Economic and Finance Committee: Emergency Services Levy 2018-19

Adjourned debate on motion of Mr Duluk:

That the first report of the committee, entitled Emergency Services Levy 2018-19, be noted.

(Continued from 2 August 2018.)

The SPEAKER: Member for Newland, there are five minutes remaining, sir.

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (11:20): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to continue my remarks on the noting of the important report from the Economic and Finance Committee particularly concerning the emergency services levy, which of course had been a very significant impost on so many households and businesses throughout the state. We have been consistent all the way through. We have gone about cutting the levy—halving it, in fact—which is exactly what we said we would do before the election, and we are delivering on that promise.

As I alluded to earlier, our emergency services are very important and we are certainly committed to ensuring that our emergency services are always well resourced. In fact, we have put funds on the table to boost our fleet of firefighting aircraft for the CFS and significant additional funding for CFS station upgrades, as well as development of a new Alert SA app, which is particularly important given the chaos that engulfed the previous incarnation under the previous administration. Of course, all our emergency services are very important. The CFS is key among them, but also of course are the SES and the professional services amongst the police, MFS, SA Ambulance Service and all the others.

As we came to the end of the allotted time quite a few weeks ago now, I was talking about the enormous increase in business confidence that has occurred since the election of the Marshall Liberal government. This has been reflected in a number of surveys and is quite a stark and incredible increase in confidence, both by businesses and households. An important and key part of that change in attitude is, of course, removing cost-of-living burdens on businesses and households, with the ESL being a significant impost amongst them.

The other very interesting data that is being looked at, in particular, is a survey by Sensis looking at attitudes of small businesses to different levels of governments and their policies towards small business. I thought it was quite startling to see that the attitude our small businesses in South Australia had to state government policy was the worst of any state in the nation, which is a terrible place for it to be.

However, we have seen quite marked improvements in that, and that is very important because ultimately, if we want to assist families to get ahead and assist them through allowing businesses to employ people and being able to afford to live, then people being able to find work and having low cost of living is a very important part of that. I believe many people are receiving their massively reduced emergency services levy bills right now. We received ours and I know that my wife was very pleased to see that it had gone down quite a lot. Of course, on average, that is a reduction of about $145 per household, which is not insignificant, particularly for a tight budget.

The cost of living has been bad enough. It is a problem for South Australians. Under the failed energy policies of the previous administration, we have had the highest power prices in Australia and even, in some surveys, amongst the highest on earth, which is really quite incredible. The people of South Australia had had enough. They voted for real change. That real change is what we are delivering, and we are delivering it exactly as we promised we would.

In the lead-up to the election, we promised to cut the ESL. That would be $90 million per year put back into the economy, and that is exactly what we are delivering. This is in stark contrast to the 2014 election, when of course there was no mention of the ESL, and shortly afterwards it was jacked up enormously, ripping $384 million out of the state's economy. Families have been hurting very much under 16 years of hard Labor. Now they have a government that does not just give lip service to cost-of-living pressures but is implementing real plans to relieve these pressures, including cutting the ESL.

Time expired.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (11:25): I am so pleased to be able to speak on this motion. The recent election had a number of points of contention between the two parties, the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, in the propositions that we put to the people of South Australia. For nearly the last four years, ever since the remissions on the ESL were removed by the former Labor government, one of the clear differences between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party has been an understanding that the people of South Australia were being hit hard in their household cost of living by the former government's decision to remove the remissions.

Increases of hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the average household over that four-year period when Labor had jacked up the ESL hit households hard to take money out of their pocket and put it to the former Labor government's preference. At the last election, I was very pleased to stand up for the people in Morialta, who spoke to me about their issues in meeting their household living expenses. An average $145 for the median household being saved by those families will make a massive difference in those households. People are getting their ESL bills right now and, as a result of the measures identified in this report, those households are better off as a consequence.

This is why people voted for the Liberal Party at this election, amongst a range of other issues. This Liberal Party, this Liberal government, is delivering on the commitments that we made to the people of South Australia. In terms of politics around the world, the issue of trust comes up. When political pundits talk about unusual phenomena in certain jurisdictions' elections, this issue of trust always comes up. The cliché is that politicians allegedly cannot be trusted to keep their promises. I think that the former Labor government in South Australia has a lot to answer for in regard to this lack of trust in our community.

The increase in the ESL imposed by the former Labor government on the people of South Australia after the last election is a prime example of why the community's trust in politics and politicians was eroded. It was a clear identification that the faith with the South Australian people had to be met at the earliest possible opportunity by restoring the remissions on the ESL, as the Liberal Party committed to doing. In doing so, as this report notes, we have kept our faith with the South Australian people, returning money into their families' pockets so that they can meet the needs of their families. One critical component is that we have done so without impeding the opportunities for emergency services to be delivered in South Australia in the way that they must.

This report identifies the expenses required to fulfil the requirements of our emergency services. I will give an example of the sort of support that is needed. Morialta has a number of CFS brigades across the electorate, as do many of the electorates served by members on this side of the house and some of the electorates served by members on the other side as well. One of the CFS brigades that has always been in the Morialta electorate throughout the entire time I have been involved—10 years as a candidate and as a member—is Montacute.

We have changed our boundaries regularly, but Montacute has always formed part of the Morialta community. Montacute is a spread township—it is not a township; it is a community. Some 200 votes in the electoral polling booths suggest that about 300 people are living over a broad area of the Adelaide Hills. It is an area where the risk of fire is significant. It is served by Montacute Road, which becomes Marble Hill Road as it passes through Cherryville.

Montacute Road is its period in and period out. The risks here were highlighted 1½ years ago during the storms, where a significant section of Montacute Road was in fact washed out. I was grateful that the then government, at our urging, worked with the Adelaide Hills Council to repair that road as quickly as possible, because when there is a fire in Montacute you have to get out. The Corkscrew Road takes you down to Gorge Road. Anyone who has driven the Corkscrew Road knows that you would not want to be going there in an emergency. So Montacute Road is it, and it is critical that that be served.

The brigade has about 20 or 25 active members. Out of that tiny community, 20 to 25 members still turn up on Monday nights to train. They still turn up when there are issues with flooding, with cars, or motorbikes more often these days, going off the road. They still serve that community so well. In about 1987 or 1988—I forget the year but it was about 30 years ago—a report identified that the Montacute CFS station was no longer meeting OHS standards and was no longer fit for purpose. There was no hot water. It did not really have much capacity for the sorts of things that were going to be needed in a CFS station. So for 30 years the Montacute CFS has been endeavouring to improve their facilities.

Just before I became a candidate in 2008, the community was very pleased that the former Labor government said that they were going to fix it. They were going to use the money from the emergency services levy, through the CFS, to fix the Montacute CFS station, to give them a new site and to make it happen. Indeed, in 2009-10 during the election campaign the then Labor member for Morialta put out flyers of herself—she may or may not have had the CFS jacket on—standing in front of the CFS implements and the station, saying, 'We've fixed it.' The Labor government had fixed the Montacute CFS station and this was something that she should be credited for. We were only to find in 2010-11 that the then government, and through the CFS, decided that the site they had chosen was not suitable and cancelled the project.

But we kept pushing and pushing. I pay credit to the member for Light, who, when he was the minister, after years of years of pushing, finally put it back on the agenda. The money was thankfully able to be there. The brigade pushed so hard to have their new station. We were able to see that station opened the weekend before last by the new Minister for Emergency Services, Corey Wingard. The final touches put to it over the last few months were marvellous.

I am not giving credit to this new government. This is a project that has been fought for for 30 years and allegedly the money has been there for more than a decade. The people I give credit to in this instance are those volunteers in the CFS brigade who have a fantastic new station. The significance of this station in the Montacute community can be borne out by the fact that this is a community of about 300 people, as I said, and there were about 150 or nearly 200 people who came out for that opening day a couple of weeks ago, appreciating the new station's opening. The service for that local community is significant. It is a useful purpose to which the ESL funds are put.

There was so much pressure put on those CFS volunteers over the last four years when everybody's ESL rates were jacked right up, yet they were still trying to do their community fundraising as well. I note that the Rotary Club of Campbelltown, who supported that brigade, have given them a defibrillator and a stretcher. When they discovered that there was no TV in the brigade, they even brought in a LCD colour TV from the Rotary shed. That sort of community fundraising has been identified as much harder over recent years since the ESL level has been put up. Some people reported that when CFS people were going out to collect for their volunteer sales or their charity sales, people would say, 'Our ESL bills have gone up hundreds of dollars, so surely you've got more money.'

The point is that, despite the ESL bills going up so much four years ago, the CFS, those emergency services, never got any extra money. It was just the removal of the remission. What was previously paid for towards emergency services out of general revenue was never increased commensurate with the increase of money that then came from households. So this government has taken the course of what was sensible, what was in place 20 years ago when the ESL was brought in, of having this remission on households so it was at a reasonable level.

The benefit of restoring that remission is identified. The report, at page 10, says that these remissions will reduce ESL bills by $90 million, consistent with the government's election commitments. That will make a massive difference for those households and will better support the CFS and other emergency services because, while the money they get may be the same, a lesser proportion of it is coming from households so it increases the confidence with which they can do their own community fundraising. The household impact, the impact on the lives of everyday South Australians with their weekly bills, and particularly dealing with their annual ESL bills, is significant.

Cost of living matters. That is something our community talks about to us, their local members of parliament, all the time, and this government is listening. I am afraid the last government was found utterly wanting when it came to cost-of-living issues, and that is why this government has taken its election commitments to be more jobs, lower costs, better services. This week's budget is an example of us delivering just those things, and this report on reducing people's emergency services levy and returning money into the pockets of households and taxpayers across South Australia is also doing just that. I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (11:35): It is a pleasure to follow the member for Morialta, the education minister, on this topic because we came into parliament at the same time, a little bit over eight years ago, and we have shared our views on this internally and externally. This is a very important issue.

The emergency services levy is money charged on properties and some other assets, but largely it is a property tax by state government which, it is fair to say, was implemented under a Liberal government. However, at the time of implementation the Liberal government of the day also put in what were called remissions. Remissions were there so that there was a nominal amount of the entire levy that represented money the government would collect and spend on emergency services funding, and the remission was a reduction in the amount of tax collected without—and this is very important—a reduction in the amount of funding that went to emergency services.

Essentially, it was a remission that Treasury absorbed. It was a discount given to the public—households and companies—who pay the emergency services levy, but that discount did not flow through to the emergency services sector; it did not at all diminish the funding they received. It was absorbed by Treasury.

Several years ago now, I think probably about four years ago, the former Labor state government started to remove those remissions. At the time they did it for some phony excuse; I cannot even remember what they said at the time, but I do remember that it was not true. They removed the remissions, and they tried to imply that removing the remissions meant that the public—being households and businesses—paid more (the discount on the emergency services levy they received that was taken away) for emergency services.

They tried to pretend that by the public paying more for the emergency services levy the emergency services sector would get more. That just was not true. It was a blatant tax grab by the previous government. The emergency services sector did not get one cent extra via the removal of the remission, via the increased net cost the public had to pay. That money just went straight back to Treasury.

I think it was wrong to do that, but perhaps it was even worse to let the public believe that if they paid a little bit more, if they copped it on the chin, if the remission was removed so they paid more, 'at least the emergency services sector would get a bit more money, and I suppose that's okay'. It was completely wrong of the previous Labor government to allow the public to think that because it was not true. It was absolutely not true. Understanding that it was not true, understanding that the sector was not getting any more by the removal of the remission, we said very early on in the last term of the previous Labor government, very early on in our last term in opposition, that we would return that remission to the taxpayers.

As other speakers have said, and as I know is in the report of the Economic and Finance Committee, exceptionally well chaired by the member for Waite, that was $90 million per year, $360 million over the forward estimates of the budget. We said that we would do that. I think it was at least three years out from the last election. There was a bit of concern about developing that policy. Would it be the right time? Should we wait? Who knows what else is to come? And we said, no. We said that this Labor government has done the wrong thing and that a future Liberal government will fix it up, a future Liberal government will do the right thing. We said three years out from the last election, the 2018 election, that if elected we would return that money to the pockets of households and businesses.

Those on the other side might think that $90 million per year, $360 million over the forward estimates, $145 on average per household, is not much. Well, they are wrong if they think that. Every dollar counts to every household. Think about what $145 can do. Whether that is just trying to make an early extra payment one fortnight on a new mortgage, or whether that means being able to buy the fuel for your car that might allow you to drive your family on a long weekend or holiday somewhere, if you think about $145 and what that might do for a dental bill for your children, it might mean that you could do something special for your children.

You might not perhaps otherwise take your children to the Royal Adelaide Show, which is on at the moment, but if you had $145 extra, you could take your children to the Show, and it might be the one and only time that your children have gone to the Show. It makes a difference. It makes a very big difference. It makes a difference particularly in the context of all the other pressures that the former Labor government put on people with regard to cost of living. It makes a very big difference.

We addressed those differences. As I have explained, we addressed the return of that $90 million worth of emergency services levy. We have also addressed the cost of living with regard to reducing NRM levies. We have addressed it with regard to council rates capping. We have addressed in many different ways. We are looking at reducing payroll tax, which of course is a business tax, but businesses which have payroll of less than $1.5 million will not pay any payroll tax under our government.

How does that relate to families and cost-of-living burdens? It means those small businesses are more able to employ people. It means those small businesses can be more productive, can be more successful. Do you know what, Mr Speaker? This is not about supporting the businesses. This is about supporting the employees. If you have a job, if you are an employee, you want to have a secure job. You want to know that you can get a mortgage, that you can get a loan to buy a house. The only way that you are going to get a mortgage and a loan to buy a house is if you have a job and it is a secure job. It must be a secure job. Mr Speaker, what is the only way that you can get a secure job? Work for a company that has a secure future.

That is why we are supporting those organisations—not for the employers but for the employees. We know that we need to put more money back into the pockets of regular South Australians. This commitment was made a long time ago, and we are very genuine about it. Like all of the commitments that we made before the election, the proof is in the pudding. Two days ago, Tuesday this week, budget day, our budget included all the commitments that we had made going to the last election.

I do not pretend that there are not people who do not have some level of disappointment with regard to our budget. Of course, if you received a cut to your spending, a reduction to the spending of your particular area of interest, it is quite natural that you would be upset. However, we decided that we would only make cuts outside of the areas where we had made election commitments, that all of our commitments would be funded, and we would look for necessary savings in other areas. That is exactly what we have done.

The people of South Australia have got their $90 million per year back. The people of South Australia have got their on average $145 per year back in their pockets. To connect back to what I said earlier, the previous government tried to pretend that the increase in the emergency services levy was going to result in an increase in money for the emergency services sector, which of course was not true. While we have returned the remission, while we have reduced the emergency services levy, we have not cut the funding to the emergency services sector.

In the same way that they did not get one dollar more from the previous government, they will not get one dollar less from our government by the fact that we have reduced the emergency services levy. That is very important. Those professionals, and perhaps more importantly those volunteers working in the sector, are fully supported by us, as are households.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:46): I rise to support this motion in regard to the first report into the emergency services levy 2018-19, moved by the member for Waite. I would like to acknowledge the amazing work of our volunteers and what they do right across the state in no matter what role they play, whether it is with emergency services or not. The simple fact is that without the many hundreds of thousands of volunteers in this state, the state could not function, and we would never have the ability to adequately pay for these volunteers on a wage basis.

What happens with the emergency services levy as far as our emergency services—and, sure, there are some professional operations here. We have the police, the Metropolitan Fire Service and obviously the State Emergency Service and the Country Fire Service, of which I am a member with the Coomandook brigade. There are many thousands of volunteers who do great work in these services for our state. There has been some discussion about fire stations in some of the contributions and it is interesting how convoluted the story can get in just getting a fire station. A lot of it can be around Crown land and native title access and all that kind of thing.

At Coonalpyn, when I was there with the member for MacKillop when that was opened in the last few years, it was a brand-new station with multiple bays. Coonalpyn is just outside my electorate, only by a few kilometres, mind you, so some of the people who volunteer there come from the seat of Hammond. These volunteers attend road crash rescues, as do Murray Bridge brigade members and those from Tailem Bend, and some of the atrocities that these people have to witness just as part of their job as volunteers would make you wince if you knew even the half of it.

I know for a fact that some volunteers just take a year out because when you are a volunteer or in the professional services and you are on a main road like we are on the Dukes Highway to Melbourne, sadly, we have those road trauma incidents and people see horrifying injuries and the impacts of road crashes that cause a terrible death to some people. I applaud our volunteers who are on call at any hour of the day and night.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: Hear, hear!

Mr PEDERICK: Absolutely! It is good to see that Coonalpyn, after a bit of toing and froing, finally sorted through where they could have their new station, and it is working well.

Another one that had a litany of errors getting up was the fire station at Rockleigh. Sadly, in recent years Rockleigh has had multiple fires. It was serviced by three electorates, Hammond, Kavel and Schubert, and Hammond has made a takeover now with the new redistribution and I am very pleased to represent the good people of Rockleigh.

Rockleigh is a bit like its name: it is a place where getting around in any vehicle on some of the paddocks can just tear tyres and vehicles apart. With one of the most recent fires at Rockleigh at least 100 tyres were destroyed by CFS vehicles, and they were basically ratting tyres from other vehicles sometimes just to keep going; it is tough country. There are some lifestyle blocks in there, but it is good country for people to live in.

However, the Rockleigh Fire Station proposal was a long time coming. There were many years of bureaucracy and red tape. I must admit that I wrote multiple letters to the previous Labor government, and I will commend the now Leader of the Opposition, the member for Croydon, for bringing the answer to one letter up to my office in this place. I did not see another minister from the other side do that when they were in government. The letter was regarding Rockleigh and the simple fact that they were about on the verge of securing the land but they had not done the Crown land clearances, and they realised this at I think the 11½^th hour. That ended up in the Federal Court, which was ridiculous, because the work had not been done in the background to make sure that all the clearances were in place.

I am pleased to say that I was present the other day when the Rockleigh Fire Station was opened by Greg Nettleton, the Chief Officer of the Country Fire Service. We have had a few earth tremors lately, and what I learnt that day was that that is probably the safest building to be in. Just get the truck out of the shed and get in the CFS shed at Rockleigh. I think it is the soundest building in the district by a long way, so obviously we are building these buildings to a very high standard and that would be the place to be.

Thankfully, for the good volunteers at Rockleigh, they finally have a shed and equipment does not have to be stored in the neighbour's shearing shed anymore. They can put their firetruck in and they have an operations room and a radio room, and the other volunteers that back up at Rockleigh, the Rockleigh support group, have somewhere to be based as well. They have had some terrible fires there in recent times. The CFS, which is funded by this levy, and the air support manage to limit built losses in a significant way. Sadly, one home was lost, but I was just amazed when I drove through the area after the last big fire that it was only one. It shows the dedication of our volunteers and our aerial firefighting team working in tough conditions.

We are seeing more stations being upgraded by our government, the Marshall Liberal government. There are six new stations to be built, with a couple in the South-East and a couple in other places. Tailem Bend will get a new station as well, and that is obviously quite vital with the growth in the region, not just with The Bend Motorsport Park but with a lot of the agricultural industry investments happening in the region. We are getting a solar farm built out there as well. I am pleased that those investments are coming into the electorate.

I note that my station at Coomandook is combined with Ki Ki and between those two stations they run a four-four truck and a three-four and a 9,000-litre tanker, so they are well served to battle bushfires. When the big fires happen, you see volunteers not just from around the state but from interstate come our way to help out.

I have been involved, since I have been in this place, with several fires, including one at Sedan, and going over to help clean up and put out a lot of the aftermath of the big onslaught on Kangaroo Island in 2007. Before that time, I had never seen a truck that had got so hot that the mirrors had melted off. It is a credit to the facilities we have to keep our crews safe in these trucks.

None of this would be happening, and we would not have the support for those volunteer firefighters, without the emergency services levy in place. The beauty of it is, as has been mentioned by other speakers, that the remission noted in this report is $90 million a year going back to the good people of South Australia, on average $145 a household, because some of these increases were crippling households, crippling farmers.

We are good on our promise, as we have said all along with all of our commitments—our 300-odd commitments that we made before the election as a Marshall Liberal team—and we have delivered already on the first $90 million of a $360 million rollout of remissions in the ESL levy, putting that much-needed money back into the hands of the good people of South Australia. I commend all our people and our services, whether professional or volunteer and commend your service.

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (11:56): I also rise to support the motion moved by the member for Waite in relation to the emergency services levy. It is certainly something very close to my heart, with the work that is done in the emergency services space. My grandfather had a great passion for volunteering for what was originally known as the emergency fire service, later to become the Country Fire Service (CFS).

He was very much driven, with others, to establishing the emergency fire service at Port Elliot following the fire in the 1950s that started at the top of Cut Hill, which is the corner of Crows Nest Road and the Victor Harbor Road, and burnt to the beach, burnt the seaweed on the beach at Middleton, right down to the township itself. That certainly brought the risk of fire in the 1950s back to the farmers of the region and the members who lived in the towns—the risk they faced without a combined approach to actually fighting fires. That led them to forming the brigade there, which still thrives today.

I guess one little interesting anecdote from that fire was a photo my grandfather proudly had, showing the governor coming down to thank those who had been fighting the fire. He had filled the boot of the Rolls-Royce with ice and beer, and he was dropping the beer to the volunteers out on the ground. It was an interesting use of the governor's Rolls at the time to look after the volunteers. That is how we very much understand the commitment people make, and it goes right back to those times.

I see the continuation of this support as essential, but I also understand that we need to make sure that the cost burden is borne not just by the property holders but generally by all taxpayers because everyone is at risk in a fire or an emergency of different sorts. It is not just the landholders who have losses but people who are travelling through, etc., who also need to be protected. We need to make sure there is some equity in the approach to funding for the fire services, the SES and other emergency services.

One of the key things I think also is very important that I am really pleased to see in the budget is the money to make sure we fix the Alert SA app. That is something I have very much used in my time in my different roles, which have taken me out of my state and away from my farm. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.