Question Time

Planning, Transport And Infrastructure Department

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:04): My question is to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. Why is the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure spending only 8.4 per cent of its capital budget in the regions this financial year when regional South Australia has 29 per cent of the state's population?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (14:04): I thank the leader for his question about this particular issue. I was very pleased this morning, as I was checking how much money the state Labor government is investing into regional roads, to know that it is almost $100 million this year. We are spending $94 million from state government funds on regional roads. It's a record high. If you were to include all those revenues that we are also receiving from the federal government and you package that together, it's $188 million—nearly $200 million.

Of course, it's a tremendous opportunity to contrast this approach with an alternate approach, which I took some interest in reading about this morning, and that would be to denude the regions of that level of road funding and wind it back to only $75 million. What an extraordinary commitment, from somebody who is seeking for the first time to be popular amongst the regions, to decrease road funding by $20 million a year.

Mr PISONI: Point of order: the minister is debating the question.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I was in Freeling this morning.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: And Hammond—don't forget Hammond. I uphold the point of order.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir: House of Representatives common practice is to allow ministers and governments to compare and contrast alternative policies. It has been a longstanding practice of the House of Representatives, and I ask you to consider—

Mr van Holst Pellekaan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Stuart was very lucky not to be rissoled out of this place yesterday for a completely bogus point of order. It does not lie in his mouth to take that point of order against the Treasurer. I will have a look at House of Representatives Practice, and I do allow some argy-bargy, but the minister had descended into an extended examination of the opposition's policy.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: That's part of the comparing and contrasting.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I know. Minister.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is called to order. Minister.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Just for those who were wondering—because I didn't mention the opposition or the Leader of the Opposition who had come up with that policy to reduce regional road funding by nearly $20 million a year—now that the member for Unley has outed the Liberal Party for coming up with that plan on the front page of The'Tiser to wind back regional road funding, it might help the chamber to perhaps examine how we got into this situation where we have reached record levels of regional road funding in this current financial year and that two years ago—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Yes, well he wouldn't be the only one. Minister.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: As I was saying, that's because we had a budget commitment from the Treasurer, who increased regional road funding by $110 million across South Australia, and of course the vast bulk of that goes to the regions. As I outlined to the chamber yesterday, of the more than half a billion dollars that we spend in road maintenance and road upgrades across South Australia $341 million of that gets spent in the regions—a good chunk. Two-thirds, approximately, gets spent in the regions, a level, year on year, substantially higher than the opposition leader committed to this morning. How extraordinary that he would rush out without even checking his figures. It's alarming that, in purporting to represent regional interests, he runs around doing them out of regional road funding.

Ms CHAPMAN: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I think—

Ms CHAPMAN: It is a direct contradiction of your ruling earlier.

The SPEAKER: Well, be that as it may, the minister is now debating the matter.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I will come back to the point. Our extra $110 million of road funding across the state, principally to be spent in regions, was absolutely necessary when we made that commitment not just because of course this state, like many states around Australia, went through a huge program following the Second World War of building new roads and sealing unsealed road, and of course over the last 50 or 60 years maintenance hasn't always been kept up.

It was particularly important because in May 2014, in the first federal Liberal budget, there was a road maintenance cut of $9 million a year to South Australia. So we had to increase the amount of money that we put into regional roads because the Liberal Party of Australia cuts road funding to regional roads. That's why the Labor Party will always stand up for the regions while the leader of the Liberal Party thinks that this state finishes at Gepps Cross.

The SPEAKER: The minister's time has expired. Leader.