Bills

Appropriation Bill 2018

Estimates Committees

Debate resumed.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (11:58): I rise today to speak on the report of the estimates committee. I was looking forward to the opportunity to talk directly to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment because he is in the other house and I have to direct my questions through our lower house members. It started off with disappointment for me because he thought it was more important to try to score some cheap political points than to base his arguments in fact. The minister openly challenged data his own chief executive provided to the Economic and Finance Committee only days prior to this estimates hearing.

Mike Hnyda was across the numbers when we talked about the work of Investment Attraction South Australia. He declared clearly, as has the minister when asked for written responses on this, that IASA was successful in bringing 36 projects to our state, creating approximately 9,000 jobs, and that is what it will do. Of course, we had to have the cheap political point, 'But it hasn't done that yet.' We know that we are all here because we want to see our state grow and flourish, so I was very disappointed that that is where we started.

It seems that the minister is more than happy to go to the opening of these launch events that were supported by the Economic Investment Fund and were attracted to our state and supported through Future Jobs. He was very happy to attend the upgraded Robern Menz factory in relation to the Violet Crumble, which was thanks to the Labor government, but of course had to score a cheap political shot. My question always has to be: why does the government go in celebration of these successes, yet talk them down at the same time?

More than that, they went on and abolished the industry advisory board that was supporting Investment Attraction projects. When questioned as to what Rob Chapman did wrong, all I got really was, 'Look, the board was a bit expensive, so we have brought it all in-house.' It just feels to me that we have a vote of no confidence to a model of investment attraction that independent studies say will generate an extra $9 million in economic activity to this state over the decade, so I am very disappointed that we are not on the same page.

One of the questions I had during estimates was about the savings that are expected to be achieved: a $26.84 million cumulative saving of this newly formed department. I asked questions about the structure of the department, where those efficiencies will come from and where the FTEs will be cut, but they were unable to be clear with me about the structure. I will continue to ask these questions about the structure because they have brought in a whole heap of different groups to the Department for Trade, Tourism and Investment and they have this efficiency, yet they cannot tell me how they are going to do that.

One of the key aspects of this budget, and of course the election, was this half-hearted approach for a network of South Australian trade offices. The minister has spoken about it many, many times and is very committed to it, but we know that expert reviews into trade offices clearly state that business missions and trade offices can only work if they are properly supported. Not only are we planning these bricks and mortar isolated trade offices with very few staff but at the same time we are cutting back on our trade missions.

We heard that they are going to be more focused, but we still do not have a calendar of events. How is a business going to decide whether going on a trade mission is what they want to do if they do not know if they are going to happen or not? I again call on the minister to please publish the calendar. We want our businesses to grow. We want them to export, but they cannot make a decision as to whether they are going to go with the minister without forward planning, so please bring that calendar out.

I will continue to ask questions about isolated trade offices. It is very ambitious to have them in Japan, the UAE, the US and of course Shanghai as well, but there are only going to be minimal staff there. I know there is going to be a sectorial team approach, but you are going to have isolated trade offices that are very expensive. I question and will continue to question the model for us to achieve this growth in exports that we all want.

I was very, very shocked that there was no answer to what is one of the key funds that was announced in this budget. The Economic and Business Growth Fund is one of the three funds we wanted to simplify and that you felt you wanted clarity around. However, my question is: how are these decisions going to be made? When someone applies to this fund will there be a selection panel? Is the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment the person who is going to be walking that into cabinet? None of that was clear to me.

I think the Treasurer knows. I think the Treasurer knows exactly how this fund is going to work. However, what I am very concerned about is that you are diminishing the role of Investment Attraction. You are diminishing the role of the health industries fund. You know that TechInSA has been chucked out so we will start something new there again. In the past, we have brought these people to South Australia with a very clear mandate about what we wanted to do.

We want to grow health industries, whether it be in the field of medical, assistive technology or biomedical research. These are areas where we have deep skill sets and we want to grow them. If you are going to have to cut and make efficiencies and then say, 'Well, we're not really quite sure who is going to make the decisions on this growth fund,' what clarity are we giving people? I am very concerned that no-one seems to have exact details about how this economic and business growth fund is actually going to work.

Of course, tourism is an area the minister is very keen on, as he was previously the shadow minister in that area, but the reality is that tourism has been cut. We know that $11 million less will be spent this financial year than last financial year—$11 million is a huge cut. I asked some very specific questions about these cuts. We know that the Adelaide 500 was not spared. The Liberals have broken an election promise to provide an additional $1 million for the funding of the Adelaide 500, but that has not eventuated. In fact, at estimates it was confirmed that $2.9 million less will be spent on the Adelaide 500 race in 2019 than was spent this year—$2.9 million is a lot of money.

What is going to be cut is unclear. There are some things that attract families to this race, this really important race at the start of the racing season and one of the best events on the calendar of the supercars, and some are unlikely to be continued. There is still no announcement about the post-race concert, and ticket sales have been delayed.

I am very proud of what we did as a Labor government to build this event, and I am very concerned that, while the minister has affirmed his commitment, there are members on the other side of the chamber who have people in their electorates who say, 'We don't really like the Adelaide 500. Putting up the grandstand and pulling it down disrupts our traffic.' I think the minister is committed, but it concerns me that other people in his party have other ideas.

Just last week, we heard that there are going to be some announcements about the programming of supercars. I am seeking a briefing, and I am sure that the minister will provide me with one shortly. This will be a challenge for South Australia because we have had the first race of this Adelaide 500, the supercar series, for some time and the question is: if it moves to the end of January, do we get the option to move it to then? If we want to keep it in March, then we lose the title of the first race. These are some of the challenges that we face in the future.

I talked about the fact that the tourism budget is going to have $11 million less than last year. This completely flies in the face of what everyone else is doing. When you look interstate, the NT recently announced that it is turbocharging its tourism with an additional $114 million, WA has just announced a $30 million partnership with Perth Airport and Queensland put another $94.6 million towards its tourism programs. That is why it is so astounding to me that there is this cut in tourism. This is a very competitive field. It is a national and international marketplace that we are competing in. Now is not the time to pull back.

I had the opportunity to ask questions of the Minister for Industry and Skills. I have to say that it was a case of deja vu because it was a continuously repetitive estimates hearing where the minister described at length his upbringing and his formative years. While I support his history—and he is very proud of his history—I have heard it many, many times. It was a little like bingo: how many apprentices he has employed, what he did, how he got there. While I know that he is proud of that, it was a case of deja vu over and over again.

When I came to the questions that I wanted to ask, once again there was a very proud announcement about 20,000-plus apprenticeships and traineeships over the next four years. The conversation was about commencements; I want to know about completions. This comes at a time when they have cut many of the jobs-supporting activities that were previously funded. It is not an additional 20,000 because we already have many apprenticeships and traineeships. It is a lift—I will give you that—but let's be clear about what we currently have and where we are aiming to go. Let us focus on the completion rates. You can have all the people in the world commencing, but what we need people to do is complete their training or their apprenticeship and get their trade.

I had some questions about the cuts to industry and skills and about Jobs First and Career Services. I was very disappointed that there was no real knowledge from the minister about what those funds did before. He was very clear that he had cut them and that they are not there anymore, but he had no understanding about what role they played and how important they were, whether it be in the disability sector supporting people with disabilities to get into work, or the University of the Third Age, which has established itself over many years. We know that there are impacts on Bedford and, in my own electorate, Northern Futures has lost the majority of its funding.

What I heard from the minister was, 'The federal government will take care of that. It's not our place to pay.' But you cannot just abdicate everything to the federal government because a lot of people in South Australia are unable to qualify to get that support. Therefore, when we wanted to support people through apprenticeships and traineeships to be work ready, these groups were funded to do that. Sometimes people need someone to walk alongside them to get work ready. For those of you in this house who have employed people before, if they are not work ready they make life more difficult. If people are not work ready and ready to be there to learn, then you cannot continue to employ them. These work-ready programs are incredibly important, but they have just been dismissed and they have been cut.

Of course, another area very close to me is the Northern Economic Plan. It appears that this government has turned its back on the people of the north. The state government had a 10-year commitment through the Northern Economic Plan with the councils of Port Adelaide Enfield, Playford and Salisbury. The job is not done, yet what I hear from people is, 'Oh, no, things have turned out okay. We don't have to continue doing things there. There are going to be some special projects, but we don’t actually know what they are yet.'

I asked the minister, 'Did you sit down with the Mayor of Salisbury and explain to her that you are cutting and running, that you are not continuing the Northern Economic Plan?' There was absolute silence. No, there is no commitment to them. He is cutting Service SA offices, he is cutting TAFE, but what is our ongoing investment to the people of the north? I think the belief is that the job is done.

We know that economically our unemployment rate is less than we thought it would be at this time after Holden closes, and that is a good thing for the state. I think the work we did with the Future Jobs Fund and the auto transition was very good, but please, this is not the time to think that the northern economy is fully complete. It needs your continued focus and your support.

Let me talk about Lot Fourteen. We heard a lot about this from the minister. I really wanted to talk to him about his knowledge of other areas of cohabitation of groups and collaboration, but he did not seem to have that much knowledge of it. He has been interstate, but I am not sure he knew how well we were doing here in South Australia as well. What I got was interesting. The question for me was: what is the role of the private sector versus the public sector, and is our focus on Lot Fourteen going to interrupt the private investment that we have here? Instead this is what I got:

For years, Adelaide has been described as the city of churches. We are building the entrepreneurial cathedral in the middle of Adelaide.

When there are serious questions of economic policies, questions about jobs and the future prosperity of this state, I think the people of South Australia will not tolerate such a flippant and disrespectful answer. We can only come to one of two conclusions—that the minister was not up for the scrutiny around this question about Lot Fourteen or that he genuinely thinks that he oversees this shiny new cathedral. That is where this government's head is.

We need to be realistic. While I am a supporter of innovation, while I am a supporter of our looking at entrepreneurship, the constituents in my electorate want you to focus on jobs, health, cost of living and education. While we encourage the development of innovation, and we encourage the development of new ideas here, they do not want to hear a minister meandering on about how he thinks the government is building a cathedral. That is not what they want to hear.

When I think about the budget, I think about the estimates process, and I think what we are seeing here is a consolidation of the Treasurer's power within government. The government have abolished the investment and health industry advisory boards because they think the boards were too expensive. That was their rationale. I asked whether business cases were done and in both those cases there was no answer there at all.

They have turned their back on Kangaroo Island residents by abolishing the office of the commissioner for Kangaroo Island, one of the key arrowheads of our tourism offerings. Just throw the baby out with the bathwater 'because we didn't like it'. But what we need to be doing is collaborating and working together. In terms of this budget, it was confirmed through estimates that there were key cuts to the drivers of economic growth and investment attraction and tourism. There is no strategic backbone to this budget and its cruel cuts. Rather than saying that it is our future, I feel that we are going back in time.

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (12:18): I am very pleased to rise today to speak on the report into the estimates committees on the Appropriation Bill. Firstly, as those before me have done, I would also like to commend the work of the member for Flinders and Deputy Speaker as well as the member for Waite in chairing these committees. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the ministers, who performed very well throughout the budget estimates period, particularly given the disappointing performance of the opposition, where in some cases shouting and interrupting were viewed as a substitute for thought-provoking questions. It reminds me of the old saying that speaking loudly is the next best thing to being right.

I would also like to commend the work of the ministerial staffers and also all the public servants who put in an extraordinary amount of work in preparation for these committee hearings. The Marshall Liberal government's first budget is a strong budget, it is a firm budget and it fixes up the mess left to us by the former Labor government and delivers on each and every one of the commitments we took to the people of South Australia at the last election.

In my case, and for my community in the north-east, this has meant a number of very good things, including significant funding to upgrade Modbury Hospital; funding to fix Golden Grove Road; funding to open up reservoirs, including the Hope Valley Reservoir; increased funding for park-and-rides to fund expansions of parking at Paradise, Golden Grove, Tea Tree Plaza and Klemzig; upgrades to the Tea Tree Gully sports hub, to Tea Tree Gully Gymsports; to parking access and availability at the South Australian Districts Netball Association courts; to fix the intersection of North-East Road and South Para Road in Chain of Ponds; and increased funding to the Tea Tree Gully toy library of $100,000 over four years.

We are delivering on our promises locally and across the state. Importantly, we are also ensuring the sustainability of the state's finances into the future by delivering balanced budgets over the forward estimates. This is, of course, in contrast to the previous government which, in its Mid-Year Budget Review late last year, promised a $12 million surplus for the 2017-18 financial year. Curiously, we have seen Treasury documents warning that same government in January this year that the budget had already blown out by about $190 million; of course, there was no mention of that at the time.

It is also worth noting, particularly given a lot of the bleating coming from those opposite, that the Labor government's final Mid-Year Budget Review included $715 million in savings. What this government has done is an additional $148.9 million. On top of that, one of the big differences is that the former government clearly failed to meet its targets and was failing to meet these targets, which is in contrast to the responsible approach taken by the new Marshall Liberal government.

Health was an important feature of the budget, particularly in the Treasury committee where we learned that the budget for the Central Adelaide Local Health Network had blown out in the 2017-18 financial year by more than $300 million. This is clearly an issue resulting from the irresponsible work of the previous government, but it needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency to ensure that our health system functions as it needs to into the future.

Moreover, the former Labor government's Mid-Year Budget Review included cuts to the health budget that the Marshall Liberal government deemed unrealistic; as such, that effectively puts an additional $800 million more into health compared with what had been budgeted previously. Importantly, we are also investing an additional $45 million to reduce elective surgery waiting times, as well as colonoscopy waiting times, in our public hospitals.

In the case of colonoscopies, all the advice is that the sooner you get the opportunity to treat bowel cancer the much greater the chance the person has of surviving. Obviously, the fact that so many patients were waiting beyond the clinically recommended maximum wait time could have a devastating effect on the individuals affected but, from a broader public health perspective, early intervention has much better outcomes and much greater efficiencies within the health system as a whole.

Another commitment we made that I was particularly pleased with was the $30.7 million over three years for the meningococcal B vaccine for children between the ages of six weeks and four years and then also for years 10 and 11 students and young adults. This important program was formulated with input from a local study called B Part of It, a study happening right here in South Australia looking at the impact of the meningococcal B vaccine, a very new vaccine, on colonisation in adolescents.

An important aspect of an organism like the meningococcus is that for a lot of people it is carried without any disease at all, and so knowing what is happening and which people within our community are carrying this bacteria, but not necessarily getting sick, is important for then targeting how best to prevent the disease. The work being done here and around the world is showing that the primary age group that transmits this organism around the community is indeed adolescents. Whilst those young children are much more likely to get sick, and that is where we see most of the disease, they are much less likely to be carriers.

That is why the properly informed program that the Marshall government is putting forward targets the important age group that is responsible for transmitting the bug around the community whilst also targeting the age group that is most likely to get sick. This has been seen before in my previous area of work with the pneumococcal vaccine, where the younger children age group was responsible for transmitting the bug around the community. When that age group was immunised, we saw a reduction in disease in their grandparents. It is important to consider all these factors and that is why the work that the Minister for Health and Wellbeing has done on this in the working group in determining how to best target this vaccine is very important. They should be commended for it.

I was also very pleased to be part of the committee with the Minister for Industry and Skills, of course not only to hear his very enthusiastic commitment to improving skills and increasing the number of apprenticeships and traineeships throughout our state—something he will never tire of speaking about, even if some of those opposite do tire of hearing about it—but also to be part of the session where he talked about innovation and what the government's plans are in the area of commercialisation of research and, in particular, some of the work that has been proposed for the innovation and commercialisation precinct at the Lot Fourteen site, which I think is a fantastic opportunity to bring different groups together.

We have academic institutions that have extraordinary intellectual capacity and skills along with those from the private sector and those, again, with the government. We have seen many examples now of this trend towards bringing those groups together and seeing that important transfer of the fantastic work that is being done right here in South Australia into products that can be sold or services that can be provided for our state and around the world.

Last Friday, I was very privileged to attend the University of Adelaide with the Premier and also the Assistant Minister for Defence, Senator Fawcett, for the joint signing between the university and Lockheed Martin of an important agreement between the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and this enormous defence company from the United States, bringing in world-leading expertise at the academic end as well as the industry end.

A number of months earlier, I also attended a similar event at the University of Adelaide, where we saw the company by the name of Silanna sign an agreement with the University of Adelaide in the Faculty of Engineering around their semiconductor research program. I must admit that that is an area of research that I do not profess to know or understand a lot about, but it is clearly very important in terms of where we are going with technology into the future.

One of the particularly exciting aspects of that agreement was that Dr Petar Atanackovic from the University of Adelaide is one of those rare cases who studied initially in Adelaide, went on to work at Stanford University, and then in the private sector within Silicon Valley, and has then made the move to come back to Adelaide, bringing that important expertise here.

I also had the privilege recently of attending the fifth anniversary of the new Braggs Building that houses the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS), the institute at the University of Adelaide that looks at fibre optics and how they can have different sensors attached and detect all range of things from biological compounds to chemical compounds and even heat sensing.

There is a particularly interesting project going on there that is being done in collaboration with Nyrstar in Port Pirie where they are designing a fibre that can detect heat with high resolution within their furnace, not only giving them an overall average temperature across the whole furnace but also allowing them to measure the different variations in temperature in the different positions within it.

I commend Professor Andre Luiten, the head of that institute, for the work he is doing and also Professor Tanya Monro, who is now at the University of South Australia but who was instrumental in the beginning of IPAS in Adelaide. The government is committed to supporting the commercialisation of research. This has been done through the new Research, Commercialisation and Start-up Fund. Importantly, we have also appointed the new Chief Entrepreneur, Jim Whalley, who has enormous expertise in this important area.

In summary, our budget is focused on fixing many of the problems we are faced with now but it is also very much forward looking. It is looking at how we can provide better and more efficient services into the future but also at how we can create the best environment possible to ensure that we are creating jobs of the future that will stand the test of time and ensure that our young people and people of all ages can stay here and work and enjoy the lives they want to live right here in South Australia.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (12:31): I note there was no talk there about the O-Bahn or any of the cuts that have happened to services in the member for Newland's area. I want to talk today about a mean, tricky, nasty budget, some of the effects of which we will not see for several months and people will not know just how disastrous this budget has been, delivered by the new government.

I sat through the estimates with the minister for trade and tourism and I was really worried about where tourism is headed. Everyone I speak to in the tourism sector is also very worried about the cuts that are happening to one of our most exciting economic drivers. The visitor economy, as I think everybody is aware, went from $4.9 billion a year to $6.7 billion a year in the space of five years, and that did not come about by accident. That came about because we as a government put extra money into the visitor economy through the South Australian Tourism Commission. We established a bid fund for conferences and conventions. We also set up a major events bid fund; we went out and we won some pretty big events. The state of origin, rugby league, is coming to South Australia.

The member for Morphett will be at the Lifesaving World Championships in just a few weeks, which will be fantastic, in his electorate. I think we may be the first city in the world, if not the second perhaps, to host these world championships for a second time.

Mr Patterson: The first.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: We are the first to host them for a second time, which is a great accolade for South Australia, but they do not come about by accident. We have to go out and work really hard to get these major events. One of the big ones that we had was the great fight between Anthony Mundine and Danny Green at the Adelaide Oval. That was one of the most spectacular nights of entertainment or sport that we have seen at the Adelaide Oval and that did not come about because we had more money to throw at it than Sydney or Melbourne or Perth or Brisbane, who were also competing for the biggest grudge match in Australian boxing. That happened because we made a concerted effort to go out and win that major event for South Australia.

I wrote to Anthony Mundine and Danny Green and explained how big this would be for Adelaide. I explained how, if you go to another city, you might get lost in the big smoke, but here in Adelaide people will get behind it. We have this brand-new Adelaide Oval, which our government had the vision to build at a cost of $535 million on behalf of the taxpayers of this state. I explained that we have this new oval, this fantastic stadium that is noisy and popular and would attract a massive crowd. When Danny and Anthony came here for their famous pre-match press conference and announced they were going to have the fight, they actually said that made a difference, because there was a personal touch from the government.

I am a little bit worried that this new Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment is actually not involved in going out and getting the sorts of events that we need here to make sure that our visitor economy grows. We saw his comments in the first few weeks that he was a minister. He was very hands-off with the South Australian Tourism Commission. I will tell you what: you can say all you like that it is a statutory authority that sits at arm's length from the government, but when things go wrong, everything comes back to the minister's door and table because it is the minister who has the ultimate responsibility for driving the visitor economy in this state.

I was pretty disappointed last weekend to hear that Wollongong had won the right to host the 2022 world cycling championships. This is an event that was cherry ripe for Adelaide to have. The UCI, which is the world governing body of cycling, wanted a big fee, which was negotiable. Cycling Australia wanted a big fee, which was negotiable. The premier and I had some pretty good conversations with the president of Cycling Australia, Steve Bracks, throughout last year. As recently as early this year, we sat down with Steve Bracks and chatted to him about how Adelaide was the right place to host the world cycling championships because we have a commitment to cycling that goes back years and years.

During the Bannon years, we built the velodrome out at Gepps Cross, which is still one of the best velodromes anywhere in the world. We were the home for so long of the Australian Institute of Sport's track and road cycling program. Adelaide has been a focal point. During the past few years, we also committed to $11 million of extra funding for cycling. That involved an upgrade at the velodrome at Gepps Cross, building a wind tunnel next to that.

It was interesting that in this budget, the Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing and the Treasurer showed absolutely no shame in going out and claiming those announcements as their own. That is a disgrace. What they could do is just say, 'We're committing to what the previous government did,' but to go out and take credit for something that was announced in January this year at the Tour Down Under dinner, I think shows a fair bit of hide and a fair bit of shamelessness.

But people are not silly out there. There is a recognition that it was our government that put that money on the table. As well as that, there is the Sam Willoughby international BMX track to be built in the southern suburbs. The location is still to be worked out between the Marion and Onkaparinga councils and the state government, but again it was a commitment of our government.

We were telling Steve Bracks of Cycling Australia and David Lappartient, who is the new head of the international cycling union, the UCI, that South Australia should be rewarded for being one of the great cycling states and locations anywhere in the world, where David Lappartient and the UCI can bring people from around the world to Adelaide for the world cycling championships in 2022 and say, 'This is what the best cycling city in the world looks like. You should aim to look like this as well.'

It will require investment in infrastructure and investment in major events to get that reputation, but it is something that we have built up over many, many years. We were getting a good response from Cycling Australia and the UCI. Those relationships did not happen overnight. I was a cycling journalist right throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. I lived in Switzerland for a couple of years and covered the Tour de France.

When the head of the Tour de France comes out to stay in Australia, he stays at my house. We have a very good relationship. We were together again on the Tour de France last year—and that is what you need to have. This is not just about having the biggest pile of money because we are never going to win the contest if it is about the biggest pile of money, not when you look at the money available to the bigger states like Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. When you cannot compete on a monetary level, you have to be smarter about how you go about doing business.

Christian Prudhomme, the head of the Tour de France, and I are good mates. Sir Gary Verity, who was knighted by the Queen for getting the Tour de France to start in Yorkshire a few years ago, is another good mate. He was out with us and stayed with us during the tour this year, last year and the year before. We took him to Kangaroo Island this year and showed him around. Last year, I reciprocated: I went to Yorkshire and caught up with him. You have to have those relationships with people.

Sir Gary Verity, who heads up tourism in Yorkshire, was successful in getting the UCI to award the 2019 world cycling championships to Yorkshire. Like South Australia and Adelaide, they have built up a reputation for being a region committed to cycling. Sir Gary offered this new government the opportunity to work on behalf of Adelaide to try to secure the rights for the world cycling championships for 2022, to be held right here in Adelaide, which would have been terrific.

It was one of my great ambitions and dreams to host the world's best cyclists right here in South Australia. There are 300,000 people expected to come to watch the world cycling championship and the best cyclists ride around—millions and millions and millions of dollars into our visitor economy, another vote of confidence in Adelaide by the world for being a great cycling city and a great city for putting on major events.

Sir Gary never heard back from the government about his offer to help. The weekend before last, we woke up on a Sunday morning to find out, at the world cycling championships in Austria, that they had announced the 2022 world cycling championships will go to Wollongong. What is going on when Wollongong beats Adelaide? I have nothing against that beautiful part of Australia, with its coastline, but we are the city, we are the state, that has invested in the infrastructure. We are the state that, until this new government got in in March, had an exemplary relationship with these world leaders.

I gave four years' notice to the Liberal Party when, before the 2014 election, they did not bother to meet with the then head of the UCI or with Christian Prudhomme, the head of the Tour de France, or with Sir Gary Verity, who were all in town. They did not take the time to walk down the street or come up to them at one of the legs of the Tour Down Under and talk to them. We saw exactly the same thing before the Tour Down Under this year. It really worries me that this is a government that thinks it can just get in and turn up to all the openings and schmooze around. It is a hard job to build the visitor economy. You can make it look easy, you can make it look fun, but it is actually hard work.

It is one of those areas where, if you are lucky enough to have that portfolio, you can make a real difference in terms of bringing money into the state, creating jobs, creating wealth. The best money we can have in our state is the money out of the purses, wallets and pockets of people from interstate and overseas. That is direct money into our capital city. It is direct money into our regions, where 42 per cent of tourism dollars are spent, which is great news for Kangaroo Island, McLaren Vale, the Barossa, the Riverland, for the South-East, the stunning Eyre Peninsula and the fabulous Flinders Ranges. For every part of this state the visitor economy is vitally important.

I am hearing that marketing money has been stripped out. We have already missed out, as I said, on hosting the world cycling championships in 2022. I really worry for some of those other events, which I know were on the drawing board when we were in government and which this new government has dropped the ball on. I was disappointed to hear in estimates about the massive cutbacks that are going to hit the Adelaide 500; still no concerts announced.

As to the stadium supertrucks, which have been such a huge hit, my Facebook tells me that it was four years ago today that I went out in one of these stadium supertrucks and went over the jumps at 200 km/h, sitting in the passenger seat with a legend of NASCAR called Robby Gordon. He told me that day, 'You wait till these hit the streets during the Adelaide 500 next year. This is the only motor racing event that brings everyone to the barriers.' I am thinking, 'Yeah, sure mate, you're just talking yourself up a bit.' But we were there, watching it on their debut in Adelaide at the Adelaide 500 in 2015, and he was right. Everyone left their seats and raced down to the barriers to get a closer look at those overgrown utes going up and over jumps and getting up on two wheels. It was the most spectacular racing that we had seen.

What I am getting at is that the stadium supertrucks are no more for the Adelaide 500; there are no big concerts anymore; everything is being cut out of it. What I hear from the teams and those involved in supercars is that they are very worried about what they heard out of this government and what they heard out of the South Australian Tourism Commission when they were down at Tailem Bend for the first ever supercar series race at Tailem Bend back in August.

They got the distinct feeling that this government does not care about the Adelaide 500, that it is quite happy to have everything moved down to Tailem Bend. Tailem Bend is an amazing facility, a facility that our government helped get off the ground. We gave every support we could, including $7.5 million. We gave support to their getting the licence to have a supercar race there, but it was conditional on us growing the pie and having two major rounds of the supercar calendar here. There is no bigger race, apart from Bathurst, than the Adelaide 500. It is a street circuit race, and it is one that is loved by the fans, by the teams and by the sponsors of supercars. It is phenomenal and it is the only race of its kind on the circuit.

It really worries me that we are hearing all sorts of figures of money that is being stripped out of that event, from between $3 million and $6 million. I am hearing that the $6 million figure is closer to the mark than the $3 million figure. I really worry about our visitor economy because we made a lot of investments to get events here, to get visitors here through marketing, and to build infrastructure: the $400 million Convention Centre, the $535 million Adelaide Oval, and that investment was followed by private sector investment, which built hotels that need cleaners, bar staff and front-of-house guest relations employees, and which employ thousands and thousands of South Australians every day in our visitor economy. The easiest way to kickstart your economy is through the visitor economy. The easiest way to make it go downhill is to take money out of that sector, and I am very afraid that that is what is happening.

In my local area we made a commitment for millions and millions of dollars to be spent on sporting infrastructure in the south. We worked with the Onkaparinga council, and they are very well aware of what we promised in the last Mid-Year Budget Review that we brought down in December last year. Part of that agreement and commitment was $2 million that we put in for a soccer pitch at Aldinga. Aldinga is one of the fastest growing suburbs in South Australia. There are a lot of young families there, and it has no soccer pitch. You have thousands of people—women, men, boys, girls—who have nowhere to go to train or play soccer. As a local member and as a sports minister I listened to that request, and we prioritised $2 million to go to the Aldinga area to build a soccer pitch.

I received a letter today from the Minister for Sport, who tells me that, under the previous government's Mid-Year Budget Review, the money was not transferred to the Office for Recreation and Sport for administration or allocation. That is just rubbish—that is rubbish! We were out there publicly declaring that this money was there. The Office for Recreation and Sport knew that that $2 million was there for the people of Aldinga to have their soccer pitch. This new, mean government with its mean budget took that $2 million off the people of Aldinga and spent it on something else that was not very important to the people of Aldinga or to people anywhere in this state.

When we build new suburbs, we have to keep up and we have to have the facilities there. I can tell you that the people of Aldinga are pretty dirty on this new government. Unlike some of those backbenchers opposite who come in here and accept that their suburbs and their communities have been stripped of facilities and services that were either in place or promised, I will not be silenced. I was not silenced when our side of parliament was in government—I had fights with my own side—and I will certainly not be silenced, now that there is a new Liberal government in town cutting things in my local area, because it is an absolute disgrace.

The other area that is going to come back and condemn this government is women's sports. For far too long, because they have wanted to participate in sport, girls and women in our state have had to change in their cars, behind bushes, in men's toilets with urinals, in offices and in other inappropriate places. That is not good enough, and we knew that was not good enough. As the surge of women came towards sport, and as women wanted to participate in sport, we committed $24 million for women's change rooms, either for new builds or to retrofit existing facilities. This new, mean, tricky Liberal government with their mean, tricky first budget have taken that fund away.

They have penalised every woman and every girl in this state, and it is just not good enough. I can tell you that not only are the women and the girls coming after this government for what they have done but so are the men—because they have sisters and daughters and they know that it is not good enough to ignore the women and the girls in our community.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:51): I take this opportunity to thank you, Deputy Speaker, for chairing the estimates session I am about to speak about in regard to the Appropriation Bill. I will start by talking about the education session, which was of course of great interest to me. We covered a very diverse range of issues. Starting with the question of additional funding for our schools, the session that we had came in the wake, very shortly, of an announcement by the federal government that there would be a significant increase in the funding for non-government schools but not one that would be matched for public schools.

I inquired of the minister what his intention was in terms of standing up to the state of affairs. Although the minister said that he had made several representations, internally, to the federal minister—who had only been in for a couple of weeks, I think—there was no sense of his really pushing hard on the absolute inequity of the federal government deciding that it would break its own policy settings (policy settings that I do not agree with in the first place) to push still further the inequity of prioritising private schools over public schools instead of having a genuinely sector-blind, needs-based approach to school funding.

Queensland, Victoria and the ACT have come out very strongly in opposition to that. In some ways, I am sure the minister or the other side of the chamber might say, 'You would expect that. They are Labor governments and they are perhaps freer, politically, to do that.' However, consider New South Wales minister Rob Stokes, who is following in the very well-regarded footsteps of minister Adrian Piccoli. As Coalition ministers for education, they have seen that their job is to stand up for children and schools, rather than to stay close to their political mates. Rob Stokes has come out and said, 'I may not sign this. I may not sign this agreement because it is unfair.'

Now, that is an education minister. He has been an education minister for a little longer than the current one in South Australia, and I have some hope that maybe our education minister will similarly realise that staying close to Canberra does not benefit South Australia. Standing up for the right issues, standing up for what matters and what is important and for what you are responsible for, which is the school system—that is what makes a difference.

Following a cut under the Abbott government's first budget of $335 million in the last two years of the original Gonski deal, after fighting and fighting we got $125 million of that back for all three sectors. That is not good enough. With $210 million, you could do an enormous amount for schools and for students in need, but fighting made a difference, and I would like this government to reflect on that.

Ironically, just after our estimates federal Labor came out and, consistent with their position that they would restore the original Gonski funding, have been able to give clarity on how much that means—that is, an additional $256 million in the first three years for public schools in South Australia. The minister was very lukewarm about that in the media, far more lukewarm than anything I heard him say about the additional funding for private schools but not for public. While we are talking about funding, there was much discussion about the increase in funding for education in this budget. It looks like it has gone up something like $500 million from the previous budget to the end of these forward estimates.

What is that additional money? It is enrolment growth—expected. It is depreciation in assets—expected—although it is somewhat of a mystery and, I imagine, better understood by the people who manage assets and finances than most others. It is some Labor-funded commitments—the new schools in the north and the south and in Whyalla. It is the Labor decision to reach average state funding for non-government schools that occurred at the Mid-Year Budget Review. It is the increase in the commonwealth funding that I have just cited, which we fought so hard to get. It is also indexation. That is not going to make a difference to kids in schools who desperately need improved quality.

What might make a difference in a negative sense are the cuts, and that was the next subject of discussion—200 staff from head office. The government very rightly is at pains not to have the cuts directly affect schools or, I think I understood from estimates, the Learning Improvement Division within head office. I find it hard to fathom that 200 jobs can go from head office without affecting schools. They do not do things that are so irrelevant to schools that you can get rid of 200 of them overnight and schools will be left untroubled. This may not be a case of cost shifting, but I suspect it is at the very least a case of work shifting, where work that has been done centrally will now have to be undertaken in schools.

We talked about year 7. The move for year 7s into a secondary setting is one that I chose not to make, but I respect that the government have come in with a policy commitment for two elections in a row that they want to do it. All I ask is that they fund it. The genuinely new money in the budget is to fund the first six months, the first half of the school year, of the much more expensive approach of having year 7s in secondary school. It is more expensive to teach kids in high school than in primary school. Different industrial conditions mean that it is more expensive.

That money is in there, and it will go on. It is something like $40 million a year net that the state government is now going to have to find every year because of that choice. If they find it, and if they add it to the education budget, then that is a perfectly respectable position. What they have not done is fund the money for infrastructure. What they are doing is largely taking the money that had been assigned to a number of high schools and area schools, as well as primary schools but leave them aside.

A number of high schools and area schools will have funding that we allocated to improve their infrastructure used to increase capacity for year 7. Capacity was mentioned in our program, and it was leant on very much by the minister. It was one of the criteria. That capacity was because these schools are growing anyway. Golden Grove High School is already full. It is already under enrolment pressure because the area has more families and therefore needs to increase its learning areas for that natural growth.

Having money that has to be dedicated to year 7s means that they will almost certainly not be able to build the performing arts studio and spaces they had expected to be able to fund because of the money that was allocated by the previous state government. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.