Member's Remarks

The Hon. M.L.J. HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Minister for Investment and Trade, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (15:32): As a general principle, I try to refrain from personal criticism of fellow MPs, except where they have attacked me. This sitting week provides me with the first opportunity to deal with defamatory and untruthful remarks made by the Hon. R.L. Lucas MLC in the other place on Wednesday 7 December 2016, during the last week of sitting. Mr Lucas falsely asserted that I had not been telling the truth in regard to ministerial travel, that I had engaged in a deliberate strategy to conceal the cost of such travel, and that I had taken 224 days of gazetted leave in 2015 and 2016. Mr Lucas went on to launch other offensive personal attacks.

All of these claims are untruthful. He used parliamentary privilege to defame with a view to media reporting the falsehoods, which The Advertiser did do on 10 December. Two days ago in this house, I corrected those claims and reports and established beyond reproach that all the obligations expected of me and my office had been complied with. I have raised the matter with The Advertiser and I will be taking formal action in regard to the publicly repeated comments by the member for Schubert. I note Mr Lucas has not had the courage to repeat these falsehoods outside the parliament.

I know Rob Lucas well, having served closely with him from 1997 to 2014. He is a cancer in the heart of the Liberal Party that should have been plucked from it years ago. He is one of the principal reasons the state Liberals nearly lost the 1997 election and have lost the last four subsequent elections. This is a man who, as education minister from 1993 to 1997, closed schools and scrapped music programs in public schools, leading to major embarrassment for premier John Olsen, who was stalked during the 1997 campaign by the Croydon Primary School community.

This is a minister who made a mess of every aspect of the sale of ETSA and did so without the protective measure of a Riverlink interconnector to New South Wales. Rob Lucas's arrogance and incompetence in government have left a legacy that South Australians are still paying for. This is a man involved in the savaging of the premiership of Dean Brown and who was a beneficiary when John Olsen promoted him as treasurer in 1997.

This is a man who called for and arranged a special general meeting of the joint Liberal party room late at night in the Old Chamber of parliament during a sitting week in August 2000 to urge us all to expel the member for Hammond, Peter Lewis, from the Liberal Party. Rather than keep Lewis in the tent, Lucas ensured that he was demonised. Had he not done so, Peter Lewis may not have run as an Independent and been in a position to bring down the Liberal government in 2002. The state Liberals have Lucas to thank for that.

When I became leader of the state Liberals in 2007, it was clear to me and to a majority of Liberal MPs, many of whom told me so, that Rob Lucas was yesterday's man—and that was 10 years ago. I removed him from the shadow cabinet because I knew he would oppose change, and he did. He opposed moving football to the city, he opposed the renewal of the Adelaide CBD spelled-out in my 2008 master plan for Adelaide, he opposed an ICAC. He proposed nothing; he opposed everything.

I was not alone in identifying the member as a leech on the party's leg. A former party president jettisoned him from the state executive after concerns about leaks to the media and his arrogant and obstructive behaviour. The leaks stopped with his departure. He raised no significant funds for the party's effort at any time in my observation. In one 12-month period, it was reported that Mr Lucas failed to represent the party at a single community event. He offended the Greek Orthodox community by dragging them into a dispute over a community grant, and Liberals were ostracised by that community for years. Even when, as leader, I asked him to desist, he continued.

Mr Lucas used the Budget and Finance Committee to undermine his House of Assembly colleagues and to promote himself. His loyalty to any leader is contingent upon his own self-interest. His contribution in the current parliament has been to tie up government departments with requests for mountains of documents and trawl through them for an out-of-context piece of information that he can offer to a journalist in exchange for a prominent quote from him. He targets the personal information of individual public servants.

In summary, Lucas is the chief architect of the low profile, small target strategy, which brought four election failures. He raises no money and he has no ideas. I am not surprised at the cowardly defamation he delivered on 7 December; it is totally in character. It would be a benefit to all MPs if Mr Lucas, after 12,520 days here, retired in the next few months and made way for new talent. It is surely the worst parliamentary record in the state's history. He is a merchant of misery, and I would suggest that he ceases his unheralded personal attacks and gets on with the job.