. The government estimates that more than 5,500 transfers each year will benefit from this abolition of duty. There was talk about the abolition of stamp duty on genuine corporate restructures, as well as other stamp duty matters.

The point I would like to make is that the people of South Australia and especially the small businesses of South Australia are experiencing problems now. They are calling for the government to get out of their way now. The only way to do that is to make South Australia a more competitive place to do business. That is why some of these measures need to be brought into place now. The noose is, unfortunately, already around the necks of so many small businesses out there. They want to do well, they want to employ more people and they want to grow. However, it has been proven time and time again that it is expensive to do business in South Australia. We are the highest taxed state in all of Australia, so the least the government could do is to move some of these provisions forward to at least give business a go so that they can grow and so that they can go out and employ more South Australians.

We then moved to the Attorney-General's Department. It was again evident that the government is all talk when it comes to the courts and upgrading the courts precinct. The courts have yet to receive the several hundred million dollars that was spoken about many years ago in regard to an upgrade. Instead, what did we hear? We heard a pie-in-the-sky idea that the District and Supreme courts might be merged and that a single court of appeal could be established. This has been proposed many times over the last 15 years. The government has always talked about it but never actually done it, I note.

We know that the District and Supreme courts already have the same criminal registry, which is the busiest division of the superior courts, and this is hardly going to cut costs. All it is is a simple rearranging of the deck chairs. It is nothing more than a distraction, and the Attorney should know better. It is nothing more than a distraction from the real problems confronting the justice system. If you talk to lawyers and people who use the legal system or attend court, they will tell you the same thing: there is a lack of facility. Look at the issues concerning the sale of Sturt Street, the IT system and the ballooning case lists.

The government and the Chief Justice, to my satisfaction, did not give answers as to how these issues would be addressed. They need to say more than that they want just a new court building because it is about more than just that. We know that they are not going to get one any time soon under this government, so I suggest that the CAA get on with improving their services with what they have, rather than just hoping for a new building which the government is not giving any money to. I would like to remind the government about the commonwealth courts option and the fact that the former chief justice, I understand, knocked back a proposal from the former attorney-general to use the then newly built SA Water building.

The Attorney-General has let down the people of South Australia as far as the courts precinct goes. He knows better and he should be doing much more. I am actually curious as to the Attorney's answer to a question from the deputy leader, when she asked him if he was thinking about appointing himself a judge. I noticed that he did not rule it out explicitly. It would not surprise me if he did become a judge in the future. If you look at most of his mates, Deputy Speaker, most of his mates from Murray Chambers have done very well over the years, and it would not surprise me at all if he became a judge.

Mr Gardner: He has wig envy.

Mr TARZIA: He has wig envy, the member for Morialta says. Then there was the Treasurer. The Treasurer has been a long time in this place; he should know better. Certainly, when he wants to, he can provide answers to questions, but it was not his best day yesterday. He resorted to attacking our leader, and it was in a puerile and immature fashion at some points, and it is not good enough.

We are here to do a job. People wonder why the public sometimes switch off from what we do. It is just not on. We generally want to work where we can with the government to provide long-term economic improvement in South Australia. It does not help when members on both sides, and members on the government side especially, resort to personal attacks on members of the opposition. If only they put as much effort into attacking people on our side personally as they did to actually fixing the jobs crisis that they have created on their watch. It is very disappointing.

Overall, what we have seen is that the government wants to talk about everything under the sun except jobs and except the economy. Beware of the weapons of mass distraction this government constantly uses time and time again to distract the people of South Australia from the real issues out there. They want to talk about driverless cars. They want to talk about time zones. Deputy Speaker, wait for it: I bet you that in the future this government will try to change the message on registration plates on those driverless cars, too. You wait for it. They will talk about anything and everything except the economy and the dire state of our economy at the moment.

We need to be doing more to create jobs for South Australians. At 8.2 per cent, we have the worst unemployment in all the nation. Stop the mucking around, get with the program, and let's try to at least get this economy moving once more. South Australia can be great; however, it is being let down by a poor, tired and incompetent government.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (12:48): I must say that I love listening to the words of others in this chamber sometimes. For the member for Hartley indeed, not just can South Australia be great, indeed it must be great. That is the thing we all have to strive for, and it is. Within this chamber, we have some level of control over what we talk about. It gets distracted from time to time, but estimates is a five-day period that I enjoy. Not having yet had the opportunity to be on the government side and cram for every potential question that may be asked of you, or to ensure that the staff members around you prepare an answer to every potential question that may be asked of you, I desire the opportunity tremendously one day and I hope that I live long enough for it to occur, because it has to be a system that will work well.

I come into this place, though, respecting some who actually walk into the chamber without the need to make rather lengthy opening statements or without the need to put questions from their own side before themselves to give them the chance to provide more information. I respect those people. Indeed, the member for Newland has just walked in, and I have vivid recollections of him in the other chamber in his first estimates session as Minister for Recreation and Sport. I was asking questions on behalf of another shadow minister at the time, and the member for Newland walked in without an opening statement and did not have any questions from his own side. The period went for two hours, and he was prepared to provide an answer to every question that was posed to him by the opposition.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: No wonder I got into so much trouble.

Mr GRIFFITHS: The member for Newland notes that it is no wonder he got into so much trouble. I must say that from my side there was an instant level of respect for the willingness to come in and actually face the questioning. It did create a bit of a scrambling need for us to ensure that we had enough questions to last through the whole two-hour session, but that is part of the challenge for a parliamentarian. It was a good tactic because we presumed—incorrectly, as it turned out—that there would be a different focus, that there would be questions and an opening statement, but it did not transpire. So, I commend you, member for Newland, and I hope that those who follow behind you have the same ideas on how they should perform.

The member for Enfield did well in Planning estimates, the Adelaide Cemeteries Authority and the Consumer and Business Services on liquor licensing. He actually had the same principles that he adopted last Wednesday, and that was for a 90-minute session. There were only a few questions about the Adelaide Cemeteries Authority, which has a relatively smaller budget of $4.8 million, which was the only reference I could find, and that was about capital works. We only had a couple of questions on Consumer and Business Services. The Hon. Rob Lucas is the shadow minister, and it is interesting that, in relation to liquor licensing, there has been publicity only today about some recommendations on a review to be undertaken. It will be interesting on where the final point rests, but it is important that questions are asked in that area too.

The main focus of my 90-minute session was planning matters, which I consider to be absolutely critical to the future of South Australia. When planning is done well, it puts in train an opportunity for some surety to be attached to development and for some surety to be attached to the community, where part of its challenge is to be involved very significantly in developing the future vision of a local government area, a suburb, or a regional township and, by association, the whole state. To get that right is absolutely key for the parliament to ensure that it has the opportunity to occur.

The minister has spoken quite openly many times about the fact that within the next two days, I believe, a development bill will be presented before the parliament, not to be debated until September, and the mechanisms around that will be key. It is a complete rewrite of the act. The current act has been in place since 1993 and amended close to 50 times in that 22-year period, so it is appropriate for it to be reviewed.

There will not be total agreement: there will be an enormous number of questions and an enormous number of different positions put by relevant industry and community groups from across the state. In this chamber particularly, there will be some lengthy debate. We will talk about it for quite a few days, and we will talk about all the challenges it represents, and the opportunities and scenarios around it, and we will ask why a particular stance has been taken and an alternative position put and then come to some form of resolution.

I was interested, in asking questions of the minister on just a few things, when we talked about the existing RAH site and the future planning and zoning requirements of that, given that the government has sought expressions of interest for alternative uses for some of those sites. We asked questions about the Adelaide Parklands zone DPA that is currently out. At the time of questioning the minister, I believe something like 167 submissions had been put in about that DPA. It is a rather high number, but it shows that no matter where people are from, and because there are so many different suburbs that front onto the Parklands areas, there are people who are interested in it. So, from a community engagement point of view, I am very pleased that people are becoming involved.

An interesting aspect of that DPA is that for infrastructure development the government wishes to pursue it suddenly becomes 'complying development', certainly from a public notification viewpoint, and an opportunity for further consideration of it. That was an interesting change from previously having been noncompliant. It is a change of only a few words, but the implications are quite significant, so that is why we spent some time asking questions on that.

We also had questions about the Adelaide CBD high school, which is currently and has been known as the Reid Building. Primarily, it is the responsibility of the Minister for Education as to the infrastructure challenges that represents and what modifications are going to be required for it. I asked the Minister for Planning about what level of involvement the Minister for Education or her predecessors had had in earlier discussions on that. That will also require some zoning issues to be considered, depending on what occurs there.

We asked questions about the planning reforms, particularly down to things such as the urban growth boundary. Again, this is not a situation or question area that excites a lot of people, but it actually has quite significant implications. There has been a version of an urban growth boundary in place since the mid-1990s. The Hon. Diana Laidlaw, as a previous minister from the other place, put that in place, and minister Rau confirmed that, in his time as minister, he has not made any changes to it. I took, though, some of his words to be concerns about previous changes that had been made and the fact that he wants to legislate for it instead of it being a ministerial responsibility, as it has been for over 20 years. He does so from the basis of a lack of belief in future ministers for planning and what they might do. I find intriguing what is going to occur there.

We asked some questions about it, and the minister provided some comments to me. I am not sure if they were particularly reasons for the desire to legislate for it, but there will be a lot more that occurs about that. I asked some questions about things like interactions between adjoining land and the challenges when change of land use applications are considered and supported. I quoted some examples, particularly in a broadacre sense, about mining, where it adjoins agricultural land and the challenges from not just the production of broadacre farming adjoining it but the marketing of it.

I think there is a lot to consider there, particularly as resources are located in the more settled areas where long-term agricultural operations have been occurring and mining applications are being either developed, put before the government or have been approved and what the implications of that are. That is an issue that divides regional communities very strongly: one side wants to see the regional economy grow through diversification of the economy and others want to ensure that respect is paid to the traditional use of it, a broadly European settlement sense, with agriculture occurring there.

The last area of questioning for the Minister for Planning was the Kangaroo Island commissioner role, which was subject to legislative debate last year and which was implemented in May, I think, when the commissioner was appointed, so it has been in place for a two-month period. A strong emphasis of the legislation that went through this place and the Legislative Council was on the appointment of the community reference groups. I was rather frustrated that after two months there has been seemingly no movement upon that.

I believe that is a rather tardy follow-up of what needs to occur. There were seemingly no pronounced examples of where the commissioner has been working on developing what the strategic vision of the role would be or what level of improvements have been created within the first two months through the interaction between community, local government and state government departments to get some achievable outcomes there. I still look forward to that information flowing through.

I know the person who has been appointed commissioner, I have respect for that person, and I have no doubt that it is a challenging role to ensure that the outcomes are there. I am frustrated to some degree because I believe that ministerial accountability should ensure that that level of cooperation exists between government departments, local government and the community already without the need for a commissioner to be appointed, and I put all that on the record last year. It is an interesting scenario, where the outcomes have to be very strong, but I am not quite sure if they are there yet.

My next question area was for minister Gago about Consumer and Business Services and the licensing requirements. We had a 30-minute session only. Frustratingly for me, in that time the minister chose to make an opening statement and take questions from her own side. It provided very little scope for questions to be posed by the opposition. Interestingly, one question was posed by the government about free-range eggs, which was to be my next question area, and about the codes that have been put in place for those. That is where uniform support does exist for what is occurring, and there has been debate within both chambers on that. We asked a question about things such as noncompliance and letters that had been sent to people who have not quite done the right thing. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.