Question Time

Election Commitments

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (16:09): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and again congratulations on your election. Also, with your indulgence, Mr Speaker, allow me to congratulate the Premier, his cabinet and parliamentary team on their recent election to government. My question is to the Premier. Will the Premier commit to the house to deliver on every commitment that the Liberal Party made in the lead-up to this year's state election?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (16:10): I thank the honourable member for his question. I also, on an indulgence, would like to congratulate all members of this house who were elected or re-elected at the most recent election. From our point, the government certainly wants to maintain all the traditions and conventions of this great parliament that we are so privileged to serve in. I look forward to this next session. It was a great opportunity to have His Excellency, the Governor of South Australia, the Hon. Hieu Van Le, attend our parliament today and to open this new parliament, and for that we are all very grateful.

I thank the leader for his question. The answer is yes. We made a series of promises to the people of South Australia in the lead-up to the election: more jobs, lower costs, better services. They are the commitments that we have made. In fact, when we look at the total number of commitments we made to the people of South Australia in the lead-up to the election, the number totalled almost 300. We are very proud of the work that we did in developing an alternative policy platform for the people of South Australia. I want to congratulate those members of the team who worked so diligently over the last four years, first of all to develop a long-range platform, the '2036' document, but, more importantly, hundreds of policies that sat on top of that platform.

The people of South Australia want a change. They voted for change. They wanted to hit the reset button in South Australia. They wanted a government in South Australia, importantly, that was putting the people of South Australia first, a government that listened to the people of South Australia, a government that had a greater aspiration than was being delivered by the previous government in South Australia. As I said, those commitments were made around three critical themes for the people of the state.

More jobs was a critical area, where people didn't want to be let down by a government that wasn't delivering more jobs for this state; secondly, lower costs—costs have been a real issue. When I was out talking to people over the last four years, and in particular the lead-up to the election, people said to me and to those of us on this side of the house that they were sick to death of increasing costs being imposed upon them by poor government decision-making. The third area, of course, was the area of improved government services.

It goes without saying that the people of South Australia want the highest level of services possible. When they travelled interstate to other jurisdictions they saw government services being delivered in other jurisdictions to a higher level than what they were receiving here in South Australia, particularly in critical areas like health and education, two areas that we campaigned on extraordinarily strongly. I would like to commend in particular the member for Morialta, the Minister for Education in South Australia, for the very strong platform that he put forward to the people of South Australia, which I think received an overwhelming endorsement from the people of South Australia, and also the Hon. Stephen Wade in another place for the excellent work that he did holding the former government to account in terms of the delivery of critical health services in this state.

Obviously, people don't want to be calling upon our emergency services or emergency departments in hospitals very often, but when they do they expect to have the very best services available. That wasn't the case under the previous government. We made a series of commitments around health and education and right across the board, and we will be delivering on every single one of them.