Grievance Debate

State Liberal Government

Mr MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:16): What another disappointing week from what is fast shaping up to be a disappointing government. The fact that we have just had to finish on that note after the last question time of the week speaks volumes about the approach of this government. We have minister after minister after minister taking a casual approach to advising and providing this house information in response to questions from the opposition.

First of all, we had the Minister for Child Protection trying to bat away—or, should I say, drive away—an allegation that she had misled the parliament about her attendance at golfing practice during work hours rather than meeting with her stakeholders. She told us it was for charity. Of course, that was not correct, and she had to scurry in here later on that day to correct the record that, indeed, she was just playing golf during work hours.

The Minister for Police, of course, has been one of the worst offenders. Not only does he seek to avoid answering any question by alluding to the fact that he and the police commissioner have had discussions—that they regularly have discussions, that he regularly backs those discussions and that, if he does not back those discussions, he backs his police commissioner—but he went out and told the media that STAR Group officers would be attending teenage parties in the southern suburbs. He had to go straight back out to the media the very next morning and correct them on what he had told them only 12 hours earlier.

Not only have we just had a ruling from you, Mr Speaker, on a matter of privilege but we had another ruling from you on another matter of privilege about the Minister for Police and what he had committed to the house and, of course, until that date had not done, and that was table notes of a meeting in the southern suburbs.

We also had the promise by the Premier and the Minister for Transport about this wonderful deal that they had secured for South Australia, $1.8 billion for new infrastructure projects, when only 36 hours later it emerged in the federal budget that there was less than one-tenth of that: $162 million. We know there is not $1.8 billion because what do federal ministers think of money committed beyond the forward estimates? Senator Simon Birmingham says, 'It is not real money. It is beyond the forwards; it does not really exist.'

We know we have a Premier who likes to issue all manner of things from his mouth that the federal member for Sturt, Christopher Pyne, has previously uttered, including that apparently he is a fixer. Well, there is one thing that is not going to be fixed in the near future and that is the north-south corridor because the deal that he did, which is apparently as good as it gets, is that more than 90 per cent of that funding will be beyond the forward estimates. If you listen to how Christopher Pyne has explained money beyond the forward estimates, it is not real money. There is no commitment to it. It is not real. That is how he described the Gonski and the NDIS funding.

Now we have a government that is not proceeding at all on the agenda they promised to South Australians. Speaking of the Minister for Transport, he was in here yesterday providing an answer to a government question that I had already provided a year earlier in response to a then question from the government about road train access to Yorke Peninsula. What did he do today? He came back in and did the same thing. He took a government question about AddInsight, the Traffic Management Centre and new laws governing roadworks, all of which came into being over two years ago, in the case of AddInsight, and, more recently under the former Labor government, with the governance of roadworks.

Today, we had the increasing fumblings of the health minister, struggling to justify why he could be present at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital talking about a whiz-bang new facility down there but neglecting to mention that they have had a spike in their infection rates from orthopaedic surgery. When he was asked to explain this on talkback radio, he made it very clear to the ABC presenters exactly how it works in his portfolio: when we had major issues with SA Pathology, well, the announcement was made by SA Health, and the Public Health Officer recently made announcements in relation to influenza vaccine supplies—when the bad news comes up, it is for the public servants to do, but when the good news is there, that is when Stephen Wade, the health minister, will be there with bells on.

This is a shocking start for a government that cannot deliver its own agenda. We have also had the Premier admit in question time that he will not even meet his own 100-day target to introduce shop trading legislation. What a dreadful start from what is fast shaping up to be a dreadful government.