Bills

Supply Bill 2017

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (16:39): I rise to make some brief comments on the Supply Bill. Just looking at it straight off, my concern is the amount being asked for this year compared with in other years. For the record, in 2014 the appropriation request was $3.9 billion; in 2015, it was $3.2 billion; in 2016, it was $3.4 billion; and for some unexplained reason the Supply Bill is seeking $5.9 billion.

One could guess about some of the reasons for this increase; however, until a budget is handed down, it is difficult to understand exactly what they are. It does concern me that this request is such a marked increase on previous years. I wonder whether it has anything to do with some impending developments that are to take place and due to come online, but we will know more about that as time goes on.

Last year's budget was listed as a jobs budget, as was the 2015 budget, yet the fact remains—a fact that Labor cannot deny—that South Australia's unemployment rate remains the highest or the second highest in the nation, depending on which month it goes in. This shows that the government's initiatives and incentives have failed. It concerns me greatly on a number of fronts when I start looking at the raw numbers. We are collecting $922 million more than in 2015-16 through GST revenue or, as is it more accurately known, horizontal fiscal equalisation.

When you start looking at some of the states that pay a dollar in GST and receive back only around 35¢ versus South Australia, which gets back about $1.30 for every dollar it pays, you can see why they start getting a little bit jaded. I understand from when federalism came in the spread of the assets of all the people who live in the country, and not just which section you live in, and that you might have higher mineral deposits or mining opportunities. I do understand the spread, and of course it works really well when there is a three-year lag on the upscale of the horizontal fiscal equalisation, but it can be quite devastating on the downside, as we are seeing at the moment in Western Australia, where they are still being charged high GST recovery rates versus the actual budget in play at the moment.

This comes on top of the privatisation of the Motor Accident Commission, which was an asset of all South Australians. The total return from the privatisation of the Motor Accident Commission is now estimated to be about $2.5 billion. Of this amount, $1.16 billion assisted the net operating balance of the budgets in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. The MAC dividend in 2016-17 of $298 million compares with the estimated net operating surplus of $300 million. In short, if we were not flogging off assets in this state there would be no net operating surplus.

Some of the important key performance indicators, according to the ABS and Labour Force, are quite rightly concerning. Private investment has fallen, from around 7 per cent in 1990 to a little under 5 per cent nowadays. We are not growing quickly enough and unemployment is running over 7 per cent, so it is quite a concern for South Australians. In my research, the real unemployment rate is closer to 12 per cent, with some areas, such as Gawler and Elizabeth, close to 40 per cent.

Some of our youngest and our brightest, those who are prepared to have a go, are leaving this state. There are also little indicators—such as the number of people who are defaulting on their power bills and having their power cut off—that give a real sense of where an economy is at. In 2012-13, 10,100 South Australian dwellings had their power cut off because they could not pay their bills. At the moment, it is well over a 50 per cent jump from where it was. People are struggling to meet their power payments, as well as their water bills, and according to my figures around 6,000 customers per year are receiving hardship payments.

We desperately need private sector input. It concerns me when the Premier talks about a political solution or public money, which of course is part of the scenario, but we really need to be supporting the private sector as well. Some recent animosity between some in the business community and the Premier is quite concerning from the point of view of attracting other investment into South Australia.

You do not have to research too hard to start seeing some of the doom and gloom. In August 2014, Arnott's biscuits cut 120 jobs in Adelaide; on 22 August 2014, Aldinga Turkeys axed 79 jobs at McLaren Flat; in September 2014, glassmaker ACI cut 60 jobs in Adelaide; in October 2014, Caroma Industries at Norwood closed its doors; and in November 2014 ABC television studios closed its doors after 55 years.

There is also Arrium, BHP, dairies, and SANTOS with 200 job losses in 2015, but of course the big one is Holden workers and the imminent closure of the Holden plant. There are also shipbuilding job losses at ASC, with what is called the Valley of Death. All the way through, there are large job cuts. In 2015, Fairfax cut about 35 full-time equivalents; SA Pathology has confirmed job losses; and it goes on and on and on.

My concerns come pretty much from the position of male full-time employment. I think we are going to be heading into seriously interesting times, where full-time employment for males is going in reverse. The male unemployment rate of around 7 per cent in 2017 and full-time employment growth in reverse is going to be a diabolical combination. After peaking at around 365,000 total male full-time employment in 2008—that was our high mark, when 365,000 males were employed full time in 2008—we are now at around 336,000. So, about 30,000 fewer full-time equivalent of males in work is starting to trend towards the 1990s recession, when it bottomed out at 313,000.

A lot of people talk about other genders and equity and all the rest of it, and I agree 100 per cent with that, but I want to talk a bit about full-time male employment. Job prospects for men in particular are poor, both in terms of quality and quantity. All the recent growth in male employment has been part-time, so we can expect underemployment to rise sharply with the automotive closure given the lack of full-time employment growth in industries where men predominate. While continued growth in employment in service industries has underpinned rising female participation in the workforce, much of this growth has been casual and part-time in nature, fuelling rising underemployment for women.

Employment growth in South Australia is largely concentrated in health, aged care and community services, providing limited opportunities for workers with decades of experience in manufacturing. For those who successfully make the transition into the service sector, it is often into less secure, part-time and casual jobs, fuelling the rise of underemployment. For many others, the risk of unemployment is high. Some will pick up part-time or casual work, where there will be a rise in underemployment, but for others it will lead to unemployment.

Around one-third of retrenched manufacturing workers typically experience long-term unemployment after retrenchment, particularly during periods of slow growth. It is true that in Australia there is a link between men's health and their vocation, and their security within that vocation. The underemployment and casualisation of the male workforce and the side effects or symptoms that we are going to start seeing out of that are of great concern to me.

Another thing I want to talk about is the lack of investment in regional South Australia. One example is mobile blackspot funding for phone towers. In June 2015, the federal government announced that it completed its $100 million Mobile Black Spot Program and was going to deliver 499 new mobile phone towers across Australia. Most states allocated somewhere between $30 million and $50 million for mobile blackspot phone towers, with Western Australia allocating around $85 million. You can imagine that there would be lots of blackspots in Western Australia because it is a very large slice of Australia. That $85 million got them 338 towers.

South Australia contributed nothing in round 1. This is a Labor government that does not care about regional South Australia. Through the generosity of the federal government, we were allocated 11 towers—pretty ordinary. In round 2, we contributed a measly $1.5 million. Just to put this into perspective, the next lowest was Queensland, with $23.7 million, so a good $22 million shortfall there. Queensland got 144 towers. Again, through the generosity of the federal government and some hard work by our federal MPs to secure a decent number of towers, even though the state Labor government was not spending anywhere near an adequate amount, we got 31 towers.

If this South Australian government were serious about the regions, they would invest properly in them and not just in a couple of their cherry-picked areas where they may hold one regional seat or an Independent seat. I am talking about the whole of regional South Australia. You just have to drive on country roads to see some of the disgraceful deterioration that this government have allowed to take place. If you do not want to travel too far, just travel up to Port Augusta and go past Yorkeys Crossing or some of the bridge infrastructure, such as the walk bridge across Spencer Gulf, and you will see the lack of care and attention to vital infrastructure in regional South Australia.

Mr Hughes interjecting:

Mr BELL: There might be a few reasons, but underfunding by the state Labor government shows that they do not care about regions. I will finish with a very concerning trend I see occurring within the Public Service, and that is the politicisation of the South Australian Public Service. I am drawn to a comment I read a while ago now by Rod Hook, who is a former senior South Australian public servant whose roles included chief executive of the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Some credit Rod Hook's development of key infrastructure projects in Adelaide as the reason that Labor snuck back in at the last election. I think it probably had more to do with a gerrymandered electoral boundary than that but, anyway, Rod Hook was asked whether or not the South Australian Public Service had been politicised, and his answer was:

Hell yes, and at an alarming rate.

The apolitical nature of the public service is being dismantled before our very eyes. It is happening with barely a squeak, as far as I can see, from the Commissioner for Public Employment or the unions.

The fundamental premise of our system of government is that politicians are elected by the people for terms, usually three or four years. Governments are formed by the party garnering the majority support amongst those politicians. Those governments are then supported by an efficient and apolitical public service.

That at least was the public service I joined many years ago.

How sad would it be for our state if a prerequisite for a successful public sector career is for you to be encouraged to drop around to your local party sub-branch and sign up.

This follows on from some pretty serious developments that occurred around 2015 with the sacking of 11 senior executives within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. The Chief Executive of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Kym Winter-Dewhirst, a former Labor staffer, emailed staff to say he had made structural reforms—this is as quoted by InDaily—that would lead to better services with a new, nine-person management team. Most of those sacked without warning had 30 to 40 years of experience, and one executive was just one year into a five-year contract, which is extraordinary. The sacked executives were escorted out of their offices.

Appointments include Paul Flanagan, a former Labor government staffer, as the director of government communications, together with the executive director, implementation and delivery, Rik Morris, another former Labor government staffer. The latest appointment to raise the ire of the Public Service is that of Adele Young as the director of reform. Ms Young was the chief of staff of former Northern Territory Labor leader Clare Martin, an ALP strategist attributed with spearheading Labor's three Northern Territory election victories. She was also once exposed by Media Watch for using a fake name to call into an ABC radio program.

Enough said on that, but it is very concerning. I see at a local level as well that, if you are loyal to this Labor state government, you seem to progress a hell of a lot quicker than if you are not, and that is a true tragedy for our Public Service. With that, I conclude my remarks.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (16:59): I rise today to speak to the Supply Bill and indicate, of course, that the opposition does support the bill. It is simply a mechanism to allow continued payment of public servants and public services until the Appropriation Bill, or what is more commonly known as the budget bill, is passed by parliament later this year after the budget. It is an overdraft, essentially.

The amount of money that the government is looking for in 2017 is $5.9 billion, which is something of a blowout. In 2016, the appropriation was just $3.44 billion, and in 2015 the appropriation amount requested was $3.29 billion. In other words, the amount the government is looking for in its overdraft facility is increasing and it has been quite a jump since last year.

Last year's state budget was listed as a jobs budget, as was the budget in 2015. However, the fact that South Australia's unemployment rate remains the highest or the second highest in the nation, depending on which month's figures you look at, shows that the budgets and the governments have no correlation with the spin that goes with it. We have a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7 per cent, which I understand is the highest in the nation.

Most concerning of all, the unemployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds is 17.3 per cent. This is a real concern. This is the age of my children, who are still in training but will ultimately be looking for work in South Australia. Actually, a correction for Hansard: my eldest son does have a job now, but he is finishing his studies while he is working. He is fortunate that he has had the opportunity to take a job in a regional area.

It is paramount that we keep in mind in this state the primary reason that we are all here, and that is to find jobs and a future for the next generation, for our children. Unfortunately, we have got to a position in this state now where we are seeing in some parts, both in metropolitan and in regional areas, that generational unemployment has become the norm.

We need to create an environment that fosters and encourages investment. Businesses must have the confidence to invest, to reinvest or to start up. What we have seen is that the cost of doing business in this state has really put a dampener on that investment and that confidence. Business are having to deal with not only the cost but also the time that regulation and red tape consumes each and every day. These are businesses that simply want to go about and do their business, provide services, build things, make things, grow things and sell things. The regulations that are imposed upon them from above, from both state and federal governments, really need to be addressed.

In addition, we are very conscious of the costs those businesses confront. Of course, electricity has been in the news for most of the last year. We all talked much about the 28 September blackout. In fact, parts of Eyre Peninsula experienced a rather tenuous power supply in the months leading up to that event. I think what ultimately happened was that the situation on Eyre Peninsula became the canary in the coalmine for what was about to happen in the rest of the state and, in fact, over the rest of the country.

I have to think to myself that somebody must have been asleep at the wheel, otherwise we would not have got ourselves into this pickle, and I see no real resolution to that. Ultimately, the test will come next summer, which is really only six months away, when the next bout of hot weather comes and our capacity to provide electricity for our households and our businesses will surely be tested.

There is an issue with the quality of the line on Eyre Peninsula. I know ElectraNet provides the main transmission line down from Port Augusta, through Whyalla to Yadnari, and from there it branches out west to Wudinna and south to Port Lincoln. Essentially, that line is at capacity. It is probably at the end of its useful life, truth be known, but it is certainly at capacity. I know ElectraNet has done a lot of work in relation to the upgrade or duplication of that line, whichever it may be, but they really have not been able to justify any further expenditure without being able to see for themselves any added demand. It becomes a chicken and egg situation: without extra demand ElectraNet are not going to provide any more electricity and without any electricity there is not going to be any extra demand.

What is potentially a game-changer has been on the boil for the last six or eight years, and I have certainly been part of it. Last week, approvals were announced for Iron Road to progress their mining proposal. Significant conditions have been attached to those approvals—127, I believe, which is nowhere near as many as Rex Minerals had imposed upon them—but the fact that government approvals have been gained means it is a step closer.

It is a significant deposit of magnetite that has been known about for a long time. It has been known since the 1960s that iron ore in a magnetite form existed in the Warramboo district, so it was no surprise that somebody came looking once again to the landowners. I guess they had seen a number of exploration companies come and go over those five decades and had, in a way, assumed that the same situation would result; however, Iron Road has regressed significantly from that. As I said, they have gained their government approvals, but it is by no means a done deal yet.

There are significant challenges ahead for Iron Road, not the least of which is the raising of capital. The latest figure I saw just last week is that it is estimated that they will need to raise $4.8 billion, which is a lot of money when starting from scratch—and they do need to start from scratch because none of the necessary infrastructure is in place. They will have to build from scratch. They will need to develop the mine site at Warramboo.

They will need to develop a freight and infrastructure corridor, which will consist of a railway line; a roadway, I assume; an electricity line; and, importantly for all mine operations, a water pipe as well. None of that is in place, nor is an export port facility available to them, so it would be a brand-new port facility, which at this stage is being proposed for Cape Hardy, just south of Port Neill. This is not going to happen without some angst; in fact, there has been a deal of angst even getting it this far.

I was involved with the community consultative group at Warramboo. I have been to many meetings over the last half a dozen years or so; I was pleased to be part of those, but they were difficult. They involved landowners and business owners from the Warramboo district. They also involved local government and Iron Road themselves. Everybody sitting around the table knew each other well and we were all feeling the pain of this proposal and how it might impact on families and businesses that had been in this particular district sometimes for generations or since European settlement. So, there was significant interest and investment not only in the community but also in the businesses they ran.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the most difficult thing of all for everybody in business, whether it be a farming business or a business in town, has been the uncertainty that comes with a mining proposal because with these approvals the uncertainty still remains. It becomes difficult for a farmer or landowner to make a decision about a significant capital investment, for example, whether to renew a fence, invest in a new tractor or air seeder, build a new shed, or even in some cases (and I know this has been the situation) whether or not they should build a new house on their property that is their home.

If there was one thing I could do—and I know the Mining Act is likely to be up for debate in this place later this year—it would be to find a way to remove some of that uncertainty and perhaps assist landowners and farmers in their negotiations with the mining company because it is problematic at the moment. We are in uncharted waters, in the sense that, apart from Rex Minerals, which seems to have gone relatively quiet for the moment, it is the first time for a long time that we have seen significant mining proposals within the agricultural zone of South Australia. So, it becomes more sensitive, more problematic. There are more receptors, if you like, more people involved and more businesses affected.

Regarding the conditions that are imposed, many of them will be about the environmental management of the mine, and hopefully that will give the surrounding landowners some comfort that the environment they are gaining a living from, gaining production from, will remain intact. I guess after all that, what it may also do is provide the opportunity for significant investment into infrastructure.

What I am talking about is investment into electricity, which I have touched on already, and investment into water. For a long time, ever since European settlement, Eyre Peninsula has battled scarcity of water. One of the real challenges in the early days was sourcing, catching and providing enough water for the settlement. Now that the population has reached 30,000 in the electorate of Flinders, and if you add Whyalla there is another 25,000, there are over 50,000 people in the electorate of Flinders and all those people need access to utilities, particularly water.

At the moment, we are sourcing the majority of our water, probably 85 per cent of it, from the southern basins which are underground basins, underground lenses, situated west and south of Port Lincoln. It is a finite resource. It is recharged every year. Of course, that recharge is dependent upon natural rainfall, which we have not had much of this year. We are still looking for the break in the season. I might come back to that if I have time.

The supply is supplemented by the River Murray. A few years ago, SA Water extended the pipeline that went from Whyalla to Iron Knob, and they extended that onto Kimba, so we are actually hooked into the state water supply. Investment into electricity and water could occur as a result of this mine development because ultimately Iron Road will need a water supply greater than what is currently available. I understand they have identified a body of water to the east or south-east of the mine site that is saline, but it is not as salty as sea water. It is underground water, so they are looking to extract that, desalinate it and use it at the mine site.

Another issue is transport infrastructure. Theoretically, this rail freight corridor will provide rail transport for the ore, which will be processed at the plant, because it is magnetite and needs processing into a purer form to be transported by rail to the new port site at Cape Hardy. Farmers have been saying to me, and have been crying out for years, for more competitiveness in the supply chain. We are committed to exporting on Eyre Peninsula. We are too far removed for any domestic markets, those large domestic markets of the Eastern States. We are a long way away from them via road, so we are committed to export.

The majority of our export grain goes out of Port Lincoln, with another half a million tonnes also going out of Thevenard. Potentially, another port could offer that very competition that farmers have been looking for for so long. I have to say that the facility at Thevenard is looking a bit tired, and I am hoping for some investment there because it is after all the second busiest port in South Australia, exporting not just grain but gypsum, mineral sands and salt. It is averaging 2½ ships a week.

The issue with Port Lincoln now is that the city has grown and the freight task has greatly increased. Last season, Eyre Peninsula grew three million tonnes of grain, not to say they will do it again this year, but certainly the trend is upward. The production figures are upward, and with modern farming systems I have no doubt that will continue, providing adequate rain falls. A lot of the grain brought into Port Lincoln by road currently goes down Liverpool Street, the main shopping centre, on road trains.

Of late, I have been seeing some triples come down the coast—which is one of the more efficient ways to cart grain—but we are taking these road trains, both doubles and triples, through the built-up area, the main shopping precinct of Port Lincoln. All credit goes to the drivers because they manage it very well, but if the tonnage continues to increase then it becomes problematic for the town and the ability to hold that grain and ship it out of Port Lincoln.

In summary, as a result of some good seasons, the tuna quota is still being caught and other fishing quotas are being caught and the prawn industry is doing relatively well. There has been a bit of a hiccup in the oyster industry last year with Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome being discovered in Tasmania, but all those West Coast growers are now producing world-famous oysters—often colloquially known as Coffin Bay oysters. In fact, they are sourced from Denial Bay all the way around to Cowell, so a better term would probably be 'West Coast oysters'.

In the past, all those oyster growers have sourced their spat, their small oysters, from Tasmania. They grow them out in the racks, handle them a number of times and grade and shift them from one site to another, depending on the nutrient flows. It is a lot of work and it is labour intensive, but they have not been able to source that spat from Tasmania as per usual.

What has happened since is that the two existing spat production hatcheries have ramped up their systems and are looking to produce more. SARDI has been producing spat at West Beach, and there is a brand-new facility currently being built at Cowell that will come online later in the year. The shortfall is expected to be made up, but not in time for there to be significant production impact during the remaining part of this year. So, you heard it first in this place, Deputy Speaker—your oysters at Christmas time will be much more expensive and they will be much scarcer.

I noticed that SACOSS recently wrote to all MPs, and we all would have received the same letter. They were talking about the access to the internet and how regional South Australia, in particular, is much worse than the Adelaide metropolitan area in relation to access, in relation to affordability and in relation to the ability of people to use the internet. We are all in this place au fait with the internet. We all use email every day, we use our phones, we use Facebook and we access the internet every day. Why it is so critically important for equal internet access to be available in country South Australia is because of two primary state government responsibilities: health and education.

Without good, reliable and affordable internet access, the provision of those primary services in health and education are compromised, and I will give you an example. We have many smaller and remote area schools on Eyre Peninsula. Often, they are senior students studying subjects in their senior years using Open Access. The schools are not big enough to have a dedicated teacher for each and every subject. For example, a year 11 student at Calca who wants to do physics will need to do it via the internet, and they need that opportunity. At the moment, it is very difficult, it is very expensive for the schools and it is intermittent in its supply. It is a case of giving our country students and our country residents equal opportunity to those of their city counterparts.

In closing, and I will be writing to the Minister for Health on this, I visited the Ceduna Koonibba health premises a couple of weeks ago. We have a magnificent new hospital in Adelaide, which we heard will be opened later of this year, but at the Ceduna Koonibba health premises, which is in the town of Koonibba, there has been no doctor for the last 18 months. The roof leaks, there are termites in the floor, mice in the ceiling and they have shovels adjacent the doors to kill the snakes. Is that fair?

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (17:19): It is my pleasure to rise to contribute to the debate on the Supply Bill for the ensuing few months, probably five or six months, until the completion of the parliamentary budgetary process. The Supply Bill is a particular instrument to allow the functioning of government to carry on before the budget has even been brought down or debated and approved by the parliament. It is an important instrument, and it gives members of the house the opportunity to debate a range of issues regarding the way the revenues derived by the state government are expended on goods and services for the benefit of the people of South Australia.

I note that a number of my colleagues have been arguing during the whole of this debate that there are serious problems with the way taxpayers' money is expended in South Australia, particularly in regional South Australia. We have seen the winding back, the downgrading, of a lot of services provided to people who live in regional South Australia over the life of this government. It is made worse because we have seen a significant increase in the taxes imposed on those very people, and there has been a definite shift in the revenue-raising burden on regional South Australians at the same time as there has been a reduction in the amount of taxation expenditure in regional South Australia on a whole range of goods and services.

I will not go over the same ground that many of my colleagues have, but there are a couple of things I would like to highlight that make the point I have just been arguing. I noticed in recent days, in the local South Australian daily newspaper, a story about South Australia's share of drug action teams. I think something like 40 of these teams have been established throughout the nation, and only two in South Australia: one on Lower Eyre Peninsula, in the member for Flinders' electorate, and one in the Lower South-East, probably in the member for Mount Gambier's electorate. In fact, I think it is in his electorate, but it will service the wider South-East, hopefully including parts of my electorate.

The scourge of ice, as we all know, is very prevalent. Tests done by SA Water show that the use of this drug in Adelaide is the second highest of all the capitals in the nation where this testing has been done, yet there has been no move to establish a drug action team in metropolitan Adelaide. The federal minister said that money is there to be distributed amongst people who apply for it, but there seemed to be little interest from South Australia.

The minister—and I will come back to this minister because it is minister Vlahos who is involved in this—was reported in The Advertiser last week as saying that South Australia was not consulted and that is why we had not applied. 'South Australia was not consulted.' Well, somebody knew it was happening, because in both the South-East of the state and Lower Eyre Peninsula the people knew what was happening. They applied and were successful in getting grants, yet in metropolitan Adelaide, nobody seemed to bother. I think this highlights the lack of care of this government.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you need my protection, member for MacKillop?

Mr WILLIAMS: I think I am old enough and ugly enough and have been here long enough to survive—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will throw myself between you and your antagonists.

Mr WILLIAMS: —a few barbs from the member for Newland. He is best ignored, and I will continue to do that. On a daily basis, the government argues that South Australia has been unfairly treated by the commonwealth government in Canberra, the Coalition government. A glaring example of the reason South Australia appears to be unfairly treated is that we have a government that does not really care and is not doing its job. There are lots of other examples that I may have time to come back to.

Another issue that has been highlighted in the local press lately is the Department of Environment chasing an investigation into those who resurrected the Marree Man in the Far North of South Australia. I totally agree with the sentiment expressed by the opinion writers in The Advertiser: what a waste of money. I do not expect much more from the minister responsible. He has proven, over lots of issues, to be a minister who, in my opinion, does some very strange things. I would have thought that other people in the government, at the head of this government, would have seen that common sense should prevail in this matter and asked why the agency was wasting its resources on that sort of exercise, to try to chase down the people who resurrected what has become an iconic tourism attraction in the Far North of South Australia.

The last time I was in Marree, I could not believe the amount of accommodation built to support its tourism sector. The number of beds available and the number of people who flock to the town is unbelievable. They hop on a plane, fly over the area to look at the Marree Man. It would be a great pity if it were allowed to disappear literally into the dust of the Far North and no longer be something that attracts people.

Again, we read on a fairly regular basis about this government's lack of funding for the Coroner's office. This impacts a significant number of people, particularly those who have had some sort of disaster befall their family. Constituents in my electorate have experienced such circumstances over the years, where they have had to wait for months and months to tidy up loose ends after losing a loved one through unfortunate circumstances. It is an ongoing matter. Here we are, debating a bill that will allow the continuation of the government over the ensuing months. All these things highlight where the government has failed.

The funding for the drainage board in my electorate is abysmal and does not meet the cost of maintaining a very important asset to the state of South Australia. Virtually all the drainage system in the state is within the electorate of MacKillop. There is a very small portion in the neighbouring seat of Mount Gambier. It is the most important piece of agricultural infrastructure in the state, and its maintenance has been let go because the government knows that it will never win the seat of MacKillop, so it does not care. It is an incredibly important and valuable piece of infrastructure for the state. It allows the derivation of a huge agricultural income in that part of the state, and it would not occur without the effective workings of that drainage system. It is one of the things that I look forward to being corrected after a change of government, which I believe will happen in a little under 12 months' time.

Along with other things that I have argued about many times—NRM levies and emergency services levies—one matter that was raised in my electorate just recently was the transfer of public housing to community housing groups. I do not have a problem with that per se except that this government, in doing this, knows full well that it will shift an incredible cost burden onto local councils and has failed to do anything about it. The Wattle Range Council in my electorate believes that the cost impact on that council alone will be about $90,000 a year.

In my opinion, it is untenable for the state to impose those sorts of costs onto councils right across the state where public housing is being transferred to community housing groups. The state government should bite the bullet and make it a policy that, whenever public housing is transferred to a community housing group, it continues to pick up and pay the council rates on those properties. That is just a snippet of the issues where I think this government has its priorities wrong and where the sorts of services that should be provided by government to the community are not being provided.

I could talk about electricity, and I may get time to come back to that. As I go around my electorate and talk to the various communities, I believe that the biggest issues facing the average household in South Australia at the moment are electricity prices and the lack of security of electricity supply. It is a huge impost on home owners and it is probably an even bigger impost on business. All the blame for that lies at the feet of this government.

I want to spend a bit of time talking about the Oakden facility for aged mental health patients. This issue says more about this government than probably any other issue that has come to light in the now reasonably extensive time I have spent in this place. From time to time, we see issues arise where somebody has taken their eye off the ball and there has been an untoward outcome. That is putting it pretty mildly in this case. What not just frustrates me but also infuriates me and the people of South Australia is the government's response.

I know that the government does not want to see that a scalp has been achieved by the opposition in having a ministerial resignation or sacking over an incident, but I want to spend a few minutes talking about the responsibility of being a minister. The people have given us incredible powers through our parliamentary process and our democratic system. They have given this parliament the power to tax the people to provide the essential services. In giving us those powers, they have—and they have every right to have—an expectation that those spending that money do so in an efficient and effective way.

That is where the convention of ministerial responsibility has come from. It has been a give and take. The powers have been given to the parliament, and particularly to the executive government, to impose tax on the populace, and in return there is an expectation that the decision-making processes will be correct, that they will be for the benefit of the people, that the administration thereafter, in implementing those decisions, will be both efficient and effective and that the taxes raised will be spent wisely.

The only way that that trust can be maintained is when the ministers, the executive government, actually do the right thing. When they fail to do the right thing, the whole trust breaks down. It is not good enough for the government, the Premier and his ministers to say, 'We have done a wonderful job because as soon as a stuff-up was brought to our attention, we responded.' The way our democratic system works is much more complex than that. The expectation of a minister is not to be an administrator, not just to respond when something untoward has been brought to their attention. A significant part of the responsibility of a minister is to protect the interests of the public and to protect the interests of the taxpayer.

The ministers can only do that when they do not just sit and take advice from their bureaucrats from the agencies. They have to probe and probe and probe. We had minister Vlahos tell the parliament in question time today that, when the matter was raised with her by her federal colleague that there was a shortage of staff at the Oakden centre, she went to the agency and sought a briefing, and she said she got an answer back from the agency saying, 'No, everything is under control and the staffing level is okay.'

I must admit that if I had received a letter from one of my federal colleagues that pointed out that things were so bad that there was a significant risk of injury or even death, I would have done more than just ask the agency who was seemingly at fault, who was being accused of being at fault, for their response. I would have asked a bit more than that. I would have said, 'Okay, you're telling me that the staffing levels are fine. On what basis do you make that claim? How do you justify that? How do the staffing levels here compare with other similar institutions either here, in South Australia, or interstate?'

It is the minister's responsibility to get to the bottom of the issue, and here is a very clear case of the minister being given a warning light. It was not as though it was somebody out of the blue; it was one of her own Labor Party colleagues at the federal level who raised the matter on behalf of one of their constituents, and raised it in pretty stark terms, which should have sounded real alarm bells and which should have signalled to the minister that the minister had to do a little bit more than say to the agency, 'Can you draft a letter for me to sign and send back to the federal member?'

If ministers are to go through life believing that their responsibility starts and ends with basically being a clerk, getting an inquiry from a constituent, going to the agency and getting them to write an answer, putting their signature on the bottom of the letter and saying, 'The matter is closed. I've finished with it,' if that is where the level of ministerial responsibility starts and ends, God help us all and God help our democratic institution.

It means a lot more than that. That is why historically we have had the convention that when this sort of problem arises the responsible minister either does the right thing and resigns or is sacked by the Premier. It is only when those sorts of actions are taken that ministers will get to understand what their responsibilities are and will indeed pester, probe and get to the bottom of the question. It seems to me that ministers in this government have become absolutely lazy.

On numerous occasions, I have called out across the house, not just on this issue but on other issues as well, 'What do ministers in this government actually do? What do they do?' If they are not there to protect the interests of the taxpayer, of the public, what do they do? They are just a spokesperson for an agency. Who protects the community from the agency that has got it wrong? Nobody can deny that in this case the agency has got it terribly wrong and, if the minister is not the person who can get to the bottom of it after the alarm bells have been sounded, who is?

That is the fundamental of our democratic system: ministers are responsible to the parliament. The executive government is responsible to the people, and we should not have to wait four years for the people to have an opportunity to get rid of an incompetent minister. A competent Premier would have done that already. This is one of the most serious matters I have come across in almost 20 years in this place, and the way in which this government has handled it is an absolute disgrace. I can only hope and pray that from the Premier down they pay the appropriate price in March next year.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. G.G. Brock.

At 17:40 the house adjourned until Wednesday 10 May 2017 at 11:00.