Bills

Appropriation Bill 2017

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:50): I was lamenting the type of economics that the Labor government has applied here in South Australia. I suggested that their economic theory comes from la-la land. We had the Premier today in question time quoting from The Australian Institute, a report from that very leftist organisation, as if it was going to give some brilliant economic advice to the government and the people of South Australia. I was also lamenting how this government is arguing that it is spending money it taxes from viable businesses to give to not so viable businesses to support jobs growth and that that just does not work.

I remember asking a question of a minister probably 18 months ago when the government had given $2 million to one of the biggest wine companies in Australia, Treasury Wine Estates, for a project they were constructing at Tanunda on the promise that they would create 32 jobs—$2 million for 32 jobs. The due diligence was not undertaken because my question was about the fact that Treasury Wine Estates at that time had made redundant 11 full-time workers in my electorate in Coonawarra and 23 in the McLaren Vale. That is 34 jobs and a net loss of two jobs in South Australia, but they received a $2 million grant from the government.

That is the sort of nonsense this government applies to economics in this state, and that is why we have the highest rate of unemployment in the nation. This is supposedly the third jobs budget in a row. It is just not working. The Treasurer said in today's Advertiser, 'Labor will always put people first.' In their mind, they might think they are doing that. I do not know what happens in their mind, to be quite frank. They may genuinely think they are putting people first, but the reality is that they are destroying lives in South Australia because they have made such a mess of the state's economy. They are destroying families, they are destroying individuals and they are destroying people because they have made a mess of the state. There are thousands of people on the unemployment scrapheap in this state because this government does not know what it is doing.

I want to use the time I have available to canvass a couple of other issues. I want to talk about horizontal fiscal equalisation. We have had the Premier running around this state—and we all saw him when he gatecrashed Josh Frydenberg's press conference here a few months ago—claiming that South Australia was being poorly done by by our federal colleagues in Canberra, that South Australia was getting a bad deal. Then, when the federal budget was handed down, again we had minister after minister of this government claiming that South Australia was being dudded by the federal government.

I know that the Treasurer of the state must understand the principles of the financial arrangements between the state and federal governments—he must. I suspect and I would argue that he has been incompetent in his role as the Treasurer of the state, but he must understand the fundamentals of the financial arrangements between the state and federal governments. That is underpinned by this thing called horizontal fiscal equalisation.

It is set out in our constitution that the federal government has to treat all the states and territories equally. In the financial arrangement, it does this by ensuring that the government in each jurisdiction will be able to provide the same level of services to the people of that jurisdiction. There are some complicated formulas to work this out but, at the end of the day, every dollar that is given to the South Australian government to spend to provide services—irrespective of whether it is a tied grant or an untied grant and what service it is providing—if it is given to the state government from the commonwealth to be expended on the people of South Australia, it is given at the same level as it is in all the other states. That is called horizontal fiscal equalisation.

If members opposite do not understand it, I suggest they google it and look in the federal budget papers to get an understanding of it because when anybody—

Ms Digance: Can you explain it in detail now?

Mr WILLIAMS: I am. I have been, if you have been listening. It is the principle by which each state—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for MacKillop is on his feet and is therefore entitled to be heard in silence.

An honourable member: He needs more time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I think we should give him an extra minute. It serves you all right. Another minute for the member for MacKillop, please.

Mr WILLIAMS: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: He may never finish if you keep saying something.

Mr WILLIAMS: The formula that is used takes into consideration the different abilities of each state to provide services. For instance, in South Australia it is recognised that we have an older population; therefore, the cost of delivering health services would be higher in South Australia than it would be in a state with a lower population age, so our health segment of the finances that come from Canberra would be higher. On the other hand, because we have an older population we have fewer school-age students, so the amount of money we get for education might be lower than it is for other states.

The formula is set out such that each state is able to deliver the same level of services. At the end of the day, it does not matter who it is, whether it is the Premier or the Treasurer or any other senior minister, when they get up and claim that South Australia is being treated unfairly by the commonwealth government they are just simply not telling the truth. If there were any truth to that claim, I am sure that the South Australian government would be down the street to the High Court in a flash demanding that South Australia be treated equally, and it would have a very strong case.

The reality is that any time a minister or a premier makes the claim that South Australia has been dudded, they are not being honest with the people of South Australia. This is what we have this government doing in a whole range of things. It is trying to pick a fight with the federal government. The Treasurer, in his piece in The Advertiser this morning, carries on this false fight when he says, 'We are sticking up for the people of South Australia and the Liberal Party isn't. We are sticking up against the federal government. We are sticking up against the banks.'

In the run-up to the next election, this false fight is being created by the Premier and his senior ministers against anybody, particularly when they think they can convince the people of South Australia that it is somebody they should not like, somebody who should be unpopular, such as a government in Canberra that is dudding us—wrong. It is not possible, it is just not possible, for us to be dudded. In fact, we are doing very, very well out of Canberra. I think the figure in the budget is that 55 per cent of the state's revenues come from Canberra.

The figure for all the other states is considerably less than that, and I suspect that, across all the other states, the average figure is well below 50 per cent. It used to be that a few years ago it was only about 43 per cent and that South Australia's figure was 49 per cent. I am not sure what the average is in today's world—the figures I am quoting are two or three years old—but certainly about 55 per cent of revenue comes from Canberra, a much higher figure than the average across Australia, so how on earth can you argue that we have been dudded?

I strongly suspect that the South Australian government is deliberately failing to put the appropriate information to Infrastructure Australia so that we deliberately do not get grants for infrastructure funding. I strongly suspect that is the case—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: —because as soon as the federal budget comes out—

An honourable member: That is ridiculous.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am on my feet. Another minute for the member for MacKillop.

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not interject.

Mr WILLIAMS: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I repeat: I strongly suspect that South Australia deliberately fails to give the appropriate information on project proposals to Infrastructure Australia so that the argument can be made, as it was following the most recent federal budget, that South Australia has been dudded. Even if we were being dudded in infrastructure grants, at the end of the day it would be balanced out in our GST payments because that is how the horizontal fiscal equalisation process works. When all the grants are added up, each state is adjusted to make sure they are all treated similarly; if anyone has a shortfall they get it made up through the GST payments and if there is anyone who has an overpayment their GST payments are cut.

Whilst we had ministers running around saying that we have been dudded because we are not getting infrastructure grants here in South Australia, none of them owned up to the fact that in the most recent federal budget there was an additional payment of GST for the next financial year of $700 million; $700 million extra in untied grants from the commonwealth government to the South Australian government. No wonder we did not get as many infrastructure grants as we might have thought we were going to get.

As I said, I suspect the government engineered that, and they were then able to be totally disingenuous with the people of South Australia by claiming that we were being dudded. They did not own up to the fact that we received this largesse in the form of GST payments to South Australia. Any government, any minister or any premier who argues that we are being dudded either fails to understand the fundamental basics of the financial arrangements between the commonwealth and the states or is telling great big, fat porkies. Take either one. The reality is that South Australia is not and cannot be dudded.

The other matter will have to wait for another time because with the time left, a minute and a half, I will not even be able to start it. I will finish by asking, with regard to this argument about the banks and their profits: who does the Treasurer and the Premier propose is a recipient of these profits? Where do they think this money resides? As I said earlier, do they think the managing director of the bank has it under his bed and it is just a matter of stealthily slipping in there and grabbing it? The profits of the banks are assets of the shareholders, and most of the shareholders are you and I, Deputy Speaker, people like us who have superannuation funds. That is where most of these profits go, into the superannuation funds which are there to support all of us in our retirement.

For the Treasurer and the Premier to argue that they can take close to $100 million a year out of the South Australian economy and no-one will notice any difference is a nonsense. Again, it demonstrates an absolute lack of economic understanding. If you take $100 million from somebody, somebody else has to pay somewhere; it does not come out of thin air. I certainly will not be supporting this new tax.

Mr DULUK (Davenport) (16:04): I would also like to make my contribution to the Appropriation Bill and speak about some measures that are in the budget, some measures that are not in the budget and give some general reflections. First and foremost, one thing I have been banging on about in this chamber since my time in this place is the Blackwood roundabout, and I am very pleased that there is a line item to fund $3.5 million in this year's budget. I know that it will alleviate many of those traffic delays throughout my community.

The state Liberal team has been campaigning for funding to improve this roundabout for decades. We all know that it would have been completed in 2002 had the Liberal Party formed government, as the Blythewood roundabout was completed at that time. But we know that in 2002, the Labor government pulled the funding to provide further upgrades for Mitcham Hills roads. Finally, some 16 years later, they have seen the light.

I would like to take a moment to thank my predecessor, the Hon. Iain Evans, who was a strong advocate and constantly highlighted the need for investment in my community's road network, especially in the wake of the 2009 bushfire inquiry report which was released by the Natural Resources Committee (NRC). In 2009, it recommended the provision of substantial funds to improve the road corridor throughout the Mitcham Hills. That committee recommended that money be spent in the 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 budgets. Of course, for my local residents and the thousands of commuters of my community, that funding was never forthcoming.

However, not to be deterred, the state Liberal Party has remained committed to the needs of my community and continued to campaign for government funding. Last year, I moved a motion in this house to prioritise the upgrade of the Mitcham Hills corridor. In February this year I wrote to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure regarding the importance of appropriate maintenance and investment, and in particular funding the 2015 Road Management Plan for my community. That is the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure's Road Management Plan.

I wrote to the minister in February. He responded to me in April of this year. The minister noted that projects identified in the Road Management Plan, including the Blackwood roundabout, are currently unfunded and would be considered against other projects on a statewide basis. I was therefore quite surprised at this year's announcement that some funding has been allocated in this year's state budget. It is very much welcomed by my community. I thank minister Mullighan for listening to my community and my requests and finally seeing the light in that regard.

Of course, $3.5 million for the roundabout is simply not even going to address the greater needs of the community which, as I said, were first identified way back in 2009 in the NRC report. Upgrading the Blackwood roundabout is only a small investment in fixing the overall Mitcham Hills road network. Much more is needed, and the minister knows this. Last week, the minister was a panellist in a traffic forum at the Blackwood lawn bowls club. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Henk Smelter, president of the club, and Malcolm Parrott for their hospitality that evening.

I would like to thank the minister for taking the time to visit my community, my electorate, and to meet with and listen to the concerns of my constituents. I hoped hearing directly from the locals would resonate with the minister and the department, as well as on top of all the correspondence I have been sending for many years. I hope he and the government are left in no doubt that putting money into the Blackwood roundabout is only part of a greater solution that is needed.

We need investment in the whole corridor, and this is what a future Marshall Liberal government is committed to investing in: the entire Mitcham Hills road corridor, through Coromandel Valley, Craigburn Farm, Bellevue Heights, Eden Hills, Glenalta, Hawthorndene, Belair and all the way down to Mitcham. That is what we need. We need to look at, and fund correctly, what has been identified in the Road Management Plan. All that needs to be done is for the funding to be provided. We need to look at those bottlenecks that have developed at Glenalta and the Blackwood railway crossings, which feed into the main road corridor through Blackwood; the congestion and safety issues on Waite Street and Brighton Parade intersections; and what is quite important is that we provide friendly pedestrian infrastructure and bike infrastructure throughout my community.

We have to remember that Blackwood is more than just a roundabout; it is a commercial, retail and social precinct, and funding is required for that. It is all well and good for people to come in at the last minute and say, 'This is a great initiative and I am here to solve all your problems,' but my community knows that we on this side of the house have been banging on about this. They know what the issues are in their community and that we will be strongly advocating for them.

If anyone else wants to be an advocate for my community, they should match the Liberal Party's $20 million commitment and invest in the Mitcham Hills road corridor. Traffic congestion and safety concerns, as I said before, do not begin and end at the Blackwood roundabout. The Liberal Party and a future Marshall Liberal government have a commitment to properly invest in and fund an upgrade to that road network that will benefit so many commuters, residents and users of roads throughout my electorate.

Another initiative that was in this year's budget relevant to my community was the $200,000 for the construction of a dedicated pedestrian bridge within the Brownhill Creek Recreation Park. This is to be constructed alongside the existing White's Bridge and will provide safe passage across the creek for pedestrian and school groups, who are currently forced to share the bridge with vehicles. This is a bridge in Brownhill Creek that was damaged in the September 2016 storms. I certainly appreciate the work of the Department of Environment and the Mitcham council, which have worked together to assess the risks and attend to these reparation works.

This is a good little announcement in the budget and I have to thank Ron Bellchambers and the Brownhill Creek Association for their tireless work to preserve and upgrade Brownhill Creek not only for the local community but also to make it a destination for all South Australians and tourists. To that extent, in the last federal election there was a $200,000 investment in Green Army projects for the Wirraparinga Loop Trail and Brownhill Creek. That was part of a Green Army initiative and I would like to congratulate the federal member for Boothby for her advocacy on that project.

With the money for Wirraparinga and the investment in Brownhill Creek in the state budget, that will certainly go a long way towards looking at tourism and improving the heritage and education of that wonderful part of the Mitcham Hills. It is good to see all levels of government working together in that regard. Another good measure in the budget is the continuation of the Statewide Gambling Therapy Service.

We have seen $360,000 in this year's budget for the continuation of the Statewide Gambling Therapy Service. This money is in addition to the existing funding for gambling therapy services being provided by PsychMed. I am glad the money is there, but the way this funding has been treated is symptomatic of the way this whole government goes about its business: it decides something at some point in time, it then changes its mind, it cuts funding to a program and then it realises it has made the wrong decision and reinstates that program.

We have certainly seen that with Transforming Health and the hospital situation. We have seen that with the Henley Beach Police Station. The government actually cut funding to the Statewide Gambling Therapy Service, which is based out of Flinders Medical Centre. They ceased that funding back in December 2016. The service did previously receive $1.3 million annually and it lost more than half of it when it lost its contract from the government.

Of course, the government decided at the time to provide funding to a new contract partner, being PsychMed, in terms of providing a gambling service, which of course is run by Dr Quentin Black, a former Labor parliamentary candidate. Then, in this year's state budget, we see $360,000 being reapplied to the Statewide Gambling Therapy Service, which is provided through the Flinders Medical Centre.

It is good to see that money being put back into gambling services to help those people with chronic gambling, but once again it is symptomatic of this government that makes a decision one day, realises it has made the wrong decision and then tries to fix it up. The 2017-18 budget is full of examples of where the government is trying to paste over and cover up the sins of the last four or five years (dare I say 16 years) and prepare itself for a state election, which may be as soon as in the next month or two. If that is the case, bring it on.

In the state budget, there was some funding for increased train services and public transport services that will benefit the Belair line, which is very welcomed by my community. We will see increased frequency of train services on the Belair line over weekends and public holidays, which will go from the current hourly service to a half-hour service. That is certainly a very good move.

The Belair passenger service is a critical part of the public transport network's service in the Mitcham Hills area, and if we are going to deal with growing demand and population growth, which we are seeing in my community, we need to have adequate public transport. The Belair train line is certainly used by many tourists to get to the wonderful Belair National Park, and the additional weekend service will provide in assisting those tourists who come from the city up to Belair National Park. It is great for those who are mountain bikers, as they regularly use the train to get themselves up the hill and then take the popular mountain bike tracks back down.

Another part of the budget is the Fund My Neighbourhood program. We are talking about $40 million over the next two years. This program allows the community to decide what projects should be funded within their neighbourhood. It is quite a unique concept and it does raise a question about the role of local governments going forward. I understand that the LGA has expressed some concerns. There are certainly a lot more questions around the detail of this project.

Once again, the cynic in me would say that, in the lead-up to an election, the government has announced another initiative without any consultation, because they certainly have not consulted the LGA or many communities. The cynic in me says that this is a way for them to do a little bit of pork-barrelling but, if the Fund My Neighbourhood project takes off the ground, then I think there are some worthwhile projects and local communities that can be funded through this.

Women's sport facilities are receiving an extra $40 million over two years to address the barriers to female participation. Of course, this builds on the funding provided in the 2016-17 budget and takes the value of the fund to about $10 million per annum. It is important that we have modern and appropriate facilities for players, and there are enormous benefits for the community to have people participating in local sports.

Sadly, many sporting facilities have been neglected over the past 15 years. Female participation and investment in female community clubs have been neglected over that time. I strongly support this commitment in this year's state budget. Many of the local groups in my community applied for funding in the last round of sports grant funding and they await the news of their success or not in July in terms of whether they will benefit from any funding.

There is also another $20 million over the next two years for grants to sporting clubs to establish and replace artificial playing surfaces, which will improve programming for sports. New improved surfaces will encourage additional participation across a variety of sporting codes. It is another important investment in local assets, but of course this needs to be done in a methodical and on an absolutely needs-based basis. It cannot, as I think we have seen too often with some of these other funding projects, go to marginal Labor electorates.

Within my community, reserves such as Hewett Reserve, Manson Oval, Blackwood Oval and Flagstaff Hill all need investment and an injection of funds in their communities. I will continue to advocate on behalf of my community to ensure that they get their fair share of funding out of this synthetic playing surfaces grant funding.

One issue that many people in this house know I have a big association with and a lot of time for, as I know the Deputy Speaker does as well, is epilepsy. Epilepsy affects about 61,000 South Australians. The Epilepsy Centre does not receive any state government funding, and the major source of their funding is a call centre, which telemarkets lotteries and has donation campaigns. Once again, I am disappointed that the state budget did not include any new measures to provide funding to the Epilepsy Centre.

The Victorian epilepsy foundation receives about $1.2 million annually in state government funding from the Victorian government, and many South Australians living with epilepsy already visit Melbourne to receive specialist treatment that is either unavailable in our state or if they face unacceptable waiting periods. If South Australia wants to position itself as a place of medical excellence, we need to do more than just build expensive buildings on North Terrace. We also need to invest in our people and our services.

In terms of local spending in our health network, the Flinders Medical Centre is receiving a $3.5 million upgrade for two existing cold shell operating theatres to expand the number of operating theatres from 10 to 12 to accommodate the consolidation of SALHN's surgical activities. There is an investment in the neonatal unit, which is very important.

All this investment in the hospitals in SALHN, whilst all very welcome, is all very last-minute. It is all designed to prepare this government for the budget, for the election due next year. It is not me saying that; it is Ms Vickie Kaminski, the boss of SA Health, who is saying it. She revealed only last week that she found out about the abrupt about-face changes to funding arrangements across the healthcare network—at Flinders, Noarlunga and The QEH—when the budget was released. The government, the health minister and the spin doctors who work for this Labor government did not consult the CEO of SA Health about the huge capital injections into key hospitals in our community.

Whilst we certainly welcome the funding at the Flinders Medical Centre, it is incredibly disappointing that, of the $1.1 billion cash splash on health across South Australia that the government is promising to spend on health over the forward estimates, there is not a single dollar for the Repatriation General Hospital. Deputy Speaker, as you know, the hospital that you love in your community is receiving some money in this year's federal budget. The QEH is receiving money, and it is very close to the member for Lee's electorate. The Flinders Medical Centre in my community is receiving funding, and Noarlunga Hospital is receiving an upgrade.

Almost every metropolitan hospital in South Australia is receiving funding upgrades in this year's budget. I have give full credit to those local Labor members of parliament who lobbied the health minister to get funding for their hospitals, except there was no funding for the Repat. The government could find billions of dollars to invest in other hospitals, but they could not find any money to put back in the Repat.

It is not for me to question this, but I would have to look at the advocacy of the local member for where the Repat lies, the member for Waite, and of course the member for Elder, who picks up the Repat in the redistribution. Both members could not get any money to keep the Repat open. It is an absolute disgrace that every other hospital—

Ms Digance: What's your plan?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, member for Elder!

Mr DULUK: —in metropolitan Adelaide can receive money in this year's state budget except the Repat. That is an absolute disgrace for everyone in my community who uses the Repat, loves the Repat and goes there all the time. We know that the member for Elder used the Repat in her marketing campaign in the lead-up to the last election, but they cannot find any money out of this billion dollars of funding, which is going into capital works and hospitals across the forward estimates, for the Repat—not a single dollar. Forget the needs of the community, forget the almost 120,000 South Australians who signed a petition to keep it open. They cannot find a single dollar whatsoever for the Repat. That is one of the most disappointing parts of this year's state budget.

In my community, there has been a lot of scepticism about the government's billion dollar health spend. This is on the back of a long list of broken promises made by the Premier and the health minister. In the lead-up to the 2014 state election, the Premier proposed to build a new women's and children's hospital within a decade, and now it has been announced in this year's budget that there will be a women-only hospital. Labor promised to close the Repat, and it did. Since 2014, Labor has slashed its promised investment in Noarlunga Hospital by almost two-thirds.

The new RAH was promised to cost only $1.7 billion and be open in 2016. Of course, it has now cost us $2.3 billion and will not open until September this year. We know that Labor promised to redevelop The QEH in 2010 and 2014, and this is yet to be delivered. So, at five minutes to midnight, the government said it is going to pour all this money back into capital works for health, but of course we will wait to see if that will happen.

Really, if the government is serious about health policies in South Australia, it should be pouring money into prevention. That is where in the long run we will do the most amount of good in health policy: prevention. The Liberal Party has a preventative health policy with five key issues that we need to look at. We need to look at individual and community action, education, screening and vaccination, research, monitoring and evaluation, public health regulations and leadership and coordination. The future of public healthcare spending and investment is in preventative health, and it is about keeping people out of big hospitals. It is not about big, new, shiny projects in the lead-up to an election.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (16:24): I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people of Stuart on the Appropriation Bill and about this budget. The government travelled all over Adelaide in advance of the budget telling people that this was going to be a jobs budget. In fact, the Treasurer went as far as saying that last time around he fixed up the CBD and that this time around he was going to fix up the suburbs. That betrays his complete ignorance regarding the fact that there is an enormous amount of South Australia that is not in the CBD or the suburbs of Adelaide. As important as those places are, regions matter also.

He said that this was going to be a jobs budget, but then in his jobs budget his jobs target is 1 per cent. A 1 per cent target for jobs growth over the next financial year, the lowest jobs growth target in the nation, is hardly aspirational. If the government happens to achieve its jobs growth target, we will still have the highest unemployment rate in the nation, which will still be completely unacceptable. The government talks about a jobs budget, but there will not be many South Australians who get jobs as a result of this budget.

The government talks about the fact that they will have a surplus this year. They brag about the fact that they had a surplus last year, but last year the surplus was because of an asset sale, something the government said that they would never do. They promised South Australians that they would not sell assets, yet last year they sold the Motor Accident Commission. This year, they plan to prop up the surplus they plan to achieve by having a bank tax.

Much has been said about this bank tax, and it might sound nice for the government to say, 'Oh, those big bad banks, nobody likes them, they make too much money, they don't pay enough tax, etc.' I would bet that they pay all the tax that they are legally currently expected to. Whether it is the smallest stay-at-home business or one of the largest businesses in the nation, of course they should pay their tax, and I would be very surprised if the banks did not do that. The government says it wants to charge them a little bit more. Well, the government can do that if it wants to, but what the government neglects to tell people is that charging the banks a little bit more is going to flow through to charging everybody in South Australia a little bit more.

The government likes to say, 'Oh, the big bad banks, they are no good, nobody likes them, they are profit takers and they don't look after their customers and the people of South Australia in the way they should.' I know that there is some sympathy for that argument, but if that argument is true, that they are only interested in their own profits, then they absolutely will pass the tax on to their customers. If what the Treasurer and the government says about the banks is true, then the government must accept that the banks will pass the tax on to their customers.

It does not matter whether a person has a home loan or a business loan or aspires to be a first home owner with a mortgage, or whether a person is a superannuant and through their superannuation funds indirectly they have shares in banks. It does not matter who you are or how you fit into the South Australian economy, you are at one level or another almost certain to be exposed to the activities of the banks, and we know that the banks will pass this new tax on to their customers. When the government does this, they hurt all South Australians, but the government is used to hurting all South Australians.

The government ignores regional people very regularly. The government picks and chooses, particularly when it comes to elections, who they will and who they will not help. I am not saying for a second that nobody gets help from the government, but I am saying that they are very selective about who they help. It is naive of the government to try to say that the banks will not pass this on, and it is naive of the government to think that the public will not understand this issue. Everyday average mums and dads with home loans understand this issue and how exposed they are to the bank tax.

It is no coincidence that we have the highest unemployment rate in the nation and the highest electricity prices in the nation. Those two things go together because the impact of electricity prices goes directly to employment and, after more than 15 years in government, there is no debate anywhere in the community about the fact that the government's energy policies have failed. A few weeks ago, we said that the government had given South Australia the most expensive electricity in the nation. Now we say that the government has delivered South Australia the most expensive electricity in the world based on evidence provided by a Melbourne energy analyst, and that does go directly to the unemployment rate.

The government says it is a jobs budget, but they are not going to support South Australian jobs. They are going to have the lowest jobs target in the nation. They are going to continue to have the highest electricity prices in the nation, and the world now, so they are not going to help jobs at all. The government has recommitted its spending to its own energy plan in this budget, but the way that the spending is meted out over the forward estimates period shows that the bulk of the spending is coming later.

While the government has said that its battery backup will be in place by 1 December, and while the government has also said that its diesel generation will be in place by 1 December, it is very clear that the money it intends to spend on the gas generator it says that it is going to build is coming much later. While initially we were told it would be in place by this summer coming, we now know that is not case: it will be significantly later. That might be a good thing. It might actually be a good thing if the government called off entirely that component of its plan because the government announced that component of its plan on the premise that industry would not deliver any new generation.

The Treasurer told everybody that he thought it was important to spend $360 million of taxpayers' money on a new gas-fired generator because industry would not do that. Since then, industry has confirmed that it will build a new gas-fired generator at Torrens Island, and there are at least two more proposals on the drawing board—one near Mannum and one near Mallala. The premise upon which the government has said that it would build this generator now no longer exists, and that may well be why the government has pushed the spending so far back over the forward estimates. Like so many other things that the government has said it will spend money on, it may well in the background have absolutely no intention of doing that whatsoever.

One of the most concerning aspects of this budget with regard to the government's energy plan is that the government plans for the share of renewable energy in South Australia to reduce next year compared with the financial year that has just finished. So, the government has been punishing all South Australians with outrageously high electricity prices, with job losses, with all sorts of pain throughout the economy, with blackouts, and the government has said that it was all necessary so that it would lead to a world of lower emissions.

Whether that argument is sensible or not, let's just put that aside for a second, but on page 178 of Volume 3, Budget Paper 4, it makes it very clear that the 2016-17 target for a percentage of renewable energy generated in South Australia is 55.1 per cent, that the 2016-17 estimated result is 48.9-per cent and that the 2017-18 target is 43.5 per cent. So the government, by its own admission, is not going to achieve the emissions target that it said it would achieve, and that has been the core reason for the government going down this path that has penalised South Australians so much. Their energy plan was in chaos before, but it is in even worse condition now.

In regard to mining, it is very clear that, while the government has announced some new money for the PACE program, its financial commitment to the PACE program is reduced by $5 million compared with what it was. The government, again, says, 'Here's an announcement: brand-new funding,' and there is lots of hoo-ha about that, but the reality is that the extension of the program the government has announced is $5 million less than the existing program that was in place.

We hear the Treasurer say very regularly that that is one of the foundations of the government's support for the mining industry, but it is reducing. Also the FTEs in the mineral resources agency is reducing: 2016-17, 165 FTEs budgeted for; 2016-17 estimated result, 155; and the 2017-18 budget, 150. So the government's support for the mining industry is certainly diminishing also.

Let me now turn to regions. On the very last page of the budget summary booklet is where the government has put the regions. When you look at the summary page and you look everywhere else in the budget, there is not one hospital upgrade in regional South Australia, there is not one school upgrade in regional South Australia and there is not one road upgrade in regional South Australia in this budget. On radio, the Treasurer's answer to that was, 'That's okay because the new Royal Adelaide Hospital will have country patients in it.'

Of course that is true. Of course there will be people who potentially will need heart surgery or another medical service that we in regional South Australia would not expect to be delivered in regional South Australia, but for the government and the Treasurer to say, 'Look, don't worry. We are not going to upgrade any hospital, any school or any road in regional South Australia and it's okay because country people can come to the Royal Adelaide Hospital,' shows either ignorance or disdain for the people of regional South Australia.

This is not a jobs budget. By the government's own admission, its target is the lowest in the nation. If the government even achieves what it says it will, we will continue to have the highest unemployment in the nation, and if the government were to stop trying to pick off easy targets with taxes, which will flow through to the rest of the economy, and if the government looked after people in regional South Australia, where some of the greatest wealth generation opportunities exist, then they would have a chance of actually creating more jobs across the state.

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) (16:37): I rise to speak on this most important budget bill, not only as the minister for Investment and Trade, Defence Industries and Small Business but also as an Independent MP in the house, a member of neither major political party.

I must say that the first concern I have is not about the substance of the opposition's plans to block the budget, but about the fact that they have decided to do so. I have participated in numerous party room discussions on whether this should occur, and when I was leader of the Liberal Party I sought advice from then shadow attorney-general, Rob Lawson, on the very matter, at the request of members. It is very serious to block a government from governing.

It is a poison that has infected Canberra, where upper houses feel they can second-guess the government of the day by cherrypicking its budget to pieces and not allowing it. The Abbott opposition did it to the Rudd and Gillard governments, and then the minute the government changed the federal Labor government has done exactly the same thing to the Abbott and Turnbull governments. The net result is chaos for Australians, for Australian workers and for Australian businesses. We can see plenty of that coming out of Canberra at the moment. That poison, at the instigation of those opposite, is now threatening to spread like a cancer through South Australia.

One of the reasons why I am an Independent member is that I finally became fed up with what I perceived to be the damage the major political parties were doing to our political system. They can be very, very good and they can also be very, very poorly behaved. The object of the exercise starts to become getting into government at all costs and holding onto power, rather than doing what is best for the people.

I remember John Howard, a man whom I respect enormously, once saying to me that when the Hawke and Keating governments took some bold steps—privatising Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, deregulating the banking system, floating the dollar—they were the right things to do for Australia. It was good policy, and therefore the then Coalition opposition did not oppose them: they let those things go through. In so doing, to a degree they made the Hawke and Keating legacy, but John Howard and his colleagues in opposition at the time deserve much of the credit. They put Australia first.

I do not see much of that in the opposition's decision to attempt to block the government's budget, and I fear that both major parties—and I am speaking as an Independent MP—will do the same thing to each other. I fear, on listening to the leader's reply to the budget, that should by chance those opposite form government in March next year I know exactly what a Labor opposition will now do. You have opened a can of worms. You will never cut the taxes you claim you want to cut, and you will never make the savings you claim you want to make, and the reason is that you have open-licensed a future Labor opposition to do to you exactly what you propose to do to them, which is to destroy and cherrypick every budget you bring forward.

There will be a cacophony of Independents and minor parties in the upper house who will be happy to be part of that process. In so doing, what oppositions do is they invite those Independents in the upper house to make mayhem with the government's budget and deliver the state to a state of chaos and confusion. That is not good for South Australia. It is not good for South Australian jobs. It is not good for South Australian workers. What I would like to see is a bit more bipartisanship.

By all means criticise the government, by all means say whatever you like about their budget, but let the people of South Australia judge the government on its budget on election day. Do not hamstring the government from governing through attempting to oppose the passage of this bill. I think that it is a mistake, and I think that wiser heads opposite should have prevented it from happening; there are other ways to deal with it. I will put that to the side for a moment, but I will be returning to it at a later time because it cuts to the point that there needs to be upper house reform.

Although I agree with some of what Tony Abbott says and I disagree with a lot, one thing that I do agree with him on is that it is time for us as a nation to consider upper house reforms in both the Senate and the Legislative Council. I personally think that the idea of joint sittings of both houses to resolve deadlocks is a much better device than the one we have at the moment, and that would certainly put an end to efforts to try to block governments from governing. I do not think it is the right thing to do today, and I would not think it was the right thing to do if roles were reversed and we had a Liberal government. It is just not good for South Australia.

Having made that point, let me get back to the budget itself and its substance. Can I unreservedly congratulate the Treasurer on delivering what I think is a commendable budget in the circumstances that the state finds itself in. You can quibble over how surpluses have been achieved, but they have been achieved, to the Treasurer's great credit. You can quibble over how he has now chosen to recommend that those surpluses and those savings be expended, but I would say that it is common sense to everyone in this chamber. It is a pre-election year; it is the fourth year in the cycle. It is time to be investing in jobs and in investment. That is what the budget is doing. It is not a time to be making cuts.

Certainly, the position the state finds itself in as a consequence of the Coalition's decision, with the full support of those opposite it seems, to close the automotive industry is that we simply have little choice other than to help stimulate small business and growth. As the Minister for Small Business, I am looking at the 140,000 small businesses and the 250,000 workers who work for them. What this budget is doing is moving money from big business to small business. The device that has been used to raise new revenue is the banking tax, and that is the issue that everyone is focusing on.

I want to draw attention for a moment to the very good way the money from the banking tax is being spent. It is not only the $200 million jobs package that the Treasurer spoke of, it is payroll tax cuts, it is a host of grants to small businesses, it is an array of specific provisions and measures over a period of time that will help small businesses thrive and grow. However, it cannot be achieved without some revenue measures.

Today, the Leader of the Opposition, remarkably, pointed to a page in the budget papers and said, 'I know what's wrong here. Tax revenues have fallen short.' In the very next breath, he said, 'And the outrageous thing that has occurred is that the government has developed a new tax measure to cover that shortfall.' I would have thought that was a perfect contradiction in terms and a statement of the blindingly obvious: if revenues have fallen short, of course you will look at a new revenue measure, and that is exactly what the Treasurer has done.

I want to get to the banking tax because I think it is a very important issue. I remember that the American poet Robert Frost summed up the business of banking rather well when he said, 'A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.' It comes as no surprise that, when asked to pay a fair share of the tax regime that applies to business, the banks have acted with well-funded outrage; using their shareholders' funds, they are running a campaign.

It is not the banking tax being proposed by the government that is threatening the state as a destination for investment and prosperity; it is the campaign the banks are running. If they had more prudently argued that a floor be put under this rate and, should other states adopt it, that it be agreed to at COAG as a locked-in measure that could not unpredictably grow further without referral back to Canberra, if they sought to contain it and not run this campaign to demolish South Australia in an effort to intimidate other states from doing the same thing—which, by the way, I think will fail—the damage to South Australia would not be as rampant as it will be if the banks continue this campaign. One knock on the Liberal Party leader's door by a bank CEO, who earns more than $5 million a year, and the Leader of the Opposition is ready trash the entire budget, break convention and create instability.

The banks do pay tax, but research shows they pay a few per cent less than the statutory company rate of 30 per cent. A 2014 report by the Tax Justice Network Australia, in consultation with corporate tax expert Dr Roman Lanis of the University of Technology Sydney, shows that aggressive tax minimisation techniques by the big four banks place them sixth, seventh, 10^th and 19^th on the list of the 23 top tax minimisers in the ASX 200. The report shows that they pay around 27 to 28 per cent, saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Today, the independent think tank The Australia Institute put it into a similar perspective when it ranked the profits of Australian banks with similar economies and the taxes paid by banks around the world. The big five banks are very profitable. The most recent figures show that they earned before-tax profits of $44 billion in a single year and that their chief executives earn a combined $45 million a year. Australian banks are the most profitable in the world. Bank profits as a percentage of GDP are 2½ times larger than those in the United States and three times larger than those in the United Kingdom—and it is governments and taxpayers that underpin much of their stability.

Governments define and monitor prudential requirements to make sure that historical failures are not repeated in times of crisis such as the recent GFC, when it was government that stepped in and guaranteed the banks, the South Australian taxpayers and their compatriots across the country who saved the banks. We now have the banks responding, in this time, by threatening South Australia and by misrepresenting the truth, in my opinion. Talk to farmers who tried to endure the 1990s and talk to investors who were led up the garden path by the Commonwealth Bank's financial advisers in 2008, leading to a Senate inquiry that reported in 2014 that the bank faced a royal commission to investigate fraud, forgery and allegations of a cover-up inside its financial planning arm. Thousands of Australians lost their life savings as a result of allegedly shoddy financial advice given to them by planners of this country's biggest bank.

In South Australia 18 months ago, what did Westpac, the owner of Bank SA, do to its customers? Only eight days after announcing a net profit of $8 billion, Westpac said it was closing 20 banks in rural South Australia: Mount Compass, Morphett Vale, Lameroo, Booleroo Centre, Tintinara, Gladstone, Meningie, Riverton, Streaky Bay, Burra, Eudunda, Penola, Wallaroo, Balaklava, Mount Pleasant, Robe, Yorketown, Cleve, Crystal Brook and Bordertown. Almost every one of those centres sits in a Liberal seat, and what are they doing here today? Not standing up for the regions, not standing up for banking services for them, more than happy to see an end to it.

Last night, I watched ABC News which ran a report on artificial intelligence, anticipating that the banks would shed a further 20,000 jobs across the country in the coming decade as machines take over. We are likely to have a Bank SA in the future of one man and a dog, and the dog will be there to make sure the man does not touch the machine, such will it be and so automated will we have become. By the way, it is not Bank SA, Mr Nick Reade. It is 'Bank New South Wales'. Bank SA is a fully owned subsidiary of Westpac, trading as Bank SA. It is not Bank SA. It is 'Bank New South Wales'. Let there be no doubt: these banks are run from the Eastern States. We are treated like a place to be raped and pillaged, profits pulled out, costs cut, and then there are a few crumbs on the table at charity events to try to cover over the gashes.

I am afraid my patience has worn thin. I must say I hate new taxes at the best of times. I always prefer to see costs cut. However, seeing the reaction of the banks to this tax has really firmed my position that they are wrong, that the government is right and that this matter must proceed through the parliament, as I think it will. I think those opposite have started a journey they will be unable to complete, but we will see where this takes us.

The budget seeks to continue the task of creating new opportunities and new jobs as we shift from the Playford era of manufacturing and protectionism into a new era. I am responsible for Investment Attraction SA. Far from being a poor place to invest, in 18 months, we have pulled in $1.1 billion and created nearly 5,800 jobs. I have a long list of companies still waiting to come here to invest. We have significant competitive advantages over New South Wales, Victoria and other states, and companies can see that. They are happy to come here, and the banks are wrong to suggest that they will not come. They are also wrong to suggest that any levy or tax on the banks will act as a disincentive. It will not. They are trying to link the dots to the tax and companies' preparedness to invest in South Australia. It is simply a flawed argument.

On exports, South Australia is doing better than ever, with $15.12 billion in the 12 months to March 2017, according to official ABS figures (chain volume)—the only figure the ABS recommends being reliably used, yet the Leader of the Opposition got up here and repeated the fake news of the shadow minister for trade that it is $11 billion. They cannot even read the ABS figures. Listening to the leader's contribution today, it sounded like a year 9 economics paper. He thinks that by going out there and cutting taxes in March next year, if he is elected, that by June there will be 100,000 jobs created.

It seems as if he has read a year 9 or 10 economics book and that if he pulls this lever, a door will open and all this popcorn will flow out and fill the bucket. It just does not work that way. You have to provide some substance around your claims. What taxes will you cut? How much will you cut them? Just explain to people how that will create more jobs instantaneously. It will not. It is the same with exports. What are they going to do? Quadruple exports in 12 months? I can tell you we have some very good people working on it and most of them are in the private sector. It will not be happening in 12 months. It is a long hard journey. It requires detailed work. I can tell you I have been in there with them trying to help them grow their exports, with some success, and it does not happen overnight.

You need to understand the ABS figures, you need to understand how this works. The latest figures show an 11 per cent increase in services exports. The national rate was 9 per cent. We are competing above our weight. The number of South Australian exporters was up to nearly 2,600 (8.6 per cent). The national rate is 5.4 per cent. That is 72,000 meals on the table. We are doing better than many of our fellow states in this regard.

Let me make a few final points, and I think these are very serious points. I have raised the point about whether there should be a royal commission into the banks, and I am forming the view that there should be. This has been put on hold at the moment. I think other states will pick up this bank tax. Given the way they have behaved in South Australia and given many of the concerns that will now be profiled week after week about the banks' behaviour, I am forming the view that there should be a royal commission.

I think this should go to COAG. I think the states should unite and ask the commonwealth government to have one. I think transparency and sunlight are the best disinfectant. Since members opposite are so inclined towards open hearings, perhaps we can have daily commentary from the media on that, because I think many people will be shocked when they find out what the banks have been doing.

The second thing I would like to say, controversial though it may be—and I am speaking as an Independent member—is that I would think the state government is the biggest customer of the Commonwealth Bank. This is one of the banks that has been advertising South Australia down the gurgler in the last week or two. This is one of the banks that is now sledging this state, their customers and their employees. Frankly, I will be raising myself in cabinet the question about whether the Commonwealth Bank should continue to be the banker for the state government or whether another bank, like the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, should be the government's bank of choice. I think this is something that the government party needs to discuss.

If you want to sledge the South Australian government and sledge us, I think we need to send a very clear message to the big banks that we do not want to bank with them. We might also send that message to our schools, our hospitals, the businesses with whom we deal and our partners in business. If the big four banks have no confidence in South Australia, let's go to the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank or to one of the other options we have and let's move the billions of dollars of state government business.

The next thing I would say is that there may need to be a public campaign to encourage people towards the alternatives, because they are many. There are many, many banks that are not affected by this levy—it is only the big four)—such as Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Beyond Bank (formerly Community CPS), Members Equity Bank, Suncorp Bank, HSBC, Credit Union SA, Police Credit Union, People's Choice Credit Union, and there are others. During the GFC, the big banks swallowed the little banks. They have created what many would regard as the beginning of an oligopoly and, frankly, it is time to help the little guys.

In conclusion, I am extraordinarily disappointed by the behaviour of the major banks sledging the state of which I am so proud and talking us down. I am equally disappointed in the opposition for being surrogates for them. Frankly, they should be ashamed of themselves. It is a bad day for democracy in South Australia that an opposition would seek to block a government's budget; it will create mayhem for years to come.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (16:47): In speaking on the Appropriation Bill, I want to start with a report that has just come online from The Australian, which states:

The chairman of Australia's biggest independent brewer, Glenn Cooper, is worried about the rising tide of resentment and even great dislike by the South Australian government towards small business, private businesses and publicly owned businesses…

I think that wraps it up. I think that really does tell the story about the difference between the Labor Party in this state and the Liberal Party in this state. The facts are that we are the party of jobs, we are the party of small business and we are the party of enterprise. You just need to look at those who make up our parliamentary team, the experiences they bring to the parliament and the experiences they had before they entered the parliament. Many of them had their own businesses prior to entering the parliament and many of them were employers themselves.

I was one of them, of course. I was a humble apprentice from Salisbury who completed an apprenticeship and started my own business at age 21. The free enterprise system is a great thing; it is a terrific thing for every single South Australian. The fact is that here in Australia it is very accessible. As I say to the school tours that I take through Parliament House, our system of democracy is also very accessible. I would have to say that it is probably one of the most accessible in the world. What this tax does, of course, is put an enormous threat on the accessibility of people entering into business from very humble backgrounds. It increases costs and gives South Australia an unfair hurdle.

Every South Australian business will have an extra hurdle to get over to start a business in South Australia, and we do not need hurdles in South Australia. We need help to get business cracking in South Australia. The biggest business in this state is the government close up, and that is not a healthy position to be in for rises in standard of living, job opportunities and the encouragement of new businesses and entrepreneurs to start from scratch.

I agree with Dr Cooper: this government is anti-business. We even have a Premier who actually believes that there is this thing called a business class. I do not know if that is the same sort of thing as being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. I do not know what happened to my silver spoon; my mother must have left it on the bedside cabinet at Lyell McEwin Hospital when I was born. It is just outrageous language that the Premier has used. He is blaming others for the position that he has left South Australia in.

I agree with the Premier when he says that South Australia has many things going for it and that it is a great place to live. Despite all that, and despite all the things that South Australia has going for it, we are bouncing on the bottom. There was a time when Tasmania held the crown for having the worst economic outcomes in the country and the highest unemployment in the country. South Australia has, under Premier Weatherill, now taken that crown. It is an extraordinary situation after 16 years of Labor.

This was promised to be a jobs budget. I can remember the jobs budget of 2010. The budget was delivered after the government's announcement in February of that year that they were going to create 100,000 jobs in six years. I can remember the ads on TV: we saw cranes in the sky and they were putting up big letters that spelt 'jobs' right across the TV screen. I think that is the memory I have of the Labor Party's campaign—100,000 jobs in six years. We ended up with fewer than 8,000 and many of them were part-time jobs. I came across the first use of this government's term 'transitioning the economy' back in about 2005. This government has been transitioning the economy for 12 years.

The only transition that South Australians have witnessed under this government is a transition from secure, full-time work to casualisation and part-time work. Over 150,000 South Australians who want to work do not work at all or they want to work more. They do not have the opportunity to do that, and that has a massive impact on the economy and the ability for people to spend money in the economy and generate jobs themselves through their own consumption. It is an extraordinary situation. How long does it take for a transition to start to occur? Nobody thought for one minute, when this government started talking about a transitioning economy, that the transition would mean fewer full-time jobs and more people working casually in South Australia.

I also want to make some observations about the budget. I might start with the local government portfolio and one of the targets that this minister has set in the area of local government. He wants to progress the review of the code of conduct for elected members and council employees. That code of conduct is not very old, and I agree with him that it needs to be reviewed. It is a nonsense.

We had a situation in Unley just recently where there were plans to turn the village green in and around the Unley council offices. Homes were to be converted into community places and the grass area was to be turned into a development site. Some bureaucrats within the council decided it was about time they had some new offices. They said, 'Why don't we do a deal with the developer? Why don't we let them come in and put up six storeys, knock down our 1960s building and put up six storeys? They can sell some apartments, some office space, and we'll take some of the space and we'll get that all done for free.' It needed a massive change in the DAP in order to do that. There is no doubt that it caused absolute outrage in the community because it was the end of a significant part of public space right in the centre of Unley.

What was extraordinary about that was that two councillors, who were very passionate about wanting to vote to stop this from happening, were given legal advice by the council that they had to declare that they had a perceived conflict of interest and that they were not able to vote on the issue. The perceived conflict of interest was that they lived on the other side of Unley Road, 200 to 300 metres from the site and that their homes may or may not increase or decrease in value because of the decision the council may have made in regard to the DPA. What an absolutely ridiculous situation those councils are in.

We have had other situations when the Adelaide city council could not get a quorum because of this perceived conflict of interest that the councillors felt they had to cover themselves for because of the government's poor writing of the code of conduct. I support that. I do not trust this government to get it right. It failed enormously in the first instance. It is even a grey area that if you campaigned on a particular issue at a local government election, and then you continued that campaign after you were elected to get that outcome for your constituents, you could be in breach of the code of conduct because you are supposed to be making a decision on the quality and information made available to you at the council debate.

You cannot discuss it with other councillors beforehand, and you cannot discuss it with your constituents beforehand to give them a view on how you feel about this matter. You have to make up your mind after you have been enlightened, if you like, by the council debate. That has crippled local government, and I think it is part of the reason we are seeing many of our local governments out of control.

Onkaparinga is an example, with their outrageous payment of over $6,000 towards golf membership. I think it was an application for golf membership at Kooyonga; it was an extraordinary amount of money. Yes, the CEO has agreed in another secret meeting to pay back that money, but the minutes of that meeting will not be made available until 2027. Here we have a guy who is on about $340,000 a year, who has worked out a payment plan for $6,800 that could be 10 years long. It is just an extraordinary situation, and the people on Onkaparinga are not allowed to know about it.

I am pleased to see that there is money in the budget for the Gawler rail line, but it is only to Salisbury. I want to remind the house that, on Tuesday 22 October 2013—and this was an election promise—the government stated that it was going to electrify the rail to Salisbury and that it would be completed by the end of 2015. This was a press release that has the Premier as the minister for state development and the member for West Torrens as the minister for transport and infrastructure. Their names are on this, and they said that this project would be finished by the end of 2015, but of course it never made the budget. There is $60 million to be spent this year in the 2017-18 budget, but that does not mean that it is going to be spent because I want to remind members what happened the last time they were spending money on the Gawler rail line. Do not take my word: this is what the Auditor-General said in his report in 2014:

The Gawler commuter rail line joins the regional city of Gawler to the Adelaide CBD.

In May 2009 the Commonwealth Government committed funding of $293.5 million to upgrade rail track and certain stations, and the electrification of the Gawler line.

The Auditor-General then goes on to say that in June 2012 the commonwealth Labor government, and I think it was prime minister Gillard at that time, advised the department:

…to cease expenditure of Commonwealth funds on the project following the SA Government's decision in May 2012 [and I think the member for Playford, the now health minister was the treasurer at that time] to suspend the project.

In October of that year, the commonwealth government requested that the unspent funds be returned to the commonwealth, and the commonwealth government received that money later that year with interest, as the state government had to pass on interest as well. The department returned that unspent funding in April 2013, so it took them a little while to return it.

Then in June 2014, the state government announced a restart of the project from Adelaide to Salisbury—and that was after the election, after promising it before the election—and that it would commence in 2017-18, but before the election they said it would be finished by the end of 2015; I want to remind members of that. In the 2013-14 budget, the department assessed that expenditure incurred to date on the project totalled $50 million. The Auditor-General went on to then assess that his review had:

…identified a write-down of expenditure totalling $46.6 million. The department assessed that costs totalling $28.6 million incurred for the project between Salisbury and Gawler were deemed to be obsolete—

in other words, wasted—

or are not likely to provide any future economic benefit. Further, the Department determined that given that the project is planned to recommence in 2017-18, a considerable portion of design, scoping, project supervision, tendering and mobilisation costs for the Adelaide to Salisbury section of the line totalling $18 million were deemed to be obsolete—

again, wasted—

and are likely to be in the most part reincurred when the project recommences.

You can see that just because it is in the budget does not mean it is going to happen. It has been in the budget before, it has been an election announcement before and it is still not there.

I notice that the budget also says that an estimated amount of $9 million has been spent for additional tram purchases and the extended tramline, and that is the 150 to 250 metres heading north from North Terrace, and the $9 million we suspect is for the 10-year-old second-hand trams. We know that tender documents went out earlier in the year for someone to get those trams from Spain. Just so that members understand the history here, those trams were purchased by the Madrid transport equivalent to our Adelaide Metro in 2007-08 with a view to continuing to expand the train system in Madrid, but they ran out of money. They stopped it. Those trams were no longer needed, and they have been sitting there waiting for someone to come along and buy them.

It is an extraordinary situation where we are actually paying more for second-hand trams that are 10 years old than you can pay for the latest technology of trams here in South Australia. Why are they doing that? Because they want to meet a political time line. It is how we ended up with the narrowest trams on the widest tram tracks in the world in the middle of Adelaide—because they were what they could get and have running up and down the Glenelg line before the 2006 election. They should have looked at what was happening in other states.

If you look at the new trams in Melbourne, and the new trams in Sydney in particular, they are putting in from scratch new trams that are wide bodied and you can get many more people on them. Anybody who uses that Glenelg tram is very frustrated at how quickly they become full and 'squeezy', whereas a wider bodied tram on those wide tracks would make the journey much more comfortable. Of course, if we see more population density on that route, we will see even more of that happening, and the solution there is to run more trams.

Of course, until we have grade separation along that tramline, we will be in a situation where there will be more congested traffic in the south-western suburbs of Adelaide. Those are a couple of points I wanted to raise while I had some time in the budget process. I finish by mentioning how disappointing it was that this government only sent a draft of the fourth leg of the South Road project from Pym Street to Regency Road only a week or two before the federal budget was printed and then complained that there was no money in the federal budget for the north-south corridor when the federal government only received a draft two weeks before the budget was printed.

What is interesting in that draft is that it states that no money will be required until January 2019, so this government is not even prepared to spend any money for another 18 months, yet it blames the feds for work coming to a standstill on the north-south corridor after the current work is finished next year.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (17:18): I am very proud of the government for putting together this budget and presenting it to parliament. It is clear that this is a budget that puts the people of South Australia first. It is clear that this budget will benefit the entire community and that this budget will improve the lives of South Australians both now and into the future.

The budget focuses on the core values of this government—jobs, health, education and community. It will give access to better services that the community rely on every day and services that make a difference in the quality of lives of the people of South Australia. It will give people jobs during this challenging period of economic transition, and it will lay the foundation for jobs in an economy built for the future.

People are at their most vulnerable when they are sick. That is when they need their friends and family to be there for them, it is when they need their community and it is when they need health care of the highest quality. Our new Royal Adelaide Hospital is the cornerstone of reforms to this state's health care that will ensure we have world-class facilities available for our community. As you would expect from this government, we are investing to ensure that everyone has access to this high level of care.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital continues to be a vital facility for many. It will provide inpatient, outpatient, emergency and mental health services to a population of more than 250,000 people living primarily in Adelaide's western suburbs. It has a very proud history, opening in 1954 first and only as a maternity hospital and then with general services from 1959, and since then it has built a reputation of providing excellent clinical care, teaching and research.

This government recognises the importance of such institutions, and since 2002 has invested $136 million in the redevelopment of The QEH. This has included new inpatient facilities, a mental health facility for older patients, a new renal dialysis unit, modern haematology and oncology services and a new research building and multistorey car park. I am very pleased that because of this budget this investment will continue. As part of a new $250 million investment, a larger new state-of-the-art emergency department, operating theatre and day surgery suite will be built at this hospital.

This budget will fund new outpatient and medical imaging services, and the state's most advanced brain and spinal injury rehabilitation services will be established at The QEH. This is a specialisation that can make a real difference to the lives of people who have suffered severe setbacks. I am very pleased that cardiac, respiratory and cancer services will remain at this hospital also for the members of our community who need them the most. These services will make a crucial difference to people's lives.

This investment will have broader benefits for our community as well—this investment in the continuing redevelopment of The QEH will bring jobs. This is why this budget is one for the people of our state. This government understands the role it must play in supporting our community during this transition period. As we come closer to the closure of the automotive industry, and can rely less and less on the industries of the past, we must build opportunity for the future. The budget's new roads, rail, health and education facilities will offer opportunity for construction jobs and work in supporting industries.

It is estimated that the total infrastructure investment over four years will support 5,700 jobs on average per year. Furthermore, this government will support businesses that support young South Australians to develop careers. Job accelerator grants will increase by $5,000, which increases the benefit for eligible businesses to $15,000 for each new apprentice and trainee hired. Since the scheme was introduced as part of last year's budget, almost 10,000 positions have been registered. This is a great incentive for businesses to hire either young South Australians or South Australians changing careers.

In addition to providing jobs, infrastructure investment is an investment in the future of our state. Businesses need transport links to be as close as possible to their markets. They need their staff to be able to easily and quickly get to work and people need roads and public transport to reach the services they need. Planning for and building this type of strategic infrastructure is what this government has done and will continue to do for this state. This is the role of government. We must work with our community, our people, organisations and businesses to identify opportunity and guide the development of this state to maximise the potential benefit.

I am also delighted that next year work will start on a new rail line to Port Adelaide. This will add to the momentum building in this fantastic part of our state. This is part of the government's commitment to investment in South Australia and investment in public transport. We have seen growth recently, but we want to attract more residents, businesses and tourists to the Port. It is an area so rich in character and with so much to offer, and it is very exciting to watch this happen. It is also good news for my constituents, who will benefit from improved access to public transport and local businesses will benefit from more visitors coming to the Port.

This budget also continues on our promise to invest in education for South Australians. Education will have a significant role in the future prosperity of this state. Education changes lives for individuals and it changes the quality of life experienced by entire communities. I never hear anyone argue against this. However, as every single member of this house knows well, we do hear arguments about funding education. There are those in the federal government who are claiming victory—indeed, I believe I heard the Leader of the Opposition similarly claim victory—for passing new legislation that will deprive South Australian children of the high-quality education they so desperately need.

The education legislation the federal government has pushed through—it seems with the support of the opposition party in South Australia—will disadvantage our children. How can I so confidently say this? Why should every parent, carer and all with an interest in the future of our children take heed of this deal and demand more from their representatives in Canberra? It is because this federal government is walking away from a deal to fund schools to a level that all governments agreed was needed.

It is walking away from providing the funding it agreed was needed to provide a quality education. While the opposition spoke of this being simply a Labor opposition commitment in Canberra, indeed it was an agreement that was signed between two levels of government, the state government and the federal government, and the federal government has reneged. Surely it is obvious to everyone that this action will have consequences. It will not have consequences for the politicians in Canberra who made the deal: the consequences will be for our children in South Australia.

Our schools in each of the three sectors in the next two years alone will lose $200 million as a result of this announcement. It means that they will have fewer teachers, fewer support officers and fewer resources at the time in their lives when they need it most, fewer than it had been agreed they needed for a quality education. This will deprive our children who are in reception right now and need help learning to read and to write, our children entering high school who need help with maths or science and those in their final years who need to set themselves up for going to university, TAFE, getting an apprenticeship or a job.

It is these children and young people who need these resources, and this welching on a signed agreement between governments will affect them. This state government can see the value of investing in education. This state government is committed to ensuring that our children and our state have a future. Since 2002, we have invested more than $2.2 billion in education infrastructure in South Australia, and this budget builds on and continues this commitment. In last year's budget, we announced $500 million for STEM facilities across government and non-government schools. These are the facilities that students will use to learn about the fields that will be so crucial for their futures.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to attend the opening of the first of the STEM laboratories in government schools at Brompton Primary School. These really are the classrooms of the future. They give primary school children, in this case, the facilities that they need to collaborate in small groups and work on problems in areas such as coding, robotics and design. Science, technology, engineering and maths are fields that will all be part of future industries, whether that is immediately obvious or not, and these skills will be fundamental in many of our growing sectors, such as advanced manufacturing and defence. Our students need to start building their knowledge in these areas as soon as possible.

Earlier this term, I had the pleasure of visiting an exhibition put on by primary school students who have been trialling a 3D printer program. This technology is giving these students the opportunity to design, build and test products from scratch. There is an element of entrepreneurialism included in determining what products they will produce and how they will market them. It is teaching them that the future of manufacturing is limited only by their imagination. It was amazing to see how quickly and completely these students, some as young as year 1, were embracing this technology and learning how to use it. This is what we need more of, and this is the type of difference resources can make.

I am very pleased by the investment in this budget in two new schools for South Australia. Adelaide's growing northern and southern suburbs will be home to two new birth to 12 schools for 1,500 students each. This new capacity in our public education system will give these students access to the most modern facilities. These schools will give students the opportunity to develop the capabilities that will get them the jobs or the entrepreneurial opportunities of the future. This adds to the investment in education infrastructure this government has made in the growing northern and southern suburbs of more than $500 million since 2002.

These new schools, likely to be located in the Munno Para and Sellicks-Aldinga regions, will continue to deliver on this government's commitment to ensure that every child has access to high-quality public education. These two new schools will each have places for 100 special-school students to ensure that no-one misses out on the opportunity to learn. They will also each accommodate a 55-place children's centre to provide education for our youngest children and support for families.

This government sees education for early learners as fundamental to the development of South Australia and a community with truly equal opportunity. South Australians should feel rightly proud of the level of education that we give our youngest. Almost 80 per cent of our public preschools have been assessed and have been recognised for exceeding the National Quality Standards. That compares with 56 per cent of preschools nationally. This level of education will pay off for children and for the state.

This state government continues to invest in children's centres. We have 43 open in South Australia and another four will be opened by the end of next year. Children's centres provide health checks, child care, early childhood development programs, parenting education and support programs for families. They are also a great way we can support our most vulnerable families and a terrific investment for this state. This continued investment in education represents the spirit of this budget.

We are investing in infrastructure and services that our community needs now, and we are investing in education that will be the foundation of our future. It looks after our people and ensures that we have a future that is prosperous. It builds on the vital services of health and transport that truly affect people's quality of life, and invests directly in education. Education is how we ensure that we not only have the future we want for ourselves but that we have the future we hope for and dream of for our children.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (17:30): I rise to make a contribution on the Appropriation Bill 2017 and to say that whilst we are supporting the bill, as we always do, I think this budget is a missed opportunity when it comes to helping improve the lives of everyday South Australians. The reason I think this budget fails is primarily that it sets a very low bar, a very low set of expectations, for what South Australians should expect and what South Australians should want not only of the government but also the message that sends to individuals themselves.

This budget, which purports to be a budget that is going to create jobs, itself sets such a low bar that calling it a jobs budget is an oxymoron, calling it a jobs budget is an irony, as opposed to any real statement. That is because this budget projects job growth of only 1 per cent; 1 per cent is as lofty an ambition as this government could muster in relation to jobs growth in South Australia. The reason this 1 per cent jobs growth is all the government could muster is that it continues along its steady and well-worn path of high taxing and high spending, and nothing is more evident when it comes to their high-taxing agenda than the introduction of a new bank tax.

This new bank tax, which we and the Liberal Party have committed to block, is a job killer. We know that you cannot take from business, we know that you cannot take from the economy, in order to give back to the economy and expect it to grow. That simply does not work. There is $370 million which would be much better off in the pockets of ordinary South Australians than being in the pockets of government, only to be redirected back with some so-called jobs fund. It is much better for us to let the private sector, to let individuals and households, stimulate the economy by spending that money themselves as opposed to the government taking that money from them.

The difficulty with this budget is that it sets such a low bar. I believe this is where South Australia has hit an economic and cultural malaise that can only be fixed by raising the level of expectations. It is the current tyranny of low expectations that is holding our state back. I think the only change, in fact the most important change, in order to reverse this trend, reverse this malaise, is a change of government next March. A change of government, a budget and an agenda which will seek to reform our state, which will seek to stimulate our economy, which will seek to grow jobs, is what will help turn South Australia around. The only way that can happen is if we raise our eyes a little bit, if we seek not to look below the horizon, to look down at our feet, but seek to look up, look little bit further and a bit higher in the sky and actually ask and want and reach a better future than we currently aspire to.

This government has set the bar so low, and they are meeting these low expectations. Economic growth in South Australia over 2015-16 rose at only 1.9 per cent, when nationally the country grew at 2.8 per cent. Only Tasmania and Western Australia grew more slowly than us. We lost 6,500 young people last year to other states—again, a bar that has been set low, and those low expectations have been met by this awful government. We have seen jobs growth of only 1.9 per cent since June 2015, when nationally that sits at 3.7 per cent. We see unemployment that is the highest in the nation at 7.1 per cent on trend and 6.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted—again, the highest in the nation.

We need and we want better for ourselves. We must expect better of our government and we must expect better for ourselves. The way we can start to do that is to vote for a change of government at the next election. The reason I believe this is important is that raised expectations and met expectations are what is going to inject confidence into South Australia. What happens when businesses invest, because they have a surge of confidence in their new government to be able to deliver a better set of economic settings, is that businesses invest. They spend capital. They spend money. They upgrade plant and equipment. They put more money into seeking new opportunities interstate and around the world. The reason that is important is that renewed investment leads to jobs growth.

If you want to deliver a jobs budget, you need to deliver confidence, you need to deliver business investment and you need to deliver jobs growth. That is a recipe for a growing economy, that is a recipe for a growing South Australia, that is a recipe for a more confident South Australia, one that actually believes in itself and one that is willing to take risks to spend money in order to be able to improve our circumstances. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen if we continue to double down on the same economic settings that we have had since 2002, a doubling down that the government admits itself has not worked but has no plans to change in the short or the medium term.

South Australians need to raise their expectations and vote for a different government. South Australians need to realise that there is a better future. There is a more prosperous future, and it starts with a government led by the member for Dunstan, who is going to make sure that the bank tax does not come to South Australia. That money needs to stay in the pockets of South Australian households so that they can deal with our huge ESL bills, huge electricity costs and water costs.

The cost of living at the moment is a huge issue. It is rising well above the rate of inflation, well above the rate of wages growth, and we need to do our bit to help households to feel confident that they can go out and spend, that they actually have enough money to be able to survive and thrive. To the people of South Australia, definitely to the people of Schubert, think more of yourself, think more of your state, and please wish more of your government. In thinking about that, in doing that, we need to vote for a change of government at the next election in 2018.

I would like to move on to some of the measures, as they exist, in my portfolio areas. First off, I want to turn to the vexed area of correctional services, one that we have seen in the media quite prominently over the last few weeks. Our prison system is in crisis. We have a prison system that has delivered shotguns into the Women's Prison in an area where female prisoners are present. We had the internet accessed in a security breach at the Mobilong Prison where up to 10 inmates got access to a computer with internet, and who knows who they contacted? Who knows whether victims were contacted? Who knows how the victims were treated in this circumstance? Who knows what havoc has been wrought by those prisoners having access to that?

We have seen in the paper today that the government is so hard up for space in our prisons that they are breaking the law. On 14 separate occasions last year, they broke the law and illegally used police cells to house prisoners who were sentenced to a sentence for longer than 15 days. When questioned on this, minister Malinauskas in the other place did not deny the fact that this is happening. In fact, I am not even sure he understood that it was illegal. He said that, if there is an agreement between the police and the correctional services department, that is okay. The minister said in parliament, on Hansard, that it was okay to break the law. It cannot be allowed to stand that a minister of the Crown essentially said that we should flout the law and that departments should be able to ignore the Correctional Services Act and do what they want.

This is a government that is desperate. We know that we had 3,062 prisoners within our system, on average, over the first three months of this year. We know that is up a couple of hundred prisoners on last year, but here is the fundamental question: did this budget do anything to address the overcrowding and bed capacity issues within our prisons? Did it do anything to address the fact that we have been using surge beds every single day since 3 November 2011? Did this budget do anything to address the fact that we have seen a 40 per cent increase in prisoner-on-prisoner assaults within our prisons?

We have also seen a tripling over the last three years of the number of prison officers being assaulted within our prisons: guards being spat on, guards being punched in the face, guards being assaulted with mugs of hot water. Has anything been done in this budget to actually help address that? The answer is no. This budget does nothing to address the bed capacity issue within our prisons. We know that overcrowding is contributing to the problem, but this budget offered no new money for prison capacity. That is short sighted and I urge minister Malinauskas to get his head out of the sand and actually start to address some of these issues.

I will admit that in the area of trying to ensure that prisoners being put back into the community have more transitional support the government have acted. They have put money into a new transitional support program called Work Ready, Release Ready. They have put more money into a program called New Foundations, which is an offender community reintegration program. I look forward to seeing how those programs are implemented.

I would very much urge the government to engage the non-government sector in helping to deliver these services. There are some good people out there whose hearts are pure, who are on the ground at the moment dealing with real life issues facing people as they come out of the corrections system, and I would urge the government to engage those groups.

The reason this is important and the reason the community should care about these things is that when prisoners come back into the community, if we do not help them to reintegrate properly, then community safety is put at risk. We know that roughly half of prisoners reoffend within two years. If there is any way for us to reduce that figure, then it will make our community safer. It will have the added by-product of having fewer people within our gaols at an average cost of $100,000 per year, but community safety is paramount and community safety has to be at the heart of what these measures seek to do.

At least there was some new money announced in Correctional Services, because in emergency services there was not. The budget revealed the fact that we have lost another 500 volunteers in our CFS. This is a crying shame. We are down from about 14,000 to about 13,500. So recently after the Pinery fire, the Sampson Flat fire, the Wirrabara fire and after the floods over at Gawler, for us to lose 500 volunteers is a travesty. When I go out there and talk to volunteers, I know that they are frustrated because they have seen their emergency services levy bills go up.

They have seen their emergency services levy bills double and triple in some cases, but they have not seen that increased money actually flow through to their budgets, to their local brigades, to increased training or to faster upgrades of their equipment. What they have seen is that increased ESL bill go into general revenue coffers, and that is what frustrates them. That has to be part of the reason that 500 volunteers—

The Hon. Z.L. Bettison: No, it doesn't.

Mr KNOLL: The minister opposite interjects. In questioning in the Economic and Finance Committee, the chief executive of SAFECOM, Malcolm Jackman, answered the following question. When emergency services levy bills were increased in 2014-15 by $90 million, I asked whether there was a corresponding increase in emergency services funding. The answer was no. That money displaced general government input into emergency services. That extra $90 million that South Australians paid did not mean $90 million more for emergency services funding; it went straight to government coffers. Anybody suggesting otherwise is not looking at the truth. No less than the CEO of SAFECOM admitted it and, in fact, was frustrated by it when questioned in the Economic and Finance Committee.

There is a $1 million increase to the capital replacement program and there are 37 new trucks to be constructed over the next year. I think that is a welcome development. The trucks that do not have the proper equipment and systems in place for burn overs need to be rectified. I know of crews down in Penneshaw and all around the place that still have the situation where they are without a dual cab truck and a water sprinkler system. You have CFS volunteers sitting in the back of a truck with a blanket over the top of them hoping beyond hope that the fire does not consume them. Our CFS volunteers deserve better. We need to get on and make sure that these trucks are either upgraded or taken out of service as quickly as possible.

There was nothing new for the MFS and nothing new for the SES in the budget. The SES did get a cash injection of an extra couple of million dollars and that is quite welcome, especially after the magnitude of the Gawler floods, but there is nothing new in the budget. The police did have some new money around indexation of expenses and additional police resources for 2017-18, but I think that has to do with Recruit 313. As those Recruit 313 officers come into the system, there is an extra budget item there to make sure that that is funded.

There have been delays to some of the capital projects. There has been a delay to the continuous monitoring for screening that essentially was supposed to be completed by June 2017 and has now been pushed out to June 2018. The crime tracking app has also seen a delay.

The Hon. Z.L. Bettison interjecting:

Mr KNOLL: A crime tracking app—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just a second, member for Schubert. I do not know if the minister was in the chamber earlier, but every time there is an interjection now I am giving the member on their feet an extra minute, so you might like to think about that and listen to the member for Schubert in silence. The member for Schubert has an extra minute.

Mr KNOLL: I feel like I am getting a gold star or something, Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are, but not because you have been good but because she has been naughty.

Mr KNOLL: It is not a zero-sum game then. We have also seen a delay in the rollout of the body-worn cameras. These 1,000 new cameras first started appearing in 2010-11 in the budget at $4.1 million. The money allocated to this has gone up and down, but essentially in 2015-16 we had an end date of June 2016, then last year it was June 2017 and now it is June 2018.

These are very important bits of kit and they need to get into the hands of our officers as soon as they can because we know that they are an important part of crime prevention. They help to increase the rate of compliance by people on the street as they see that they are being filmed. Hopefully, this will lead to an increased rate of positive convictions where people are doing the wrong thing.

I will move across to road safety where the only new initiative was to put 10 new fixed location road safety cameras in metropolitan areas at a cost of $2 million, but over the forwards it is estimated to raise $15 million, increasing year on year. The government refuses to support our select committee into road safety to have a look at whether these cameras are making a difference and whether they are actually in the right spots to help remove the cynicism in the public that this is nothing more than a revenue-raising exercise, but they refuse to do that.

The RAA has conducted their own survey and they say that it is inconclusive as to whether or not these road safety cameras actually make a difference, but the government goes ahead with 10 new fixed location safety cameras, which will net $13 million into the government's coffers. Once again, that will only fuel cynicism within the community that this is only a revenue-raising exercise.

We on this side of the house want transparency. We on this side of the house want to reassure South Australians that it is about road safety and that these cameras are where they are going to do the most good. Unfortunately, the opaque, hazy way that this government goes about business means that South Australians will continue to be cynical.

I know of communities that want road safety cameras because they have identified hotspots. Even in my own community I know of areas where I think they need to be placed, and that is completely different from where they are placed. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need transparency and we need to assure the public that we are here for road safety and not for general revenue expansion. I will have more to say about issues in my electorate and the lack of regional health funding announced in this budget, but I will wait for my budget grieve to do that.

In summary, this budget was a missed opportunity. This budget was a missed opportunity to help raise the expectations of South Australians about what their government can actually deliver. Essentially, what has happened is that South Australians will continue to trudge in the mud until 18 March next year. They will continue to trudge along, not realising that South Australia can have a better future. I implore them to seek that better future: one that returns more money to their pockets, one that seeks to work with them to lift them up, one that seeks to work with businesses so they can create jobs rather than take money away from business, which actually stifles jobs growth.

I implore South Australians to get on board with a change, which will inject confidence and put South Australia back on a path that sees it as a state that can hold its head up high with pride, so that we can compete with our interstate counterparts and use the natural advantages that we have in South Australia, our natural resources and the natural ingenuity of South Australians to help us thrive, grow and prosper. I look forward to an election in March next year when we can start to help bring about some of that change.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (17:51): It is good to be able to speak this afternoon on what is my fourth budget reply speech. It is hard to believe that four budgets have come and gone since my election to the state parliament. It is always good to be able to provide a reflection of my views on the state budget, how it might impact the state and also how it impacts on my local community, which I am privileged to represent. I will speak in more detail about my local community in my budget reply grievance speech at a later date.

Today, I want to focus for a short period of time on the budget and its response, or perhaps the lack of response, to some of the major challenges facing South Australia at the moment. We know that South Australia is a state which, as many people say, is transitioning from one type of industrial background to a different type of economy. There is no doubt that that is true, but that transition cannot be used as an excuse for allowing our state to slip into a situation where we are in significant, if not terminal, decline across a whole range of key areas.

We know that South Australia has the highest unemployment rates in the nation. We know that our youth unemployment level is catastrophic, and that can cause really significant long-term not just economic but also social problems and consequences for many people who face long-term unemployment or even generational unemployment, where unemployment is passed from one generation to the other. Great social problems come with that situation, so governments of all persuasions must put lowering unemployment and tackling the impact of unemployment at the very heart of their mandate.

We were told by the Treasurer that this budget was about creating jobs. We have heard that time and time again since I was elected. I believe this is the third budget in a row that was described as a jobs budget. Unfortunately, that has not taken us very far because we continue to have incredibly bad unemployment figures. They are not just figures; they are real people in our communities across this state—in our city, in our regional towns and in our country communities—who are facing life on a day-to-day basis without a steady income from a job.

The impact that has on their self-esteem, and the impact that has on our community's ability to function, cannot be underestimated. As leaders and elected representatives of this state, we must find solutions to our state's unemployment crisis. That is a word that is used fairly loosely by politicians and people in the media but, when you have the nation's highest unemployment and that is something that has been the situation for an extended period of time, I do not think it is a stretch to describe that as a crisis.

As well as significant unemployment problems, we heard last week that we have the highest electricity prices in the world. Again, that has a whole range of knock-on effects. Not only is it a residential problem hitting households and impacting household budgets, but it is also a real hindrance to the growth of existing businesses and the establishment of new businesses in our state.

In the news last week, we had the case study of the plastics recycling firm in Adelaide that saw its electricity bill rise from $80,000 a year to $180,000 per year. How does a business manage to absorb that level of increase? It is almost impossible to absorb that in the bottom line without making cutbacks to staff and perhaps cutbacks to innovations and investments that that business was going to take. Tragically, in the case of the business that I am talking about, they feel that they had no option but to close their doors.

As members of this place, we hear story after story of businesses that are facing similar situations as they come off one fixed electricity contract and move on to another, and their electricity prices jump up. The government needs to be able to intervene and come up with a solution that will stabilise our energy industry here in South Australia and give businesses certainty that power prices are going to be stabilised going forward and, if anything, lowered as well, because we will not get growth in many industries, particularly those that require a significant amount of power, without the energy situation in South Australia being fixed.

We know that we have soaring water prices. That falls under my shadow ministerial portfolio. We know there are real challenges there and that the government continues to place cost burdens on South Australian households and businesses. We had the emergency services levy at least double and in some instances triple and quadruple back in 2014, and we have continued to have rises to the emergency services levy in previous years—not in this financial year but in previous years. That is another significant cost burden hitting South Australian businesses and households.

Now we have the imposition of another tax by the government—another lazy tax. I believe that taxation is lazy and is not a good way of doing government—increasing taxation rather than looking for innovative and creative ways to grow and expand our economy—because we know that when you grow and develop an economy, that will lead to more taxpayers. That will lead to more people investing in our communities and more people who have jobs being able to have discretionary income so that they can buy an extra coffee at a local cafe, go away for a weekend at a South Australian tourism enterprise, put in a new kitchen or buy a new car.

When you have more people employed, and when you have a growing, expanding economy that attracts more people to invest, we know that that has a flow-on effect and can bolster all aspects of our economy. That is where we want to be in South Australia, and I am afraid that is absolutely not where we are at the moment. We know that the statistics do not back up any idea that South Australia's economy is recovering or growing. We know that is the case.

Unfortunately, the budget that was handed down a fortnight ago really does not provide any imperative to see a recovery in South Australia's economy. I think the budget was very far from a jobs budget: it was a tax-and-spend budget. It was based around an old, tired ideology that this government has perpetuated for many years. It was a budget that sought to strategically spend money in key seats that the Labor Party needs to hold at the next election, but it was not about creating an energetic, innovative, creative economy, and that is incredibly disappointing.

I turn briefly—and I thank the Deputy Speaker for indulging me with a bit of extra time—to some of the ideas that the Liberal Party has on the table to look at economic recovery in South Australia. We had the budget reply speech from the Leader of the Opposition this morning and he outlined a number of those matters, which I will reiterate because the Liberal Party is very serious about having a plan out in the public domain about economic development for this state. We have many more policies in the public domain than we had at a similar time in the political cycle in 2013, and that is something that we in opposition should be proud of. It is something that I can guarantee we will build on as we head towards the March 2018 election.

Briefly, I want to cover off on some of those projects and policies that we are promoting. One of them is Globe Link, the development of a specialised freight corridor around the back of the Adelaide Hills, and the creation of an export-specific airport at Monarto. We know that South Australia has a huge amount to offer to the world. We produce more food than we need, we produce more wine than we need, and we have fantastic products and services that we can sell to the world. The creation and development of Globe Link is certainly a long-term vision, but it is important to have that vision out there. It says that we want to make it easier to move freight around our state. Rather than bringing it into metropolitan Adelaide, it would bypass around the back of the Adelaide Hills.

We want to be able to get our produce to the world with an export-specific airport being constructed at Monarto, so I think that is an exciting policy. When I speak to people in the community, they tell me that they have a lot of time for that policy, and they are impressed that the opposition has put it out there even though it is a big-vision policy. It is one of those bigger ideas, but I think people want that from governments or potential governments.

Connected to that, in terms of economic development, we strongly believe that South Australia's economic recovery will be export led, so we have put out there as a public policy that we will have an export-specific minister with sole responsibility for selling South Australia to the world. As part of that ministry, we will be establishing four new trade offices in Japan, Malaysia, Dubai and the USA with, perhaps, a vision to expand those more in the future. We see it as so important to have an export-led economic recovery in South Australia. We are proud of so many things here, and we produce so many good things, and we want to be able to take those to the world.

We also have a real desire to reduce the everyday cost of living, so we are going to reduce the emergency services levy and take it back to what it was before the government's significant hikes in 2014. We want to put a cap on council rates, and we also want to undertake—and this is under my portfolio—a really detailed review of water pricing. These are all things that will hopefully put money back in the pockets of South Australians. With that, Deputy Speaker, thank you for your indulgence, and I conclude my remarks.

Sitting suspended from 18:04 to 19:30.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (19:30): I rise this evening to make comment on the Appropriation Bill 2017. It is with interest that I have listened to many of the speakers in this house and I am sure as the night goes on they will become more and more interesting to listen to.

One of the Independent members, who now sits on the Labor front bench, was talking about how we should not quibble about how surpluses have been achieved. I think it is important to put on the record that many of the surpluses have been achieved by selling the state's assets. Selling assets that deprive future generations of income streams that were set up and put in motion to benefit the people of South Australia, and this type of selling assets at all costs to have a phony surplus, is selling our next generation short.

Obviously, we have the Motor Accident Commission—which is a big one—delivering many hundreds of millions of dollars into the state's coffers' and the Lands Titles Office, but one closer to home is ForestrySA. Forward rotations for ForestrySA were sold for around $670 million. What has been quite interesting over the last couple of months are the reported profits from OneFortyOne, the company that purchased ForestrySA. I want to be very clear that I have no issue with OneFortyOne. If a government is silly enough to sell an asset at cost price—some would say well below cost price—then it is the prerogative of anybody to bid on that asset.

For $670 million, even conservative figures put those estimates at about half price, or about $1 billion just on land value. The state Labor government sold ForestrySA at the bottom of the cycle, so it would be fair to say that OneFortyOne picked themselves up a bargain. In fact, so much of a bargain, the eminent Jerry Leech, who has done many years of work in this field, quoted that land value alone would have been around the $1 billion mark. After paying $670 million, OneFortyOne is now turning a clear profit of $120 million per year.

Reports have it that the asset will be paid off in June 2019. Of course, OneFortyOne has the asset for another 103 years and, if they sustain a $120 million a year profit, it is an extraordinary raid on future generations of South Australians that those revenues are not coming into the state coffers—$120 million per year from just one state asset that our forefathers had the common sense and foresight to plant and to turn the South-East into the Green Triangle, or certainly part of it.

Let us not quibble about how these surpluses have been achieved, says the member for Waite, but I think it is a very important lesson to learn and that future generations, who may one day pick up this Hansard and, if they are bored enough, read this speech, will know that these surpluses are fake.

Again, we must be coming into an election year because Labor has promised a jobs budget. There have been a few YouTube ads going around for Groundhog Day. When you watch the YouTube clips, it is exactly what was said in 2014, 2015 and 2016, so why would we think things are going to change now?

We need a comprehensive strategy for economic growth, with lower taxes and more jobs. That is what a Marshall Liberal government will deliver in March 2018—if, in fact, we get to March 2018 because I have a sneaking suspicion that we might be going to the polls before that, but only time will tell. After 16 years in government, Labor is out of ideas and out of time.

This budget neglects our regions, which is one of the most disappointing things of the budget. The regions have been let down, in fact totally neglected, in this budget. There is no extra funding in this budget for regional roads, despite a $1 billion road maintenance backlog. There is no investment in this budget into regional health facilities. The notion that country people will be travelling up to use the metropolitan services sounds fine on paper but has many complexities when it is put into reality.

There has been no increase in the Patient Assistance Transport Scheme. If this government were serious about supporting regional families to access those services then we would see a lift in the rebates available for regional people to access metropolitan services or vital health services. It is quite convenient if you live in the city to drive a loved one, a family member, hopefully not a child, to a hospital for an operation or a service, but it is a different thing entirely to travel 480 kilometres from Mount Gambier to access those services, particularly if you are elderly. I know of elderly people who try to do the round journey: going up in the day, seeing the specialist, receiving the treatment and then turning around and driving back. Why? Because, quite frankly, they cannot afford the accommodation because it is not cheap to access those services in a metropolitan city.

It is with great sadness that I bring to this house the tragedy that occurred quite recently in Mount Gambier where Angel Flight—which I think is a wonderful service for regional areas—had a major crash with fatalities. Three people lost their lives: obviously the pilot, Grant Gilbert, who was very dedicated to volunteering his time to the people of South Australia, and in particular the sick and needy, and, of course, Tracy and Emily.

The reason why they were on this flight was that they had returned quite recently from Adelaide by road and the fatigue factor was too great a concern to turn around and head back to Adelaide. Certainly, it is something that does need to be looked at: how do we support regional people to access the health services of Adelaide, considering that another $1.1 billion is going to be spent on metropolitan Adelaide's hospitals? Yet, there is almost nothing—in fact, nothing I can see—for the South-East for its hospitals.

I want to go through some of the extraordinary figures. This is on top of the third most expensive building in the world in the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. We were sold this notion that Transforming Health was needed to provide efficiencies in the service of health. I am here to say that Transforming Health is dead in the water.

We were told that Transforming Health was based on the notion that, instead of duplicating services in Adelaide hospitals, such as The QEH, Lyell McEwin, Modbury, Flinders, etc. with each hospital offering orthopaedics, ophthalmology, cardio and thoracic surgeries, most of the major operations would be centralised in one hospital where the equipment would be used to the greatest efficiency because the operating theatres would be working most of the time.

Other hospitals would then take on specialist roles; that might be orthopaedics at a certain hospital, so all those with orthopaedic needs would attend that facility. The efficiencies are that surgeries are equipped properly, there is no overduplication of equipment and specialists are in that area or at that specific hospital. One hospital would be for ophthalmology, one would be for orthopaedics, as I have said, and possibly the new Royal Adelaide Hospital would be for more emergency-type situations. The operating theatres would be working at a greater capacity at those facilities.

I believe it is borne out of a UK model. Certainly, on paper it has merit in what it is trying to achieve. That is the reason we need to have this major spend. Of course, due to public concern—and, as I said before, there must be an election coming up—we now see a $1.1 billion investment in all the other hospitals. The QEH will receive $250 million. It is one of the greatest pork-barrelling manoeuvres I have ever seen. I am sure that the members who sit around that seat are eternally grateful, as is probably the member for Modbury, even though we do not know who that is at this point in time.

The Adelaide women's hospital will receive $528 million; Lyell McEwin, $52.5 million; the Women's and Children's, $24 million; Modbury, $9.2 million; Flinders, $3.5 million on top of the upgrade that is currently going on, which I must admit is very impressive, and I went along with the Public Works Committee last week and had a look at it; and SAHMRI proton therapy, $44 million. I will stand here and say that I actually have no problem with those types of investments in our critical infrastructure, but what is neglected in all this are the regional hospitals.

Where is the $1.5 million for the renal dialysis in Mount Gambier? It is not $15 million and it is not $150 million: it is $1.5 million. It is bugger-all compared with the expenditure I have just gone through. Where is the surety for the Keith Hospital where they are basically relying on donations to get through on a year-to-year basis? Where is the money for the Yorketown surgical unit? My concern is that this investment in Adelaide means that this is not a budget for South Australians. I will call it what it is: it is a budget for Adelaide. The entire state's resources are basically being focused on Adelaide, focused on marginal seats and focused on the upcoming election; whether that is in a couple of months' time or whether that is in March next year, I do not know.

I will go further into the budget because, even though health is a passion of mine, so are safe roads and infrastructure. We have a $673.9 million transport plan. It actually says in the budget—and this is where I smile a bit—the 'South Australian transport plan'. That is rubbish; it is an Adelaide transport plan because, if you look at all the investment, it is in Adelaide. Of course we cannot forget the pork-barrelling that needs to go on in Blackwood because the member for Waite's area now takes in the Blackwood roundabout—$3.5 million.

There is the Penola bypass, and we have this ludicrous situation in the South-East where we have a bypass around Penola that goes half way and then cuts back into a Penola and becomes pretty much a continuation of the main street. Why do we have that? Because the state government will not put the $2 million into the $11 million plan, even though the federal government has guaranteed the $9 million for that bypass. Why? I suspect it is because the Adelaide budget does not include Penola, and the chances of winning that seat are about good as me playing for Port Adelaide in the grand final—close to zero.

Let's not forget the other little tricky parts in the budget that I find quite amusing. There is the Fund My Neighbourhood program—$40 million. Dressed up, razzle-dazzle, at first glance you would say, 'That's a bloody good idea,' but let me tell you that it bypasses most scrutiny that would be applied to an investment of that size. I will put it in context: $1.5 million for renal dialysis at the Mount Gambier hospital is the only hospital upgrade that we would be calling on. This is $40 million. I suspect there will be even more pork-barrelling in those seats where the Labor candidate is under a bit of pressure or, quite strategically, there is a Xenophon threat. The Xenophon candidate with Labor preferences could overrun the Liberal candidate, if the Liberal candidate is not polling at about 45 per cent primary.

I do not want it all to be doom and gloom, because one thing I want to congratulate the government on is the $6 million additional prize money for the autumn racing carnival at Morphettville. Why do I applaud that? Because the racing industry is a massive employer in South Australia. The racing industry is an economic driver of this state. Anybody who follows racing, and sees the impact of this year's injection of funds to the autumn racing carnival, would be amazed at the quality of jockeys and the quality of horses, with Joao Moreira coming back from Hong Kong to ride and all the Victorian hoops riding quality horses—one of my proudest moments of my watching racing, comparing us with Brisbane or Victoria, and South Australia was the premier racing event on that day. Even though it is an investment, you get a return on it because, if you look at the turnover of TAB attendance and economic activity, it actually pays for itself.

Mount Gambier has not been spared total neglect, even though it comes very close. We have received $1 million for our airport. It is about a $15 million upgrade, and hopefully we do not keep accruing it at that rate, otherwise I will be finished in this place before we get it completed. I do not count the other $2.9 million because that was actually allocated for the forest partnership program. The government with a sleight of hand moved that over to the airport, so we have about $4 million of a $15 million project, and I am looking forward to that coming to fruition. The big one in Mount Gambier is the prison—$38.3 million for an ever-expanding prison. If we are serious about it, we need to not keep expanding the prison, to look at rehabilitation and stop the 40-odd per cent of people who return to prison once they get out.

What I would call on this state Labor government to do is to stop experimenting with the people of South Australia. This Premier merged Families SA and the Department for Education and Child Development and it was an absolute disaster. Royal commissioner Margaret Nyland said, and this is pretty unprecedented, that she felt compelled to release an interim recommendation because the system was 'in crisis' and the government needed to 'take immediate steps' to set up a new child protection department.

This merging was the brainchild of the current Premier. He then went on to a renewable energy experiment where, 'We will just hit 40 per cent, but we don't know how we are going to transition there so let's give it a go and bugger the cost. We'll go for that.' Quite frankly, in terms of the bank tax, we do not trust this state government to experiment with the people of South Australia with a bank tax.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mount Gambier, apropos of racing, may be interested to know that the O'Connors have a new jumper starting at Murray Bridge in race 1 tomorrow.

Mr Bell: Would I be on the record if I gave you my opinion of that?

The SPEAKER: Yes, you would be.

Mr Bell: I think back it, because they are great constituents of mine.

The SPEAKER: I know that. Member for Chaffey.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (19:50): It is great to see that you are still as passionate about the racing industry as always, sir. I rise to provide a contribution on the Appropriation Bill and provide my thoughts on the 2017 state budget and the current state of play in South Australia, where the state's economy is at a crossroads and the economic challenges will continue to keep on coming.

The Labor government will have the general public believe that everything is going well. The figures are spun to suit the argument. As the leader said in his contribution today, we have to restore confidence and we need to restore opportunity to South Australia. To do that, we must have lower taxes to encourage investment and job creation and much less red tape and unnecessary regulation. We must ensure that government spending remains within the budget, we must have a growing private sector and an efficient public sector, high productivity, strong private and public sectors, sustained export growth right across South Australia, more investment in productive infrastructure, and greater support for our regions. The leader's contribution today really did sum it up, that South Australia has been led into a very dark corner.

In our last sitting week, when the Treasurer handed down the state budget, the headline was that Labor promised a jobs budget. I would like to be fair about this, but it was not about a jobs budget; I would call it a budget for Adelaide. Sadly, if we look at all the bottom lines, if we look at the majority of the spending that went into this budget, it was about getting ready for the 2018 state election. All that has been delivered in the latest budget has been new taxes and higher charges. To put it simply, this is the last thing businesses and investors need here in South Australia. We have seen a $370 million bank tax which, I believe, will not deliver the jobs or relief to households struggling with the cost of living, and they need that support. That is why we have opposed it.

We have almost taken a step back into the future here in South Australia. This government's target is taking South Australia back to the Second World War. It has taken a step back in time, particularly if you look at quantitative easing, after the Second World War with Germany and Japan. The philosophy we are dealing with at the moment is that we are going to get South Australia into such a dilemma, into such an economic decline, that we are going to need the federal government to step in—just like the US did with Germany and Japan after Second World War—to help rebuild it, and I am deeply saddened that we have got to this point.

Our main business body in South Australia, Business SA, described the bank tax on radio earlier this week; they are concerned at our state brand. I think that is something that every member of this parliament must be concerned about. If they are all passionate South Australians—if they are all here for the betterment of South Australia—they have to be concerned about the state brand. Our state reputation for investment attraction has been hammered with the energy crisis. It has been hammered with the entrenched high unemployment.

We are sending all the wrong signals, and this is the second time we have made global and national headlines for the wrong reasons. Yes, we made headlines about a city—an important city in the nation—having lost its lights in September of last year. I think the state government needs to take responsibility for that. It needs to work out a way—a serious way, a policy decision way—of how we are actually going to address that.

We are heading into the heat of summer in only a number of weeks, yet how are we going to provide certainty to the businesses and to the investors that are coming to South Australia to make sure that this never, never happens again? What I would like to say is: how are we going to instil confidence in investment into South Australia? How are we going to instil confidence into our own psyche as South Australians? As a proud South Australian, I have invested the majority of my life into making my business a good strong South Australian business. I have instilled confidence in my family, including my children, that South Australia is the place for them to live, invest, work and contribute to.

Sadly, my son has recently moved to Victoria. He now resides in Victoria under a South Australian company. The reason he is in Victoria working for a South Australian company is that the South Australian company does not have the contracts—it does not have the work—here in South Australia, so it has had to look further afield. He is undertaking one of the most dangerous construction projects in Australia's construction sector as we speak. He is looking at decommissioning a part of a refinery in Victoria, at Geelong, that has been earmarked for pulling down. We are using a South Australian business with a South Australian workforce in another state to do that, and it is a sad state of affairs.

I have a daughter who entered university two years ago, and her comments to me break my heart to think about. She is saying to me, 'When I get a degree, when I get my highest accolade through university, I'm just naturally considering that I'm going to move interstate or overseas to gain employment.'

I have a younger daughter again who is in middle school in a South Australian teaching institution and who is saying, 'What sort of a pathway do I need to explore when my big brother has moved to Melbourne? He's just been offered a role in the US; he is moving away. My sister is looking at gaining university accreditation in law and economics, and she is thinking about moving away. So what sort of a road do I have other than thinking about getting an education'—and I am hoping that it will be in South Australia—'before I entrench myself into another state's workforce?'

It is something that really wrenches at my heart at every opportunity. What we are seeing is the lack of confidence, not only within the business sector in terms of coming to South Australia; we are seeing a lack of confidence in our young—our brightest, our future here in South Australia—who are looking at ways of seeing their future, and their future, sadly, does not seem to include what South Australia has to offer. South Australia must have a comprehensive strategy for economic growth, with lower taxes, more jobs and what it will deliver. The state Liberals are committed to the $360 million of cuts to the ESL bills through remission, and we will be announcing more tax reforms before the election in March of 2018.

The state cannot continue with an unemployment rate that leads the nation. In fact, we have had the highest unemployment rate for 30 consecutive months. To put that into perspective, there are some young up-and-coming South Australians who have never seen South Australia prosper. They have never seen South Australia with economic growth. They have never seen South Australia with employment growth.

What sort of message are we sending to our young? What sort of message are the upcoming generations getting through our education system, our universities and our training providers? What sort of message are we sending to them? Are they already conceding before they have finished their qualifications that they are going to move? It really does beg the question: what do our policy settings in South Australia mean for future generations?

Obviously, the state cannot continue with the unemployment rate that leads the nation. What we need are policy settings that instil confidence. We need to have policies that are going to instil confidence in investment—whether it be local, interstate, intrastate or international investment—in South Australia. What are we going to do to instil investment confidence in South Australia? We have seen the high cost of doing business in South Australia. There have been costly rises in utilities that impact not only on households but on businesses. There are 140,000 small businesses in South Australia that employ about 250,000 people and contribute $34 billion to the state's economy.

I recently went over to Yorke Peninsula as part of my responsibilities for trade and investment to look at what I consider to be three representatives of prosperous industries within South Australia. The biggest concern they had was how they could compete globally, considering the insidious costs of running a business over there. They were looking at water costs. We were talking about pork and poultry as well as mining, but we were also talking about how we were going to deal with agricultural exports, the cost of power, the cost of water.

One of the young Liberal candidates at Narungga is Fraser Ellis. He is 24 years old and he is a great prospect for South Australia. He is mortified by the cost of doing business and that the business models of these three businesses are being put in jeopardy. He is absolutely horrified and that is why he has decided to run for parliament. That is why he has decided to put his hand up as a young, passionate South Australian to stand for parliament, to understand the issues and work towards a better outcome for these export businesses that employ thousands of South Australians.

In my portfolio as shadow minister for trade and investment, we have already announced an increased footprint in our overseas representation. Right throughout history, from our pioneering grain growers, winemakers and miners, we have retained a capacity to produce more than we need ourselves. We have never been able to grow our economy just by producing and selling to ourselves. That is why it is a great concern to me, under this current government, that our export performance has fallen right behind the rest of Australia.

In 2002, when this current government came to power, we had 7.4 per cent of the nation's exports. In 2002, South Australia's footprint in the nation was 7.4 per cent. Sadly, today, we have a 4 per cent footprint, which is a 3 per cent reduction. While all the other states are increasing their footprint, their economies are booming, their exports are growing and their inbound contribution to exports is growing, we have a government in South Australia that continues to do the same thing year after year.

We have a minister who has crossed the floor sitting on the front bench, happy to slag off at every opportunity a party he once led. Today, I heard him over and over again carry on about pointing the finger. What I want to ask him is: why are you doing the same thing for the last seven years and nothing has changed? Nothing has changed. We have an export footprint that is in decline and an international education program where national share targets are not being met. We are continually seeing targets being set and then reset. They are reset for the simple reason that the government does not have the gumption to understand how to be nimble and how we can make our economy be driven to prosperity.

For South Australia, trade and investment is the only answer to get where we are headed. My great concern is that under our current government our export performance has fallen behind the rest of Australia. Had South Australia retained our 2002 share of national exports today, we could be supporting tens of thousands of additional jobs. Not only would we be supporting more jobs but we would be supporting more growth and more confidence in our economy. We would be attracting more investment and we would be attracting more attention from the world.

Currently, our only trade representation is in London and in Jinan in China. That is why Steven Marshall, the Leader of the Opposition, and I recently travelled to both South-East Asia—

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey, I know that mentioning the Leader of the Opposition's Christian name and surname in the current debate is probably not going to lead to disorderliness, but it is contrary to standing orders.

Mr WHETSTONE: Thank you, sir. What I would say is that the member for Dunstan, the Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, and I have recently travelled to South-East Asia and Japan to gain a better understanding of what South Australia is missing out on. That is why we have announced four more stand-alone trade offices in Tokyo, Japan, as well as others in Malaysia, Dubai and the US. These are our most important trading partners and they are the engine room of South Australia's economy. That is the reason that we travelled to these countries, to understand what South Australia's economy and our Export Program are missing out on.

I would like to say that we have had assistance from the federal government. We have had free trade agreements. We have had many institutions saying, 'These are the opportunities that the world presents to South Australia,' yet we have a minister who continues to say that we are going to do these fluffy trade missions—the outbound trade missions and the inbound trade missions. Yes, the Liberals support the trade missions. Yes, the Liberals support inbound trade missions, but we continue to do the same thing over and over again. What that proves to me is that the minister is encapsulated in his own space and that he is not encapsulated in making South Australia a better trading partner with the rest of the world.

The rest of the world is waiting for states like South Australia. The rest of the world is waiting for our clean, green produce grown under blue skies. It is grown with fresh, clean, reliable water. It is grown with the world's best expertise. The flavours, the juices—everything that the world is wanting is what South Australia has on the table, and that is what we are presenting. However, what we are seeing is a hard-headed theory that, 'We will do it our way and we are not prepared to change,' and the seven years in which we have not seen any change in South Australia's trade policy initiatives is telling a tale.

A stronger South Australian footprint in the locations of highest potential for our exporters will give them the strongest possible support, enable deeper and stronger potential, and enable deeper engagement with our key trading partners and people looking for investment opportunities in this state. An open trade office sends the message that we are investing in your country, the country that we want to invest in, and that we are a country that is offering trust.

Dealing with overseas trading partners is all about trust, respect and responsibility. As an exporter for 25 years, I understand that the platform you have to start off on is about dealing with trust. It is about dealing with a country that can trust you just as you have to trust them. Dealing with a trading partner is about one thing: it is about trading a product for payment. If you can trade a product that they are looking for, then you will get your payment.

While you are looking for your payment, that is what puts food on our table, that is what makes our economy grow, that is what makes our great state recognised as a great trading partner, that is what makes South Australia a reliable trading partner and that is what makes South Australia's reputation for clean, green, safe food, grown under a blue sky with fresh, clean, safe water. But at the moment, we are looking to do the same thing.

Time expired.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (20:11): I also rise today to speak to the bill before the house. Before I do that, I want to quote Winston Churchill from many years ago when he said that a country that tries to 'tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle'. That is no more relevant than today with what this government is trying to do. These are the words of Winston Churchill many, many years ago, and how true they still ring following the budget put forward by this tired Labor government.

What we thought we would see was a jobs budget. The government has put forward another self-proclaimed jobs budget, but in reality the measures put forward by this budget will hardly achieve any sort of creation of jobs in this state. This budget would be more appropriately named a tax budget, as our leader stated earlier in the house. It is unfathomable to believe that the government sees fit to increase taxes and dip into the pockets of banks and households yet again to the tune of $420 million in new taxes and increased government charges in real terms. This budget will more likely destroy jobs and actually deter investment.

What South Australia needs is a government that will provide more efficient services and a government that is more focused on working within its means, rather than seeking to take from the pockets of hardworking South Australians. We need to cut red tape and reduce regulation to stimulate our economy. Now more than ever we need to lift South Australia's economic growth rate that is projected to trail the national average, and get rid of this dysfunctional, tired government that we have.

What South Australia needs is a more positive future. We drastically need to alleviate the cost pressures felt by households. As has been heard in the house many times, we face skyrocketing water prices and have the highest electricity prices in the world, yet how often I see our water infrastructure failing in our area and the lights going out, which is just not good enough. In fact, I have found over the last year that even I have personally reported leaks and bursts to SA Water. The SA Water team is quite receptive on social media when I do that in my regular doorknocking, but my office has also been forced, along with many in our community, to work in darkness on many occasions.

What about health? Words cannot do justice to just how infuriated members of my community are about this government's handling of health, particularly in regard to the new RAH. Over budget and over time—I wonder how often those words have been repeated in this house in the last 15 years. Furthermore, our community has been let down by this government in the area of mental health, specifically. One need look no further than the Oakden scandal to see how South Australia's most vulnerable have been let down. These most vulnerable people are real people. They are out there in our communities and it is time for change from the government's point of view.

This being the third labelled a jobs budget, I am a bit concerned about what it actually means, given that South Australia consistently, on every measurement, ranks amongst the worst in the nation. It ranks amongst the highest for unemployment in the country, currently holding the top spot at 7.1 per cent on trend. In fact, we have had the highest trend unemployment rate for 30 consecutive months. This budget also predicts a jobs growth rate of just 1 per cent, less than half the national average. It has been heard from the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies that, despite this predicted growth rate, the lowest jobs rate in the entire nation, we may not even achieve that.

Let's not forget that, in the lead-up to the 2010 election, the Labor Party promised 100,000 jobs for South Australia. They have fallen short by a shocking 80 per cent. Put otherwise, they missed the mark by 80,000 jobs. Over the past two years alone, our rate of growth for jobs has only been half the national jobs growth rate figure. For seven years, there has been no growth whatsoever in full-time employment in South Australia in the private sector.

Following an accurate and much-needed reply to the budget by our Leader of the Opposition today, the Premier stood up and played the victim, as he so often has done. Of course he did; he seems to think that almost nothing is the fault of this government. Where will it end? I am concerned that those in government may actually believe this nonsense that somehow they are above criticism and can do no wrong. The Premier would do well to listen to the people of South Australia. He might finally understand that they are tired and sick of these excuses. They are tired of broken promises.

To my point, young people have only known for much of their upbringing in recent times a Labor Party that promises big and delivers small. As the youngest member of parliament in South Australia, I might understand more than some the deep fear for the future of this state felt by our younger generations. For some time, this Labor government has been ruining the prospects of our young people by trying to spend its way out of problems. Guess who will be paying for this mismanagement of state funds down the track if this reckless spending does not cease? It will be our children.

As I mentioned earlier, almost 20 per cent of young people cannot find work at the moment. One in five young people is out of work. A Liberal government will deliver more to our children than just the bill for the reckless spending of today. What we will deliver for the young people of our state is not just an exciting and refreshing alternative government but a necessary one. The Liberal Party will deliver a comprehensive program to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for all students.

To be able to invest more in our young people, we need the resources to do so. We do not need to tax more to attain these resources. We do not need to reward the hard work of our state with more taxes and more government charges. Rather, what we need to do is stimulate our economy through lower taxes and more responsible budget measures, something the Labor government over its 16 years of government has proven to be incapable of delivering.

What we need here is change. We need to reduce the cost of living pressures, something that I am disheartened to inform the house is unfortunately the most frequent of concerns I hear from families and individuals. In my regular doorknocking, this is the most constant concern that is raised with me on the doorstep. Indeed, I have been encouraged by the reception to the '2036' plan released over a year ago and the feedback received on the doorstep. Our plan holds over 40 policy initiatives and major reforms that will give South Australia the chance to prosper once again, and give our youth a future.

Globe Link is among those proposals. It aims to boost the South Australian economy with the construction of a new heavy freight corridor and freight-only airport. I am excited about the prospect of a new, safe, efficient and sustainable road freight infrastructure and the potential for it to unlock the productive capacity of South Australia's businesses and exports. We cannot be wealthy by only selling to ourselves. These are groups that for too long have been limited by this Labor government.

Before I turn to the local projects being overlooked in the budget, I wish to bring to light once again the complete snubbing of the regional areas when they need our support the most. Given that the regions make up some 29 per cent of our population and contribute over $25 billion to our GSP, it is concerning to find that in this state budget we have seen a measly $74 million of new operating initiatives for the regions over the next five years. This is less than 11 per cent of the budgeted spending on all new operating initiatives and about a third of what it should be for the regions, based upon their share of the state's population.

Where is the funding for hospitals? Where is the funding for roads? Why is it that the regions will receive next to nothing as far as increased spending is concerned? Gross regional product in our regions has grown at close to twice that of the entire state in recent years. Our regions certainly deserve better for the contribution that they make to our economy, but not only that; they are the future upside of our economy. When you go interstate and look at the regional areas and the regional populations, you will see that they are much larger than we have here in South Australia. We need to be doing much better, and we need to be backing our regions for the future growth of our state.

I turn now to the local projects that are overlooked in the electorate of Hartley in this year's state budget. One of the most notable projects overlooked in the budget is that of the promised parking infrastructure for Paradise Interchange. For too long, as we know, Paradise Interchange's efficiency has been limited greatly by a lack of parking. Each morning, many commuters hoping to use the interchange are forced to park along side streets and the busy main roads nearby. Sometimes they are forced to park hundreds of metres up the road, along Sudholz Road and along Darley Road, and it is frustrating, not just for interchange users who are forced to dodge the main road traffic as they exit their vehicle but it is equally frustrating for local residents whose streets are congested as a result.

Parking at the interchange is evidently a huge issue, and in this year's state budget I note that the government has allocated funds for park-and-rides, without a car park tax, at Klemzig and also at Tea Tree Plaza. It is time they actually fulfilled their pre-election promise and made more parking available at the Paradise Interchange, in line with what the community wants.

It brings me back to the point I made earlier, that this government talks big, it makes promises that it cannot keep and predictably fails, sometimes epically in the case of the 2010 promise to deliver 100,000 jobs. To the point, this state Labor government promised to fund improved car parking infrastructure at the interchange prior to the last election—it distributed it in material. It failed to deliver. The community deserves better and the state deserves better.

Also overlooked in the state budget for the area is a solution to the increasingly concerning traffic issues surrounding the Magill Training Centre development site. For a long time now I have joined the member for Morialta in calling for a commitment from this government to come up with a solution for traffic in the area, because the roads at present are simply not capable of holding the levels of traffic we see on the roads, and it is worrying to not see any sort of solution funded in this state budget.

Then you have the Glynde substation. Whilst some months ago the residents of Glynde were called and told in an automated message from the Premier that an alternative site had been located by the government, I am yet to see this finalised. Additionally, the proposed tramline extension, it would seem, has been put on hold for the area that Labor distributed in its last pre-election material. The government put forward the idea of running a tram up The Parade to UniSA's Magill campus in the next five to 15 years, yet no funding was allocated in this budget.

Many sports and community groups also have been left in the lurch, and schools that need the funding were not allocated the funding by this state Labor government. It is disappointing to see that the government has neglected these parts of my electorate. It is unfair that the government has chosen not to commit funding to the area because it is badly needed. Clearly, it is only a Liberal Party that will allocate these projects in our budget when we are in government. We will make sure that the people of Hartley get their fair share, and we will deliver and make the area the best that it can be.

It is also disappointing that in all the tourism work that the Minister for Tourism claims he does that he could not get Paul McCartney here to Adelaide. On the topic of Paul McCartney, I bring some lyrics from The Beatles to the house at this late part of the evening. I remember the lyrics of Nowhere Man by The Beatles, and I relate them to the Premier because he is a nowhere man: 'He's a real nowhere man, he's sitting in his nowhere land and he's making all his nowhere plans for nobody.'

Ms COOK (Fisher) (20:23): I rise today in support of the Appropriation Bill 2017, the Weatherill Labor government's 2017-18 budget, a budget that is focused on Labor's core values and the core values that matter to each and every South Australian, values like ensuring there are meaningful jobs for all who want to work, like ensuring that all of the community has access to world-class health care, like ensuring that no matter where you live, or who you live with, you can receive quality, affordable education, and that we have strong and resilient neighbourhoods.

As the Premier and Treasurer have passionately argued, both in this house and out in our community, this is a budget that builds on a strong legacy Labor has created in government: a commitment to jobs and job creation in a time of significant instability and transition in the South Australian economy; a commitment to health reform, revitalising our statewide health network, streamlining services and delivering state-of-the-art best practice medicine to all South Australians; a commitment to education in a time when the federal Liberal government has abandoned the playing field when it comes to properly funding our South Australian school system; a commitment that will see the creation of new schools in Adelaide's northern and southern suburbs, easing classroom sizes and teacher workloads across the broader school network; and a commitment to building stronger, safer South Australian neighbourhoods, putting the power to rejuvenate and revitalise our local communities back in the hands of local community members.

This is a budget that strikes the right balance and puts the interests of families, communities and small business first and maintains strong, sustainable fiscal management now and into the future. The Weatherill Labor government is on track to deliver strong budget surpluses year on year over the forward estimates through 2020-21. This is in spite of the constant challenges hurled at South Australia by the federal Liberal government and their good mates on the other side of the chamber. Challenges like the impending closure of General Motors Holden, a seismic shift that will irrevocably alter the South Australian economy more than anything experienced before.

While Joe Hockey enjoys his Washington vistas and Tony Abbott enjoys his seat on the backbench for now, it has fallen to the hard work of this Premier and the South Australian government to ameliorate the damage inflicted by this decision to walk away from General Motors Holden.

Mr Pederick interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Fisher, just a moment. Member for Hammond, if there are any interjections, an extra minute will be given to the speaker on their feet.

Mr Pederick: Well, let's not do that. I'm groaning enough.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, then you need to understand—she will get another minute anyway. Just remember, we are going to have a quiet night tonight. Member for Fisher.

Ms COOK: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not know where I am up to now. It has fallen to the hard work of this Premier and the South Australian government to ameliorate the damage inflicted by this decision to walk away from General Motors Holden, in putting jobs and job security first as the closure of Holden's ticks closer. There were challenges like the submarine fiasco, where the ingenuity of the South Australian workforce and the South Australian facilities of Techport were ignored and derided by a federal government run by North Shore Liberals focused solely on Australia’s East Coast, and challenges like South Australia’s energy supply, where once again South Australia has been forced to go it alone, thanks to the maladministration of power supply by the federal Liberal government.

South Australia has met every one of these challenges through strong leadership and the commitment and will to stick to our principles. It is a shame that the same cannot be said of the Leader of the Opposition. South Australia has never experienced a Leader of the Opposition who leads from the rear quite as regularly as the member for Dunstan, a weak leader who bends in the breeze, the mouthpiece of vested interests in South Australia. We do not have a Leader of the Opposition currently, but a puppet of the opposition, and South Australia is poorer for it.

The latest example of the member for Dunstan’s capitulation is his backflip on the government’s modest $370 million bank tax, a tax that asks the banks, who do not pay a cent in GST I might add, to contribute just 0.3 per cent of their profits to help strengthen the South Australian economy through our $200 million Future Jobs Fund, a fund that will help South Australian businesses in the fields of ship building and defence, renewable energy and mining, tourism, food and wine, health and biomedical research, and IT and advanced manufacturing, expand, growing more local job opportunities.

Last week, the member for Dunstan backed this measure. He is on the record, we can look at the tape, but fast-forward a few days and the member for Dunstan has wilted to the will of the big banks. As Leader of the Opposition, the member for Dunstan has proven to be an expert contortionist when it comes to representing the will of big business and his mates in Canberra. South Australia deserves what we have now: a Premier of strength and conviction, not this daffodil in the breeze that is the member for Dunstan.

Unlike those on the other side, the 2017-18 budget is a budget of strong conviction: growing jobs, building health and education and strengthening our neighbourhoods. I am particularly pleased with the recent announcement to build a new birth to year 12 area school at Aldinga. This will help ease student congestion and teacher workload across the school network of the southern suburbs of Adelaide. This will, in part, help the families and students of Hurtle Vale, the new electorate I am standing for, and other southern electorates. It reaffirms the South Australian government’s commitment to education.

This will be in part supported by the duplication of Main South Road from Seaford to Sellicks, easing traffic congestion and creating 165 jobs a year during construction. The announcement will make commuting much easier and safer for all South Australians heading south, but particularly those living and commuting across the southern suburbs of Adelaide on a frequent basis. Given this stretch of road has borne over 50 crashes and over 80 injuries over the past decade, this is a project with practical health and safety benefits attached. During my time as a retrieval nurse, I have personally attended accident scenes on that stretch of road, and it has come too far. I know this is a project long touted by the member for Kaurna and now also the member for Mawson, and I look forward to a contribution from the member for Finniss regarding this duplication, which will no doubt benefit his constituents.

Throughout our state, we are supporting businesses to employ more young people by expanding the Job Accelerator Grant program to include the extra payment for new apprentices and trainees. The program has already proved to be a success, having created 10,000 jobs, and we will now offer businesses up to $15,000 for each new apprentice or trainee they employ. Small businesses account for around 98 per cent of all businesses in South Australia, and we want and need to support them to prosper and grow. Only last week, I was talking to a small business owner in the southern suburbs, a hairdresser, who had put on a new worker last year as a result of the stimulus plan and who is now going to put on another under this new plan, growing her business by nearly 30 per cent.

A passion of mine and of many members of the community I represent is the environment, sourcing clean sustainable renewable energy that protects our environment and builds our economy. I am pleased that this budget builds on Labor's strong commitment to renewable energy by legislating $550 million towards South Australia's energy future. As outlined by the Premier earlier this year, this plan will deliver reliable, clean and affordable power to all South Australians by committing:

$360 million towards building a gas-fired power plant to provide emergency backup power and system stability across the state;

$150 million towards a renewable technology fund, part of which will be used to build Australia's largest battery to store energy from the wind and sun; and

$24 million towards a new plan for accelerating exploration grants to incentivise gas production.

These announcements stand alongside Labor's strong and long-term commitment to renewable energy in South Australia.

Another issue I would like to briefly touch upon is the importance of community space. Greater density housing is an important social and economic mechanism in the 21^st century. It allows individuals and families to better access government and business services and reduce delivery and commuting times, delays that serve as a handbrake on the broader economy. Equally important in this equation is the need for greater, wider and more versatile community space.

One way that this government is supporting this idea is by creating grants for our local sporting clubs to upgrade artificial playing surfaces for soccer, netball, hockey and other sports. We are also committing $4½ million for the stage 1 redevelopment of Priceline Stadium, a fantastic sporting facility, which is extremely well used by netball players from all over the state, and I look forward to seeing this development, as well as the one in the western Parklands, having been a netballer all of my life.

I would also like to touch upon the importance of women's representative sport. I am very proud of the good work undertaken by this government, and the numerous outstanding sporting clubs, in promoting and supporting women's sport. I am very pleased that the government has committed $20 million over two years to the women's sporting facilities fund, which will extend the government's support for women's participation in sport. I have always been an active participant in local sports clubs, as a player and a spectator, along with the rest of my family and many of my friends. The clubs are the heart and soul of my community, and the government's commitments to improvements and upgrades show our longstanding value of supporting local clubs and an active lifestyle.

I am also delighted that we continue to support our multicultural community, and the one-off grants to multicultural and community organisations for infrastructure and equipment are extremely valuable. This budget goes to the heart of our community, using true Labor values to target our community's key priorities. We have listened to our community and we are using every lever we can to ensure that their priorities are met. I am proud of this budget delivered by our government, and I am proud to be a part of it. I commend the budget to the house.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (20:34): I rise to speak to the Appropriation Bill 2017. The first thing I want to discuss in regard to this budget is net balance and net debt. Between 2016-17 and 2019-20, surpluses have been written down by a total of $926 million since the 2016-17 Mid-Year Budget Review, and the total non-financial public sector debt is now $13.84  billion and expected to peak at $14.94 billion in the year 2020.

As we have already heard today and tonight, the Labor government claims that this budget is a jobs budget. This so-called jobs budget forecasts that during the next 12 months South Australia's jobs growth will be the lowest in the nation and only half that of Victoria. That is what it says in the budget. The commonwealth Treasury forecasts 1½ per cent employment growth in 2017-18 nationally, compared with 1 per cent by the South Australian Treasury locally.

As of May, South Australia had the highest unemployment rate in the nation, with a trend of 7.1 per cent, being the highest in the nation for 30 consecutive months: 60,300 people are unemployed, with a further 85,900 people underemployed. What we on this side of the house will do if we are elected next year is boost exports, and that is a sure way to create more jobs.

I want to discuss the closure of Holden's because much has been made of it in this budget. It was in the budget speech. There were comments made by the Hon. Kyam Maher from the other place that this is all the federal government's fault for not handing out money. I am going to talk about the Labor lie. This is a quote from TheSydney Morning Herald when the announcement was made that General Motors in Detroit decided—and it was a sad decision—that Holden's was going to close down in 2017:

Holden managing director Mike Devereux said he did not blame the Coalition government for the company's decision to leave Australia.

A quote from news.com.au is:

Holden general manager Mike Devereux, who just a day before told the Productivity Commission that GM in Detroit had made no decision to close operations, said yesterday 'this is an incredibly difficult day for everybody at Holden, given our long and proud history of building cars in Australia.'

But he added: 'As painful as it is to say, building cars in this country is just not sustainable.'

Another quote from The Advertiser is:

'General Motors has nothing but gratitude and praise for the very strong partnership we've had with successive governments over the decades,' said Mr Devereux, adding that the company was proud to 'have been a part of the industrialisation of this country.'

Another quote from The Advertiser is:

Over the decades, the car industry has employed generations of workers and, until the end, kept close to 50,000 people in a job—once you include the small businesses that supplied parts and services to Australia's car manufacturers.

But the tax payer has largely footed the bill, shelling out more than $5 billion in 'industry assistance' over the past 10 years alone.

The car industry says it invested three dollars for every one dollar of taxpayer funds.

That figure may be debated but one thing is certain: the end was inevitable.

I want to make a comment about GM closing down, and this is a quote from General Motors in Detroit in late 2013, and the headline is 'GM to Transition to a National Sales Company in Australia and New Zealand':

Detroit—As part of its ongoing actions to decisively address the performance of its global operations, General Motors today announced it would transition to a national sales company in Australia and New Zealand. The company also said it would discontinue vehicle and engine manufacturing and significantly reduce its engineering operations in Australia by the end of 2017.

'We are completely dedicated to strengthening our global operations while meeting the needs of our customers,' said GM chairman and CEO Dan Akerson.

'The decision to end manufacturing in Australia reflects the perfect storm of negative influences the automotive industry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of production, small domestic market and arguably the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world.'

As a result of the company's actions, approximately 2,900 positions will be impacted over the next four years—and we have to remember this was made in 2013—comprising 1,600 from the Elizabeth vehicle manufacturing plant and approximately 1,300 from Holden's Victorian workforce. The article went on to state:

Holden said it would continue to have a significant presence in Australia beyond 2017, comprising a national sales company, a national parts distribution centre and a global design studio.

General Motors Holden chairman and managing director, Mike Devereux, said that an important priority over the next four years would be to ensure the best possible transition for workers in South Australia and Victoria. He then said:

This has been a difficult decision given Holden's long and proud history of building vehicles in Australia…We are dedicated to working with our teams, unions and the local communities, along with the federal and state governments, to support our people.

That puts away the Labor lie, the lie perpetuated by the Treasurer, Kyam Maher from the other place and others who try to lay the blame on the federal government because it would not keep shelling out money. The simple fact was that General Motors were going to go no matter if money was handed out or not—and that is exactly what they said. People need to see the truth instead of its being put out in a budget document as a Labor lie and see it for what it is.

I want to reflect on other things regarding the budget and the cost of living. The majority of fees and charges that have hit individuals across the state have increased between 2 per cent and 2.5 per cent. We have seen in this budget an unprecedented measure attempting to put a $370,000 million bank tax on our state banks here in South Australia. We know what happened 25 years ago and what a Labor government did to the former State Bank in this state: they bankrupted the state. The State Bank collapsed and we had economic collapse in this state.

Here we go: a state government so bereft of cash, so bereft after all their fire sales, the sale of the Motor Accident Commission, the forests that were virtually given away and sold well under their value. In regard to the Motor Accident Commission, the government basically budgeted for $500 million to come in and they have got about $2.8 billion and climbing, and yet the money just disappears and it is still not enough.

In all the years I have been in here, since 2006, I have seen rivers of GST gold that were not budgeted for, with former treasurers and the current Treasurer coming in, yet it all gets frittered away. It is frittered away on excesses, yet even then this government proposes a $370 million bank tax to deter investment, to deter business and, in the end, exactly what that will do is to deter jobs. We stood up and made an announcement this week that we will vote against this budget measure part of the bill and we will vote it down because we have to look at the best thing for South Australians.

Then we look at the cost of the emergency services levy that rises every time there is an incident in South Australia. Again, on this side of the house we are committed to taking out $360 million and putting that back into individual pockets right throughout the state—$90 million a year over four years—and there will be plenty more tax reform announcements over time going into the next election.

Other key revenue measures have been announced in this budget, such as almost $50 million over four years from the foreign investor surcharge on stamp duty. Remissions of the emergency services levy have still not been reinstated and, as I indicated, total distributions from the MAC are almost hitting $2.8 billion. We see those good old revenue raisers being installed, with 10 new fixed location road safety cameras on metropolitan roads at a cost of $2 million, but look at their return to Treasury: they expect to raise close to $15 million over four years.

In relation to how this state Labor government complain about federal government funding—and they always complain that they do not get enough money from Canberra—during the next year they will receive more than $10.5 billion in federal funds, close to $700 million more than this year. I reflect on the River Murray diversification funding that this Labor government turned its back on in recent years. It was $100 million that was put through all basin states. It was put through Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

This was for communities so that they could diversify their income, diversify their industries away from being so reliant on the River Murray, which the Labor government make out they are so passionate about. But, no, what did they do, apart from all the deputations especially by myself and the member for Chaffey? They just knocked it back. They said, 'No, we're not going to take that $25 million.' The federal government was handing them money to put into these river communities, yet this government turned its back once again not just on the river communities but on the regions of South Australia.

Let us talk about power costs. It has been talked about here tonight. The government have their so-called $550 million energy plan. Why are we here? The government spruiks, 'We're going to fix up the energy,' after they have completely stuffed it up, switching off Leigh Creek and switching off Port Augusta because of their green ideology. Now, all of a sudden, we are going to have to truck in diesel generators, probably 200 megawatts of diesel, so that we can get through next summer. The simple fact is that if we do not do that—and I can see it from our side of the house—we will not have enough power because the $360 million emergency station the government are talking about building will not be built.

It will probably not even have been started, despite three other gas plants being proposed around the place. Even though this Labor government has all this green ideology, they say, 'That's alright. We will just bring in containers of diesel generation, or perhaps we will bring a ship from overseas with 200 megawatts of diesel. It can burn sump oil, it can burn heavy fuel, whatever.' How is that going with the green credentials? In fact, from what I understand, the green energy target will drop from 49 per cent to 43 per cent because of the actions of the state Labor government.

The Finkel report, which is talked about by both sides of parliament, has just come down. That report talks about what I was saying in relation to Leigh Creek and Port Augusta, that the coal plants in Port Augusta, the coal-fired power stations, are shutting down. Right now, Australia is reliant on coal for 58 per cent of its power generation. In 2030, no matter what is going on in this state, the power generation from coal in Australia will be 56 per cent. It is 58 per cent now and it will only drop by 2 per cent by 2030. This lays the lie to this green ideology.

As of Saturday, a couple of days ago, South Australia has the most expensive power in the world, and that is a disgrace. This is why our people are leaving. This is why industries are not starting up. This is why the only jobs that are attracted to the state are the ones that are paid for, as the member for Fisher was stating. These are the only jobs that are coming in, if people think, 'Oh well, here's some cash, we'll put another job in.' Head offices are coming here only because they are handed $10 million to be here. It is all subsidised. This is how socialism works. It goes perfectly until the money runs out. The money has long run out and this Labor government's chances have run out.

As I indicated, the government is looking at 200 megawatts of diesel generation by December 2017. They are looking at that battery storage of 100 megawatts. We do not think the gas generator will be up until 2018-19 at the very earliest. At the same time, this government with its green ideology is forecasting a reduction in renewable energy as a share of South Australia's total generation mix in 2017-18, which indicates that the government's policies have not only impaired reliability and increased power prices but also will result in a reduced renewable energy outcome.

In regard to regional spending, there is virtually no spending in the regions. There is something like $70-odd million out of a $19 billion budget. There are no new builds in country South Australia in Country Health. In the regions, we are getting less than 2 per cent of the annual capital spend. I have written to the health minister about the Murray Bridge Soldiers' Memorial Hospital emergency rooms and emergency area. It needs $2½ million spent to bring that up to speed after close to four decades of no decent amount of money being spent on it but, no, that is not coming.

All of a sudden we have seen Transforming Health tipped on its head. It has been three years of pain for the clinicians and for the 1.7 million people of South Australia. Overnight, in one day—the clinicians did not even see it coming—there is a supposed $1.1 billion to do extra works on city hospitals, but where are the regions? Apart from the regional hospitals seeing no money, there is no money for the Repat, which is such a disgrace. Our returned servicemen are losing their valued hospital out at Daw Park.

Transforming Health has not just ended: it has failed. Eight Transforming Health projects were announced in the 2015-16 budget and two have been delivered. Six other projects are running a total of 2,460 days late and $20 million over budget. When you look at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, it is so many months overdue. We are already paying the $1 million a day to have it open. There are no patients in there. When they do get in there, there will be the famous EPAS—the $500 million lemon.

EPAS is a system that has cost us about the same as it cost to build the Adelaide Oval and it does not work. It is a shocker, yet more money keeps getting poured into the hole. The Royal Adelaide Hospital was set up for electronic record keeping under EPAS and it is not up to speed. It will not be there on day one if the hospital does open in September. The hospital was not built strong enough to store paper records, so what are they going to do? It is outrageous.

Time expired.

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (20:54): It is a pleasure to get up tonight and speak on behalf of my community in support of this year's state budget, and not just in support of the Appropriation Bill but also in support of the accompanying Budget Measures Bill, which is equally as important and usually gets support from both sides of the house. I hope that sense will prevail during the course of the next few weeks and that both those bills will get support from both this house and the other place.

I particularly want to thank the Treasurer for the ability to work with him over the last few months on this budget. It is a very strong budget that is really focused on the particular need we have to get more jobs in South Australia, more jobs for all of our population across the whole state. I am sure almost everybody in this chamber would agree that is a very important goal, and that is something this budget is focused on delivering. In particular, it is about investing in a new jobs fund that will deliver investments into our growing industries like defence, like medical technologies, like IT—those growing industries that we need to focus on in South Australia, as well as infrastructure spending.

In the next financial year, there will be $2.2 billion spent on infrastructure investments in South Australia. That compares with something like $200 million when we first got into government back in 2002. There has been a tenfold increase in the amount of infrastructure spending that this government has invested in. I will have more to say about that later on in the grievance debate, about how that is benefiting areas like the southern suburbs of Adelaide.

Of course, we are also continuing our investments in Job Accelerator Grants. These have been a huge help for small and medium-sized businesses that want to grow their staff, that are growing businesses. We are helping them with an up to $10,000 grant for each new employee they put on, and this budget has extended that to up to $15,000 for each new apprentice and each new trainee those small and medium-sized businesses in South Australia put on. We want to see more and more tradies and more and more apprentices getting work, and we think there needs to be extra support for those businesses that are willing to do that.

There is a measure to help fund those new investments in jobs in this budget, and that is that we will impose a major bank levy in South Australia, modelled very similarly to the major bank levy that the federal Liberal government has imposed.

The Hon. P. Caica: And which the state Liberals support.

Mr PICTON: Yes, the state Liberals support the federal levy but not so much the state levy. I think all of us have a relationship with banks. We all grew up having a relationship with banks. I fondly remember the days of having a Dollarmites account back at school. You felt like the bank was your friend. You felt like the bank was there to support you and help you out. I guess back in those days the Commonwealth Bank, which had the Dollarmites accounts, was owned by the people of Australia so it probably was there to help you out, but not so much these days.

I think one of those things about becoming an adult is that you realise that banks are not your friend and that banks are not there to help you out of the good of their heart. Banks are there to make money, and make money they do in Australia. They certainly make a lot of money, and good on them; that is great. We have the most profitable banks in the world here in Australia. The five major banks combined—NAB, ANZ, Westpac, the Commonwealth, and the Macquarie Group—make over $30 billion profit each and every year; that is, $30,000 million profit that they make each and every year.

That is a significant amount of profit, more than any other bank in the whole world makes in terms of their profits, and those profits are largely coming from ordinary Australians. They are coming from mums and dads and businesses across the country who use those banks, who invest with those banks, who get their home loans through those banks, who get charged exorbitant fees through those banks and who use those banks for their investment advice, sometimes to their detriment. That is where those profits come from. At the same time, these banks have been closing their service offerings to Australians. They have been closing branches all around Australia, focusing their closures on regional branches, which have been closing all over the country, particularly in South Australia.

They have been withdrawing services, they have been offshoring jobs—they have been sending jobs overseas out of all of those banks—and there have been a number of scandals where those banks have been offering plainly dodgy financial advice in the past few years to the people of Australia. Lots of people have lost money, unfortunately, because of the bad advice they have from those banks, which were not there to look after the people of South Australia but were there to look after their own bottom line.

You just have to look at Westpac. They run around with their BankSA label, pretending that they are the piping shrike ads—I think defacing our state emblem of the piping strike in this state—saying what great South Australians they are, but if you look at what they have done, they have closed 21 branches in our state over the past couple of years.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PICTON: I am sure lots are in the regional areas, which the honourable member is very concerned about. They have also cut 387 jobs from South Australia. They are withdrawing from South Australia in terms of both their branches and their jobs at the same time that they are making record profits.

At the same time, you talk to businesses all across the state, and I have done this in my own electorate. I have done it when I have gone into the regions. I specifically remember meeting businesses in the Riverland that were saying that they were desperate to expand—desperate to get loans to expand—but the banks would not help them. The banks are not interested in helping them. Unless you are from Sydney or Melbourne, the banks are not interested in helping people from South Australia, despite what their ads may say. Because of this, they are making a significant amount of money.

At the same time, these banks are exempt from GST. They have a special deal under the GST arrangements where they are undertaxed. The federal budget papers make it clear how much they are undertaxed. It is to the tune of $4,650 million this coming financial year. They are making $30,000 million profit, and they are avoiding GST to the tune of $4,650 million this financial year. This is an extremely special deal that these banks have, and I am sure there are businesses all across the state that would love to have this special deal. For every other service provider business in the state and the country, one-eleventh of everything they charge has to go to the taxman in GST, but not our banks.

Because of this, this state government and this Premier have been raising this issue on the national level for a number of years, saying that we need to address the undertaxation of these banks. That GST revenue, of course, goes to the states and goes to fund important services like health and education as well as the important things we want to invest in in terms of jobs for South Australia. The response of the commonwealth has been to introduce a levy. We think that is good; we support that levy they have introduced. That is a levy to the tune of $1,500 million per year out of that $30,000 million a year profit that those banks are making. Whereas that GST, if it were introduced, would come to the states, none of the commonwealth levy is coming to the states at all.

The commonwealth is keeping all of that money despite the enormous cuts they have made to their health and education spending over the past few years of the Abbott-Turnbull government. They are keeping all of that money, and at the same time the commonwealth says, 'The states should raise more of their own revenue.' They are putting the emphasis on the states going out and raising more of their own revenue. They have in fact even said states should consider raising their own income tax taxes.

What have we done? We have considered this very carefully, and we have introduced our own major bank levy as part of this budget. This is a very small levy in comparison to the profits the banks are making, in comparison to the undertaxation of the banks and also in comparison to the federal bank levy. Our levy would only raise $97 million a year out of that $30,000 million a year profit that the banks are making. It works out to about 0.3 per cent of their profits. The tax itself is on the bank liabilities, and that works out to just $3.60 for every $1 million of those bank liabilities.

Why are we doing this? Because we want to invest in jobs here in South Australia. We want to support those growing businesses, many of which cannot get support from the banks. We will back them to invest in this state through our jobs fund, a $200 million jobs fund which is part of this budget which is funded thanks to that new budget measure, the major bank levy.

It only affects five major banks: the NAB, ANZ, Westpac, Commonwealth Bank and the Macquarie Group. It is only those five, not smaller banks and not credit unions. It is very consistent with the commonwealth levy that has been put in place, only reflective of our proportion of the gross national product, about 6 per cent of what the federal bank levy is. It is quite a small proportion of what they have introduced. This only applies to liabilities and major deposits; it does not apply to jobs, everyday savings accounts, home loans, business loans and those things. It is completely consistent with what is happening at the federal level.

The banks themselves have admitted that it is affordable here. The head of ANZ went on the radio the other day as part of their scare campaign, but he could not help but admit that actually we can afford this. He said the banks can afford this because it is such a small proportion of the huge profits they are making. They have started a scare campaign in South Australia. They are campaigning very hard. You cannot help but open a newspaper and see a whole bunch of ads for the banks or turn on a TV or open your Twitter account and see ads from the banks defending themselves and trying to stop this tax from coming in.

They could have almost paid for the whole tax with the amount that they are spending on TV ads at the moment in South Australia. All their propaganda that they are putting out is full of scare tactics. They are petrified. They do not really care too much about our tax, because it is such a small tax, but they do not want to see this extending to other states. They do not want to see other states doing what we have done here, so they are trying to stop us here so that no other state would dare consider this.

Of course, commonwealth Treasury have considered this and have demonstrated that their much larger major bank levy will not impact the economy whatsoever, or to a very marginal extent, which is what the secretary of the commonwealth Department of the Treasury said. That is advice from the commonwealth Treasury on this and, like the commonwealth, we have included in our Budget Measures Bill here protections for South Australian customers to ensure that it is not passed on to customers in their bank accounts or their home loans or their business loans.

That same protection at the commonwealth level has ensured that there has not been anything passed on to account holders from the much larger major bank levy at the national level, nor would they want to, which I think is pretty clear, because if they were to do that, either at the national level or at a state level, people would very easily walk to another bank, whether to another bank that would not be imposing those fees or to a credit union. It is not in their interests to do so at all, nor could they justify it, because nothing in terms of our levy applies to those accounts or loans. It is only on their liabilities, essentially their bonds and other investments that they have.

What we have seen in the past few days is the Leader of the Opposition show that he is completely in the pocket of those big banks and has surrendered completely to the scare campaign. On budget night, the Leader of the Opposition came out and said, 'We are not sure we agree with this; however, we will continue to support the budget measures, as the opposition party always has in the Legislative Council.' In fact, he said that the Premier should get his budget, as delivered in the budget papers.

Unfortunately, that did not last very long. It only took one meeting from the CEO of the ANZ who came here, flew to Adelaide and met with the Leader of the Opposition, who then suddenly changed his tune completely and said, 'We might block this. We might throw out 150 years of tradition of supporting the democratically elected government's budget measures, throw that completely out the window and block the Budget Measures Bill because we are scared of the banks and we want to put their big profits, their massive super profits, ahead of the interests of South Australians and ahead of investing in jobs for South Australians.'

There has not been one peep from him criticising the much larger federal major banks levy, and of course, never would he ever criticise the federal Liberal government on anything, but when it comes to South Australia imposing a measure, which will support jobs in this state, that is worth throwing out 150 years of tradition in supporting a democratically elected government and their budget because he is worried about the banks.

I think it is worth noting some of the research that came out of The Australia Institute today, which has been looking into this and researching this matter and has come out with its impartial advice on the South Australian major bank levy. It said that it looked at examples of bank levies globally, which are common, and points out that the IMF recommends a safe maximum for a bank levy of 20 basis points. In comparison to that 20 basis points safe levy, what do you think the South Australian levy is? Do you think it is 15, 10 or 5? No, it is 0.36 basis points, compared with a safe level of 20.

So, it is comparatively very small compared with what the IMF thinks is a very safe level. As The Australia Institute states, 'Australian banks can well and truly afford it.' They have said that it is just $3.60 in every million dollars of bank liabilities. They have said that bank levies are common around the world and that, combined, the state and the commonwealth levies are only a third of the IMF safe maximum level. The bank levy could be an employment creator if the money is used in employment-intensive services like health and education, which of course this government is investing heavily in, unlike what we are seeing at the federal level where they have turned their back on education funding and health funding.

The bank levy simply cannot deter investment in South Australia, as it is levied on a proportion of the bank's national liabilities. All this hoopla and spin and scare campaign that we have heard—saying that banks will try to avoid investment in South Australia because of this levy—are not true because the levy is based on their national liabilities and a proportion of that. They have also said federal and state governments are suffering revenue problems. They have a choice of either raising taxes on workers or taxing the world's most profitable banks. Obviously, we have taken the latter option.

If the opposition were to be believed, either (a) you would not invest in those jobs funds and you would not support those growing industries in South Australia, or (b) you would have to impose a tax on something else instead. You have to impose a tax that would hurt South Australian families, that would hurt them when they are sitting around the dinner table trying to pay their bills.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: What spending do they not want?

Mr PICTON: What spending do they not want? Their other option, (c), would be to cut services from the budget. You hear the opposition leader saying, 'There is waste that we are going to cut. Waste, waste, waste.' But at the end of the day the vast majority of everything that this government spends goes to hospitals, schools and community services. At the end of the day, if you are going to make big savings, you have to cut into those services.

The pressure is going to be on, if we are apparently five minutes to the election, as the Leader of the Opposition says, to make the case as to which of those services they would cut if they came into government. They are not going to have this source of revenue. They have said that they are going to bring back remissions for ESL to help people with their $2 million homes. So, what are they going to do instead? What services will be cut instead? I think that everybody in South Australia will be asking those questions of the alternative government in the lead-up to the next election: what services will they cut?

I think it is very disappointing that 150 years of tradition have been turned on its head just because the Leader of the Opposition became scared of the CEO of one of the major banks. It is very disappointing that they are putting at risk the investments we want to make into growing jobs in this state and supporting our industries that are growing. I think it is very disappointing that they will not come clean with the people of South Australia about what services or what increased taxes they are going to put the people of South Australia at risk of by their dangerous actions in not supporting this levy.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (21:13): I appreciate the member for Kaurna's contribution. I was semi-impressed, indeed, by the fact that there was very little referral directly to notes. It shows me that he has devoted much of his life in recent months to budget processes, bilateral discussions, various priority needs, trying to determine where the greatest level of need exists, trying to determine what the outcomes are and trying to get the balance right. I might reflect on the fact that I think this is the first time I have spoken in this chamber without a tie on, so I apologise for that.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Everyone has been talking about it.

The Hon. P. Caica: You look good for it. You look better for it.

Mr GRIFFITHS: It is terrible, but I suppose it is the last time that I am going to be here. Member for Colton, I think there are 20 sitting days left or something like that. I take a great interest, even though this is the fourth budget that I have listened to, reviewed, been part of the discussions on, tried to understand the implications of, tried to appreciate where the positives that come from it are and tried to expand upon what I see are potential negatives or areas where improvement could occur. I will never get sick of it. I am a detail person who loves the challenge of being required to read it.

Once upon a time, I did have a fanciful dream that I might have had an opportunity one day to sit where the Treasurer is and present a budget, but that was never to be. I appreciate the effort that goes into it. While I do not agree with everything, I understand the effort that goes into it, in some distinct, separate sort of way. I know that a lot of politics comes into it. There are a lot of varying community needs that come into it and the challenge is to get it right.

I want to put on the record that I am a person who believes in convention, but I changed on this one. I actually spoke quite passionately in the party room when we made the decision about this about the frustration that I have and the need for us to review our position on it. I am a person who believes in the sanctity of the fact that we have been here for 160 years and the parliament has ensured that those who sit to the right-hand side of the Speaker are given the authority for the budget to get through, but I felt that the time was necessary for a change.

I do not believe it is because of the fact that I am not here next year. I want South Australia to have good government. Good government requires some assurity to exist. It requires that a balance be struck and that people become the winner and that is why the different decision has been made.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

Mr GRIFFITHS: Not me, not me.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! He is not in his seat.

Mr GRIFFITHS: There are some things that I want to talk about. When I review the budgets I try to be fair, and probably part of my political weakness is that I do not argue the point strongly enough where I see a wrong and that I accept the rights too easily, but it is only because I am a glass half full person who actually wants to focus on that.

The Hon. P. Caica: That's what they say about you. We don't say that about you. You're a decent bloke.

Mr GRIFFITHS: You are a good bloke. That is where politics has gone beyond me and there will be a future member for Narungga who might have a very different personality and get different outcomes for the community.

In his contribution tonight, the member for Chaffey referred to a visit that he paid to Narungga (Goyder) electorate last week and he talked about the three businesses that he visited. He did not actually quote the specifics of one of those, but one of the businesses that we visited, a very significant employer of close to 500 people, has a power bill of $130,000 per month. With the policy settings in Australia and our nation that have created this tsunami of situations where 1 July represented such a significant increase, their potential cost increases are $26,000 a month or an extra $312,000 a year, which takes them close to $1.9 million in electricity per year.

They do not have backup generators, but they gave an example to me of the product that they use to produce their products. When a power failure occurs that is significant that stops their line processing their animals, indeed they can lose a whole shift. The amazing part is that they go through 14,000 pigs per week, which is over the 3,500 range. Imagine the capital involved in all of this. That is an example put to me very strongly by a business that wants to remain in regional areas. It wants to provide employment opportunities in regional areas and it relies upon that most basic necessity, electricity, to do so.

At the other end of the scale is a small supermarket that I spoke to last year, which is on Yorke Peninsula. They have gone out and spent $50,000 on a diesel generator to guarantee electricity to keep their product cold when they need to during lengthy periods of no general supply. They did not want to spend that. It took an enormous hit on their profitability for that year, but they did so out of desperation.

The minister and the Treasurer want it to be better. We all want it to be better too. I will listen with great interest to the response given by the minister to the question from the member for Stuart today about the $360 million commitment from the state government and the question about the near Mannum project and the near Mallala project at Reeves Plains. I was grateful to be at the Adelaide Plains Council meeting when Alinta made the presentation about their $450 million project. Congratulations to them. I think that is fantastic—six generators, I understand, and a 300-megawatt unit of production, gas fired, right on the gas line and close to the network. It is a perfect location for it to occur, and that is where the market has seen an opportunity

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: What are they waiting for?

Mr GRIFFITHS: As I understand it, the necessary development approvals.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: They've got it.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I am not sure if they have gone that far yet, minister. It was section 49, major projects status declaration, board's final position required for approval later this year, with construction to commence, hopefully, early next year. That is an example where they made a corporate decision, which many of us are frustrated by, for their other operations in Port Augusta and Leigh Creek.

They have decided to invest in another part of South Australia for, I believe, the 207,000 retail customers they have across the nation as part of their electricity generation. It is an example of where, I suppose, the question from the member for Stuart is an appropriate one, given the announcement of this investment to occur from private enterprise, about the need for the South Australian taxpayers' investment to occur. It was asked and I am hoping for a fulsome answer. The Treasurer provided an answer to part of that.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr GRIFFITHS: Yes, he did. It is an example of where the really serious questions still need to be asked and the answers need to be given. I noted that as part of the Leader of the Opposition's response earlier today he talked about revenue writedowns across the forward estimates of $438 million. That is a concern, there is absolutely no doubt, because when there is a prediction for revenues to decrease that can only mean one thing: that transactions are less and therefore revenue coming into Treasury is less, and therefore there is a lesser willingness, or indeed a lesser capacity, of the community to spend.

To have a reducing revenue climate in the state Treasury to ensure that liabilities are met, that opportunities are seized and that the state grows, prevents the challenge. I think the budget papers reflect—and if I am wrong, the Treasurer will correct me—that the relative GST payment is $144.97 or thereabouts. That is a very high rate. Given that it is reflective of the relative capacity of a state to tax and to raise its revenues, that being such a high rate represents a significant challenge for our state.

Other less gracious parts of our nation make comments about South Australia and the payment that we receive from the GST carve-up. It is one of the ongoing debates that will occur about the relativities attached to that. I think in the Western Australia scenario they receive back in the mid 30s from every $1 of GST that is created as part of the transaction basis. We have to improve that. We have to ensure that the policy settings that flow from the budget create the economy that ensures that individual entrepreneurism and pursuit of success are achievable on the basis of the effort being made by that person, the product that they produce and the quality of employees they have, and that the outcome equals a bottom line profit, because from it come the real opportunities for growth and employment, and that is what all of us want to see.

Like many in this chamber, I have gone through the stages of my own children finding positions, and I am blessed to have a grandchild now who in 20 years' time will be looking for a position. I want that to be in South Australia. We have to ensure that the decisions we make now are right because they are part of a policy setting that will have an impact in decades' time.

About some of the specifics of the budget, I noted with great interest and I congratulate the Mount Barker community that they have $1.9 million towards their hospital. The Minister for Health, as part of a question I think from his own side, reflected upon the advocacy of the member for Mayo in the pursuit of service extension and funds. I take this opportunity to remind the chamber that in the case of Yorketown Hospital a far lesser amount was sought. Dollars are part of the solution for surgery procedures at Yorketown Hospital. Importantly, though, it is also the policy setting that ensures that the regional areas have the ability to attract and retain skilled professionals so that it is not necessary for an increasing number of procedures to be done in a more centralised area or in Adelaide.

In our case, Yorketown Hospital has missed out. I was grateful that one of the advisers of the minister rang me on the Monday after the budget to confirm that the announcement about the changes to the Yorketown Hospital surgical procedures was occurring that day. I was pleased that they had chosen to make the announcement on a day that would allow local publicity by the local newspapers to occur sooner rather than later, but I was frustrated by the decision, I have to tell you.

In the case of Yorketown Hospital, where I convened a public meeting and 607 people attended and 2,049 people signed a petition calling for its retention, I do not know what you have to do when it comes to local effort being made and a demonstration of the commitment that a local community has for the retention of a service. I believe that was it, but it seemingly made no difference at all.

For the southern Yorke Peninsula community, which has a population of over 5,000 which swells significantly in holiday times, it will mean not necessarily a lot of direct action for those people but, for those who need the services that were provided as part of those three surgical areas that are now moving to Wallaroo, it creates a greater frustration, a greater need to travel and a greater need to try to find accommodation. It is just another dislocation and what we see as another challenge to the future viability of all service areas when it comes to health on the peninsula.

I noted also in part of the review that has been undertaken that the capital spend on regional health was a little bit under 2 per cent. It is reasonable, and I reflect upon the previous minister for health, John Hill, having told me that on any one evening up to 500 people from regional South Australia were in metropolitan hospitals, that the majority of spend will occur there, particularly with part of the announcements that have been made over the last 10 years and most certainly in recent weeks, but we want our share, too.

Those of us who sit on this side, who live and breathe the regions, who travel here during sitting periods but bless the opportunities we get to go home and be among our own communities, get frustrated by that. We know of backlogs and we know of instances where individuals, via donation, have had to raise significant dollars to do what one would consider basic maintenance in some cases. But communities do that because of a sense of ownership they have over their hospitals, but it is becoming increasingly difficult.

I remember I think it was a Country Health rally that was held as part of the 2007 Country Health mark 1 public disagreement that occurred. I had people from the central Yorke Peninsula district on the steps of Parliament House. They are property owners, farmers in the area, and they are getting a bit older now, and they said to me—and this lady is very blunt—'Steven, I'm sick of this. Instead of paying taxes, I just want write a cheque out to go to the hospital. How do I do that?' You cannot do that, but it is an example of the emotion they feel and where they want to see some tangible benefits.

I will put on the record some good things that are happening in Goyder, and I sincerely appreciate the assistance and support that have been provided by all ministers who have collectively made the decision. In the case of roads, as part of last year's budget announcement about $34 million is to be spent, so thank you, Treasurer, for giving that a tick off, I have to tell you. It is good work in the main. There is an area of project I have a bit of frustration with, but I have put that on the record in this place before. It is the start only, though, of the investment: it is not the final, and I am sure the member for Flinders and many other areas have sections of roadway they want to ensure are improved. We know that because we get people talk to us in our communities all the time about it.

I note—and it is a shame the Treasurer cannot hear this little bit—that because of the details included in the budget in my previous experience in a really serious review of it, I asked a question of the shadow treasurer about the contingency sums. He tells me that for the 2016-17 year it was $135 million but that for 2017-18, which is the period approaching the 17 March 2018 election, it has jumped. Those of you in the chamber and listening to this might ask what it is now. It is $580 million. It has gone from $135 million to $580 million. That is a fourfold increase, and you have to question what it is for.

The only conclusion that can be reached by virtue of the amount that it now is, and the timing that it now is, is that it is part of a war chest of funds that will be held in reserve and part of future announcements that the government intends to put out there to entice the people and to try to garner some level of support—I am not sure how that will happen—and to put dollars towards them for projects and services in their area. I would love a detailed explanation to be provided to me as to why, as part of an ongoing, continuous four-year forward estimates budget cycle, you have such a significant increase from $135 million to $580 million for contingencies.

There is also an unallocated fund within the Department for Transport for capital works that goes into the future. It is in a similar vein, but it is a contingency sum, which you could argue quite appropriately is used for things like enterprise bargaining agreements, wage negotiations, some projects that might have overruns, some need for budget review to occur based on a pressure point that exists from a different portfolio, but that is just such a significant amount that it is difficult to comprehend the quantum of those dollars.

I felt a lot of frustration when the Hon. David Ridgway highlighted, as part of his shadow portfolio budget review, that the PIRSA budget is being cut over the next four years by a collective $50 million. Any of us who live in regional areas respect the importance of agriculture to our economy. Many in this chamber have already spoken about its value and the billions of dollars it represents. When we are back in our electorates, we also see the absolutely outstanding level of investment that has been made by individual farmers in their equipment and the technology they use to increase their yields, for soil retention and moisture retention, and to improve the maintenance of their land while they are the current generation who controls it.

It is frustrating because it is such a significant amount, which only builds upon PIRSA funds that have been removed in recent years, and it continues to occur, and investment should be occurring now. There is a history of frustration with the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, a great innovation announced in the last period of the Kerin government, as I understand it, and opened as part of the Labor build program from 2002 onwards. It has collected some of the most blessed scientists when it comes to the ability to grow products in Australia, but it has been reduced again, so a great deal of frustration exists there.

I have also been trying to understand the timing of the delivery of services and intended programs as part of the budget. I am reminded that in the 2016-17 budget it was intended that the Northern Adelaide Plains would be a pest-free area during that financial year. That has not been achieved and it has been delayed until the 2017-18 year. That becomes part of the marketability of that area, so it is a really important issue that needs to be addressed. Linked to that is the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme, and there are a lot of members in this chamber who have some knowledge of that. It is a $110 million investment which, as I understand it, will come from SA Water, and it is hoped that a $45 million federal co-funding announcement will be made.

I have asked around, as other members have, and we hope that it is very soon because it is an important part of the two areas of government working together collectively to grow opportunity in what is acknowledged as a significant horticulture area in our nation. It is a chance to use up to an eventual additional 20 gigalitres of recycled water and ensure that we continue to grow high-value food products and create the job opportunities that come from it, particularly in an area that needs it very strongly, so I hope that the federal announcement comes very soon. I congratulate the SA Water board's support and the government board's support for this. It has been a project that has been supported by all parties and it needs to happen very soon.

I also want to put on the record—and this was only recently identified by me, as I received a letter yesterday from the Hon. Ian Hunter, Minister for Water—a project for water improvement in the Warooka/Point Turton area at the bottom of Yorke Peninsula. They are serviced by underground water, which is hard, I think it is fair to say. It is not necessarily nice to drink, but it is important to have, and water purifiers and cleaners exist in some homes. This is a $13.1 million significant project for the area and, amazingly, it has gone through the system quickly because it is before the Public Works Committee on Thursday morning.

I have been in contact with the minister's office and they have contacted my office. I am going to the public works briefing, and I reserve the right to ask a few questions and then see if I need a briefing afterwards, but generally I think it is fantastic. It is a great effort, and the Yorke Peninsula council area has something like 16 communities that do not have a reticulated water supply. This will not only ensure that current customers have an improvement but, as I understand it, it will extend to a wider area, so that is a good thing.

I want to finish with a frustration I have about the number of public servants who live and work in regional areas. I am told by those who have reviewed the budget papers very seriously that in the 2016-17 year there were 18,028 public servants in regional South Australia. For 2017-18, it is intended to be 17,592, a reduction of 436.

The member for Kaurna referred to bank closures and that, too, has frustrated the life out of me. I have expressed the frustration that I feel with each bank that has contacted me a couple of days before they intend to make a public announcement because I know that the frustration of the community will be profound. I am not trying to defend the closures in any way, but in this case we find in the budget papers that more than the number of bank employees who have had their position taken away—as government members have said, in regional areas—are being lost for the public servants, by changes within the structure of the relative government departments. So that is an accountability issue, too.

I want to look forward to the passage of a budget in some form in the future. The Leader of the Opposition is entirely right in his pursuit of the bank levy changes that the opposition will be introducing amendments to, but we have to ensure that this budget actually provides a forum for South Australia to be a better place.

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (21:35): I will not hold the house for very long. I rise today to speak in support of the budget bills in their entirety, and I would say this, that I have heard many people here tonight and earlier today—the member for Morphett, for example—speak about the 16^th budget that he has witnessed from the other side, and it will be the 16^th budget that I have been a part of from the government benches. I would like to say this: despite what others are saying, I think this is a very, very good budget. It is a budget for our economic times and the situation we find ourselves in.

There is no doubt that these are tough times, very tough times. We have a transitioning economy, and what this government is looking at is how we assist, appropriately, in transitioning that economy. Within this, it is a budget about jobs, it is a budget that creates a foundation—a platform for the future of this state—and I will detail some of the very good initiatives within the budget.

It is safe to say, too, that treasurers have never been my favourite people, whether that be the Treasurer of the state or whether it be the treasurer of a football club. They are tight-fisted people, and that is their job. They do not like, necessarily, spending money, and they corral things. But I think this budget is a very good budget, and I congratulate our Treasurer on what I think is probably the best budget I have seen in the almost 16 years that I have been here. I mean that because it is a tough period that we are going through. It is one that we are confronting, front on, and we are going to do what it is that is necessary to make sure that this state has a productive future beyond this period that we are transitioning to.

I have listened to a lot of the speakers, and it is safe to say that I get frustrated by a lot of what has been said. I took a few notes while I was sitting in my office, and I see some continuing to perpetuate the myths. The member for Chaffey, for example, was talking about and continuing to say that we were the cause of the city that lost its lights. Again, it has been evidenced that nothing that has been done by this government caused the total statewide blackout. It was not renewable energy. It was—as the member for Giles reminded me today—that cyclone that came up from the south of South Australia and created a situation where it damaged our infrastructure.

It is beyond belief that people like the member for Chaffey and others fall in line with what were the first comments of the federal government after that event, that it was the investment in renewables that caused the problem for South Australia with respect to the provision and the interruption of our energy supplies. It is just a nonsense.

The member for Chaffey also spoke about his son having to move away, working for a South Australian company that won the tender to decommission infrastructure in Victoria. I think it is fantastic that we have a South Australian company that is actually operating at the national level and taking with it people from South Australia to be able to do that decommissioning. That is what we want. We want businesses in South Australia to ultimately be an export performer for the state of South Australia. I think that is a good thing. The member for Chaffey confuses me. I do not get confused that often, but I certainly get confused when he and others on the other side say the things that they do, because it does not make sense.

The member for Mount Gambier is a very decent human being and he is a great addition to this parliament. He spoke about Transforming Health and how most of its focus is in Adelaide and very little has been done in regional South Australia. I will tell you, as a person who sat around cabinet for an extended period—not as long as I would have liked, but for a period of time—I am a great supporter of Transforming Health. Admittedly, its genesis was probably in saving money because health is a black hole that will suck every dollar it can into that black hole. Things needed to be done with respect to the management and the expenditure that has been put into our health system.

The reality is that we cannot have a hospital that services the needs of every South Australian in every part of South Australia. We need specialist hospitals and the most appropriate place for those is in metropolitan Adelaide. That is not to say that our regional hospitals still will not be able to meet the majority of the needs of those people in regional South Australia. We cannot have brain surgeons operating in Whyalla or a host of other types of specialties sprinkled across South Australia; they need to be centralised, they need to be consolidated and the best place to consolidate those is in Adelaide. I support Transforming Health. I am also very pleased with what we have done in regard to adding to Transforming Health, to put the finishing touches on it through this budget.

I am not one who goes out there and publicly slanders our government. What I do is communicate with the Minister for Health and other people behind closed doors where you are supposed to do that. There is no doubt that I had my discussions with the Minister for Health about certain aspects of Transforming Health that I thought were impacting upon the western suburbs not as well as they should have in regard to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

I took that up, and I am very pleased that my colleagues of the western suburbs also took these matters up, with the Minister for Health. As a consequence, we now have the upgrade to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This is one of our busiest hospitals and the hospital that I was born in. We have retained cardiac services there, which I think is the proper and appropriate thing to do. I am very pleased about The Queen Elizabeth Hospital upgrade.

We are also seeing so many other good initiatives being introduced through this budget in regard to health in South Australia: the new women's hospital, additional money to the Lyell McEwin, additional money to Flinders, additional money to Modbury Hospital, which I am sure you are very pleased about Deputy Speaker, and additional money being added to the services that will be provided at Noarlunga Hospital. This is a very good and sensible initiative through this particular budget.

I disagree with some of the comments made by the good member for Mount Gambier, who is, as I said, a decent bloke, but he needs to understand that we cannot have all services and all hospitals being a one size fits all for every need of every person in South Australia throughout regional South Australia. We just cannot do that.

I want to try to be positive. I am positive about the budget, but I find it a little bit more difficult to be positive about the opposition. I have spent almost 16 years here—it will be 16 years, concluding on 16 March next year when I retire from this place—and I have to say that in my time here I have never seen a more pathetic opposition in all my time. I really have not seen an opposition as bereft of ideas as the one that we have before us now.

They talk about policies and they say, 'We're going to do this and we're going to do that.' For example, the member for Chaffey again said, 'We're going to lead from the front by ensuring that there is overseas investment.' It is very, very good rhetoric, but not once have I heard from the opposition about how they are going to do it. They have statements, not policies. I think they are a policy-free zone.

The member for Hammond wants to increase exports. Again, he does not talk about how that is going to occur. He talked about Labor lies. He wanted to talk about the lies that have been promulgated and promoted by the Labor Party, but what I think is a more appropriate approach is to actually talk about the Liberal farce, the lack of policies and what it is that they are actually going to do.

I will tell you right now that the party opposite has to really articulate not just the rhetoric that was, I guess, exemplified at the last election—'Take the handbrake off,' I think it was—but, again, they did not articulate what that meant or what it is they are going to do in regard to what they say needs to be done about our economy in South Australia. That is the defining difference between us and the opposition. We actually put forward plans. We believe in them and, if they do not work, we tweak them. You actually have to do something. I cannot for the life of me fathom what it is that the opposition says they are going to do. They say what needs to be done but they do not say how they are going to do it. I think they lack courage.

Let's put it this way: the opposition keep talking about us and how bad we have been over 16 years, but we have been here for 16 years. They seem to exemplify a very good opposition because they have been in opposition for that period of time. Whether or not they make the transition from opposition to government, should they win the next election, I fear that the lack of talent on that side is not going to augur well for South Australia. I am not pre-empting an outcome because I think it is quite incredible that this election seems to be on a knife edge, but the one thing that I know that differentiates this side from the opposition is our ability to work hard to make sure that we remain in government.

We do not have instilled into us that we have a right to be in government. We believe that we can be in government and we work accordingly, and that is one thing that the opposition does not do. They do not work hard and I guess they have shown that through their 16 good years as an opposition. When I say 'good years', they have been satisfied with thinking that they are good at being an opposition, but they have no idea about what it is like to be in government, and I hope that they do not after the next election.

We also heard from the member for Hammond and others about General Motors and espousing the words made by the people from General Motors who said we were not competitive. To a certain extent that is probably true, but what did not help us in the management of General Motors was both the commonwealth government's and the Liberal opposition's acquiescence to driving them out of town, to not supporting General Motors and not supporting or fighting for its retention. We have seen that. They caved in and, ultimately, General Motors were run out of town.

That might have happened anyway, but it was assisted by a federal government and the opposition here in South Australia that acquiesced to the federal government saying, 'We're not going to support this very important component of South Australia's economy.' Now it is gone. It is gone and what this budget is about is making sure that, come the time when they close their doors, we have something in place that we hope in the short term to the medium term will help us to transition to an economy that is different from what has existed since it was created by the Playford government many years ago.

I want to make a few comments about the bank levy. I think it is very good. The member for Kaurna spoke very well about aspects of the bank levy and I do not intend to repeat too much of it. However, $3.60 in every million dollars that exists there—point zero something, a very minuscule amount of money—where is that money going to go? That money is going to go to promoting jobs in South Australia, to driving our economy, to incentivising aspects of our economy, and that will in turn make it a successful transition to the new economy that we know South Australia requires.

What is beyond belief are the actions of the leader in regard to the change-about from the time only a week or so ago when he said, 'We are not happy about it, but we won't oppose it because that's not what happens in opposition. We support the government of the day with respect to its measures and its budget measures.' That changed completely. It seems to me that he has either been bought off or he got scared and ran away, with his Brave Sir Robin approach to the way he manages things. Essentially, he was in the spotlight, freaked out and said, 'We are going to do this.'

We talked about 150 years of protocol here in South Australia, but in reality it goes back many hundreds of years before that in regard to the appropriate actions of an opposition concerning the budget measures of the government of the day. I think it is pathetic. Not only is it pathetic but it is a pathetic action by the Leader of the Opposition that has shown he is not worthy to be the Leader of the Opposition and certainly not worthy to be a premier of South Australia. Weak-kneed, that is what I would say.

I thought the member for Goyder made some very good comments. He is a decent human being and a very good local member, and he will be a loss to this parliament when he retires at the next election. I think not only has he been a good local member but he has also been a very good person to deal with in parliament. I do not necessarily agree with everything he has said, but he believes in what he says, which is different from the person I was previously speaking about.

He spoke about the Northern Plains. That is another good initiative of this government, to make sure that we extend the recycled water to the northern suburbs because agriculture and clean, green food from our clean, green environment are going to be one of those planks underpinning our new economy. That can be achieved by extending the water supplies. I think the member for Goyder also talked about what is before the Public Works Committee this coming Thursday, but also before the Public Works Committee is the extension of the BIL in the Barossa, heading further north. Again, that is a good initiative, to use water that is going to open up more land to agriculture that in turn is going to assist our economy.

I want to finish off where I started. I think this is a very good budget. I think it is the best budget I have seen since I have been here. I want to congratulate the Treasurer and those who worked with the Treasurer, including the member for Kaurna and others, on the preparation of this budget. I think it is a budget that underpins the future of South Australia. I think it is a budget that has vision. I think it is a budget for our times, and I am very pleased to be a member of a government that has introduced a budget that I think is going to benefit all South Australians and, indeed, is one that is going to be engaged with and embraced by our community.

I particularly like the initiative that looks at our big community funds and what we can do within our community that will benefit our people across South Australia and all our communities in regard to initiatives that the people of our community believe are important to them. I commend the bill to the house. I hope it has a speedy and safe passage through this house and, more importantly, I hope it has a safe passage through the upper house. I am a little bit worried about aspects of that, but I hope that common sense prevails and this budget is supported both here and in the other place.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (21:54): I rise to give my contribution regarding the Appropriation Bill. In 2008, I made a decision to join the Liberal Party and to aspire to become a member of parliament. The reason I did that was that too many of our young were leaving our state. I had a business that I had had for 15 years at the time, which I loved, yet I was so saddened by seeing so many of our best and brightest finish their degrees and move interstate to search for work.

I was also disappointed at watching so many businesses fail under this Labor government and watching thousands and thousands of jobs leave our state and billions of dollars of turnover and profits leave our state. I saw Harris Scarfe go under twice. I saw John Martin's close. I saw Faulding leave South Australia to be listed. I saw so many companies leave. Young & Rubicam advertising agency left the state, printing companies lost work, and modelling agencies lost work, as did photographers and distributors of catalogues. Thousands and thousands jobs left and nothing was done, because if you are not in a unionised industry really the Labor Party does not care about you.

I saw so many politically motivated decisions that were being made not for the best interests of the people in South Australia but for the best interests of the Labor government staying in power at any cost. Sadly, some nine years on, nothing has changed; it is exactly the same. We still have our young leaving the state. In fact, they are leaving in droves. In a Facebook discussion, I had so many people write in. I asked them whether they knew of anyone who has left, any family or friends who have left. Here are just a few of the things that they are saying:

I am leaving in 10 days for a job in Sydney, have only succeeded in random, sporadic contract work here for 18 months on a single parent income. Financial situation is dire so I had to go interstate. Got a job I happen to be stoked about but can't do it here. Even with five recruitment agencies, I was struggling. My son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren went to the Eastern States. I miss them but they had to provide for the family.

Another new Australian wrote:

I am very concerned about young graduates leaving Adelaide for work.

Another person wrote:

I tried very hard to get a job in South Australia after finishing my degree last year. I now have a permanent full-time job in regional Victoria. I still keep an eye on SA. I love Adelaide and hopefully will be there one day when a career opportunity exists.

Another comment:

If it weren't for my cloud-based services business having clients across Australia and overseas, I would have left SA. The South Australian economy has been on life support for several years now. It's appalling how much energy and vibrancy has been sapped out of the corporate economy in the last 15 years. My fellow business leaders have had enough of it. Fundamental quantum change is absolutely required, otherwise more of our youth are going to be leaving. Enough already.

On the flipside, Adelaide and South Australia is an amazing place to live and raise a family—best place in Australia, I think. Things are at the lowest ever I have seen them in my adult life. The one positive I have is that it's only upside from near zero from here.

In other words, the only way is up—

My eldest son James applied for his first position in Melbourne at the completion of his architecture degree. He has been living there for 18 months now. Our son left 12 years ago and has never looked back. Both my children have left the state to further their careers. South Australia in general is very flat. There are many more opportunities on the eastern seaboard.

Sitting extended beyond 22:00 on motion of Hon. S.E. Close.

Ms SANDERSON: More comments were:

As much as I want my son and his friends to excel and find wonderful careers, it makes me so sad to think that he'll start his adult life in another state because there's not enough opportunities here.

Far too many are leaving, Rachel, and unless something is done about this poor excuse for a government, we are doomed. With two teenage boys soon to head to university, they are already thinking east coast for uni and jobs. With this latest bank tax debacle, we need to get the Labor government out and fast.

My only child's son couldn't find a job here but got offers from Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne is close to here. Working for Metro Trains as a mechatronic engineer. Not happy. I prefer he stayed in Adelaide, but I'd rather have him there rather than here as a jobless young man.

Not only had my daughter left the state to find work in Victoria but my husband was made redundant. The rest of the family also left South Australia to find work in the Northern Territory with no prospects of coming back anytime soon. Come on Libs, we desperately need you in power.

My daughter wants to be a paramedic. Uni told her very few graduates get work here in South Australia and a better option would be interstate or overseas when she graduates.

And yet we use interstate companies to fulfil our major contracts, bringing interstaters and internationals here because we don't have the skills.

We were sorry to leave South Australia but we had no choice. Left to find work interstate.

My husband and I moved to Melbourne for work after not finding anything after we graduated uni in Adelaide. He is a mechanical engineer and I'm an associate nutritionist. Most of our friends have also left South Australia to find work interstate and overseas.

My eldest son had to leave Adelaide for work. A university graduate, has not lived in SA for yonks now. His four children work, buy houses, spend their money, all interstate. This Labor government has run the state into poverty. They have just about sold everything.

My sister and her family have been living in Hong Kong.

My nephew and niece both went interstate for work because there were more opportunities. My nephew is in Brisbane. He has a doctorate in engineering. My niece is in Townsville doing administrative work after serving in the Army in various locations, including Canberra.

I spent 18 months applying for jobs five years ago when I was made redundant from Telstra. The corporate landscape is shrinking in Adelaide due to centralisation and I failed to secure a job with 170+ applications. I was depressed and had no idea what to do and had to start my own business.

Another one says:

I am one of the few Gen Ys who stayed in Adelaide but it has been hard, so hard in fact it was difficult to find a job. I had to create one for myself and start a business. I am currently in my hotel room in Perth for two days of work. The work still comes from interstate but I decided to commute because I preferred to live in Adelaide. I would do anything to support other young people to live, work and innovate in our state. Would love to support you in that cause.

It goes on. There were many, many people who wrote in very sad stories of their children, their family, their partners, their friends, all leaving a beautiful state because there are no jobs here after 15 years of Labor. Where are the hundred thousand jobs you promised? You promised us a jobs budget last year; where are the jobs? You call this a jobs budget, yet you tax the banks, who then straightaway say they are not now going to expand—150 jobs I think it was for the State Bank, and Westpac also had plans to expand. They have both been put on hold because of this government's budget, which apparently is a jobs budget but which really is not.

Labor governments do not actually know how to create jobs; employing more people in the Public Service is not actually creating wealth for your state. We need enterprise and we need business—small business, medium business, large business. We need people employing other people so that they pay taxes, which helps our country and our state run.

Speaking of this budget, apparently we have a surplus. However, you cannot really call it a surplus when this government continues to sell off our assets and include them in the revenue path. When you sell an asset, that would generally be in your balance sheet; it would be going from a building or a motor accident commission or a lotteries commission or a forest rotation or whatever it might be and it might then go to cash at bank, it will go to a liquid asset. But, no, this government actually puts it in as revenue to pretend that they actually have a profitable business.

If you have to sell off your silverware at your home, you would not really call that an increase in your wages and a surplus because eventually you run out of assets to sell. However, this government seems to find them, and now it is the Lands Titles Office that is up for sale. I believe we also have the State Admin building up for sale. I remember Kevin Foley trying to sell a building we did not even own in the city. This government will stop at nothing to try to buy off the voters so they will vote for them another time. Clearly they have no moral compass as to what is the right thing to do.

The O-Bahn is a prime example of a politically motivated decision. I was at the deposition that Rod Hook, the previous CE, gave regarding this project. He said that you work for the head of department your minister tells you what you are doing. He said for years his department had been working on the Gawler electrification. They had done all the planning, the costings, all the work—the poles and wires were already up, as we know—and he was told before the 2014 election, 'We don't have the money. Project's off.' He said, 'You know, disappointed, but you're staff. You do whatever the government says.'

He was very surprised when suddenly, only weeks later—very soon after—the government found $160 million for the O-Bahn because the north-eastern suburbs were under threat. They must have done some polling, and now they needed to secure the north-eastern suburbs seats—the marginal seats. And it worked: people fell for it. The thing that was stated was that there was no planning done. There were no costings done. There were no engineering studies done. It was basically the back of an envelope, totally politically motivated, and it worked. But is it the right thing? Is this how we want our state run—with politically motivated decisions that are not in the best interests of the people?

In order to save 2½ minutes in the morning and 3½ minutes at night, the government found $160 million to secure their political future. The people of Adelaide were certainly very, very unhappy about this because it has not only destroyed Rymill Park but it has removed 200 trees and led to the loss of public amenity in arguably one of the most beautiful parklands in Adelaide. Apparently, it was originally going to be a tunnel, but it has ended up a 60-metre long, six-metre tall steel canopy to be built in the middle of Hackney Road, and then a second 20-metre long canopy constructed in Rymill Park.

It is really a trench through the Parklands with a roof. It is not even a proper tunnel. I have seen it. It has not been opened yet, but I am sure it will in time for the ribbon opening. I think you might want to open it at least three times before the election, like you did for the sky way, or whatever that road is called.

Cancelling the Gawler electrification at the time meant that the state government lost the commonwealth funding of $76 million because it was dependent on the state government going ahead with the project. We lost $76 million in commonwealth funding, there was an estimated cost penalty of $70 million if you wanted to restart the project later and the Auditor-General wrote down the asset—the poles and wires—by $40 million as unutilised infrastructure. This is $186 million that was lost by not electrifying the Gawler train line, yet they found $160 million for a completely different project. It is unbelievable that they have the gall to make these kinds of decisions.

Transforming Health—or destroying health, however you might want to call it—has been the biggest debacle ever. Nearly every day in the paper there has been some other issue, some other health scandal, something being closed, people unhappy, doctors unhappy, ramping, no ambulances available, and now, suddenly, right before an election, they have realised it is pretty unpopular. 'We better build a few more emergency wards or add some more beds. We better forget about Transforming Health. We better focus on trying to win the next election and throw a whole heap of money. Instead of having a Women's and Children's Hospital—because now we have worked out we probably can't fit it on the site, even though we promised it—we will just have a women's hospital; we will separate it. We will put a bit more money into the children's and leave it where it is, and then we will do something later.'

In 2010, when I first visited the Women's and Children's Hospital as a member of parliament, I noticed that the car park was full by 9.30 in the morning, and I said to them, 'Why don't you expand the car park?' The Women's and Children's Hospital Foundation had just finished paying off the extra levels of the car park and it was very, very profitable. It was a great financial win that they were then using to fund things in the hospital that the government did not then have to fund. The reason they were not interested in expanding the car park was because of the uncertainty.

The government was at one point looking at selling the car park; at another point, they were moving the hospital; they were not moving the hospital. For seven years, we have had nurses parking miles away. We have had issues with lack of parking in the area for residents, for sick patients. We have seen photos in the paper of children on oxygen tanks walking from The Lion on Melbourne Street in order to get a park.

When one of my residents was having twins, she was supposed to go in to have her blood pressure checked. The doctor said, 'You are walking from so far away, your blood pressure is up. Don't even bother coming in because we are not getting a proper reading because there is no parking available in the area.' Seven years on, we still have a parking issue because the government makes promises they do not keep. They tell people this is going to happen, then it does not and then they change it.

I am beyond believing any words that come out of this government's mouth, but hopefully the people of Adelaide will start to pick up on what is going on here. They will just say whatever it takes to get your vote—it may or may not happen but probably will not happen. If they win the election, we will have the Gawler electrification, which I believe has been announced for the third time. Now it is going to cost $462.5 million and is subject to federal money, so that gives them an out. They are going to tell you it is going to happen, but they have given themselves a get-out-of-gaol-free clause because they will blame it on the federal government, yet they could have actually done this many years ago had they wanted to, but maybe they did not worry so much about the member for Light in Gawler.

As far as jobs go, we have 150,000 South Australians looking for work, and Labor's budget will only produce 8,000 jobs and a 1 per cent rate of job creation, which is the lowest in the nation and half that of Victoria. You could hardly call it a jobs budget. It is just the wrong name, that is for sure. There are a few initiatives in this budget. I would just like to mention Fund My Neighbourhood at $40 million. I went to a briefing on this recently by a stakeholder who actually put in for one of these funds and apparently it took weeks.

The application process is incredibly difficult, and this was an NGO, not just a community group, but a big, professional NGO. For every person who went on to vote for them, they had to spend about two hours allocating the whole $40 million. You do not just get to go on and vote one for the project that you believe in. You have to read through every single project and vote for all of them. It is about a two-hour process. It really is very cumbersome. It is good that there is money available, but you have made it as difficult as possible to access the money and to get people to vote on it, which I think you need to look at if you really want to give away the money. If you just want to say there is money and nobody can ever get it, then you have set it up in a very good way.

As I have already mentioned, Transforming Health has been an epic failure, and the government is changing their mind on it. The energy plan for the state has also been an epic failure. We could have had Alinta stay online in South Australia for $8 million per annum, or a net of about $3.5 million if you count back all the payroll taxes and everything they pay back to the government, to keep us stable with a stable and affordable supply of power while we transition to more renewables. But instead, no, we need to get rid of that because this government is wedded to their renewables target at any cost. It does not matter how many companies close, or how many people lose their jobs, they have a point they want to make.

We have seen how good the government is with our elderly at Oakden and we have also seen how well they have dealt with our child protection over many failed years. To give you some feedback from other stakeholders—SACOSS, for example—we are extremely disappointed that South Australia's expenditure continues to increase in the area of commercial and residential care. Investments in prevention and in the provision of intensive family supports are desperately needed to curb this trend.

Even the PSA, their own union, was not happy. There is a boost of $86.5 million in child protection; however, the majority of this funding will be provided to the non-government organisations. There is no additional funding to cover the royal commission recommendations to cease using commercial carers and to abandon having workers working alone overnight in residential care. There are so many things wrong with this budget.

Finally, the bank tax is one of the worst things, and that is why the Liberal Party will be standing up to vote against a new banking tax. Again, I have brought this forward to people in my electorate, and I have hundreds of people who have written to me with their reasons, and the majority of them were all against the banking tax.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.R. Kenyon.

At 22:15 the house adjourned until Wednesday 5 July 2017 at 11:00.