Grievance Debate

Transport Infrastructure

Mr MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:14): What a shocking, terrible week for this fledgling government. They spent most of the last week boasting about this fantastic infrastructure deal that they had apparently done on behalf of the people of South Australia, and it only took the release of the federal budget on Tuesday night for all that deceptive, misleading, deceitful spin to come unravelling.

The boasts of the member for Schubert that he had done a great deal on behalf of the state, that he had repaired the relationship, that he had taken a mature approach to negotiations and that the dividends were flowing—well, nothing could be further from the truth. He crowed about $1.8 billion, and so did the Premier. We were told $1.8 billion of new infrastructure funding was coming to South Australia over the next four years to 'continue the pipeline of projects currently underway'. 'Locked in,' said the member for Schubert; 'definitely happening', said the member for Schubert; and 'the first one to be delivered in the 2019-20 financial year'—so he committed on ABC radio and so he recommitted in this chamber in question time.

What did we find out on Tuesday night? That only $162 million of that $1,800 million that he said he had secured for South Australia was going to be delivered over the next four years—less than one-tenth of what he had been crowing to every media outlet and what he had the temerity to come into this place, on Wednesday afternoon, and claim that he had secured.

It was a dud deal, and this is what happens when you send your most junior, most inexperienced cabinet minister over to Canberra to negotiate with the federal government. They get played like a fiddle, and what a tune that fiddle played: a melancholy requiem of disappointment and dejection for the thousands of South Australian civil construction workers who were relying on the member for Schubert, as minister, to secure that future pipeline of projects, let alone the dozens of South Australian businesses and subcontractors who are keeping their heads above water on these projects that the Labor government secured at the moment. It is a comprehensive failure by this inept government to do a good deal with their Coalition buddies.

Most importantly, we have to ask: did the member for Schubert or the Premier even ask the federal government how much of that $1.8 billion was going to be provided over the next four years? Did they even ask? They could not have, surely, because if they had asked and if they had been told what was coming over the next four years then it means that they have engaged in over a week of calculated, deceptive spin to deliberately hoodwink South Australians about this deal. It means that they knew and they deliberately misled South Australians. What outrageous behaviour.

But, of course, I am a bit more generous than that. I will give them the benefit of the doubt—that they did not even have the brains to ask, that they just got what was given to them unquestioningly. How could a minister and a government be so inept in their dealings with a federal government? The minister did not have a clue in question time about how much money had been allocated across the forward estimates when he was specifically asked, project by project, the day after the federal budget had been handed down. This was despite the fact that that detail had been publicly released. It was in a press release on the federal infrastructure minister's website. How could he have not seen it?

I have to say that the member for Schubert, his frontbench and the member for Sturt—sorry, Mr Speaker, I meant the Premier; that was a genuine, Freudian slip—this is the way they enjoy being treated by their Coalition counterparts. They rolled over on Holden. They were ready to roll over on the submarines. They roll over on education funding, they roll over on health funding and they even rolled over on pensioner support in the 2014 budget—absolutely shameful.

Time expired.