Grievance Debate

State Liberal Government

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:13): For a government that came to power on the back of a promise to the people of being more open, transparent and accountable, I think that this week of parliament has been a very good example of how they have no intention of making good on that promise. The questions put to the minister for corrections about the Telstra outage that saw 774 people, including parolees and those on home detention and bail, unable to be tracked for more than 24 hours, were extremely basic in their nature; for example, 'How many of the 774 were sex offenders? Did the minister ask how many were sex offenders after learning about the outage?'

There could be no more basic and fundamental questions put to a minister for corrections after an incident like this. Only perhaps if the opposition asked the minister what his name was and what his title was could the line of questioning have been more predictable. Even so, the minister yet again looked completely unprepared. He fumbled his way through an hour of non-answers, repeatedly using phrases like 'potentially 'and most alarmingly 'don't quote me on this'.

This is from a man who has been a member of parliament for more than four years and a minister of the Crown for more than seven months. I am not sure what role the minister for corrections thinks that Hansard plays in this parliament, but my understanding is that its primary task is to record everything that is said in this place so that it can be quoted elsewhere. But over here on the opposition benches it was very clear what was happening.

The minister has proven time and time again since the March election that he is out of his depth. He never has answers to even the most basic questions. I think he learned early in this term of parliament that it was safer just to spout platitudes and avoid answering the question altogether. This week, the minister was true to form. Not only could he not answer the question about how many of the 774 people were sex offenders but it was also revealed that he had not even asked the question.

However, he did confirm, albeit with the usual array of qualifications, that he had been informed of the outage sometime on the Sunday morning. So the minister had most of Sunday, all Monday and until question time on Tuesday to ask this very simple question of his political staff and his public servants: 'Please provide me with a breakdown of what offences were committed by the 774 people whose monitoring failed.' Either the minister did not think to ask this most basic of questions, which is an indictment in itself, or he chose to deliberately come into the chamber without that information so that he could not be drawn on details because he knows that if he had those details they would trip him up again.

What we have is a minister who, for whatever reason, will never be furnished with the facts in this place. It is truly remarkable that we have a minister of the Crown in this new Liberal government—a government, which, as I said before, pontificated about accountability and transparency for years and years in this place—who is a minister for the areas of law enforcement no less, who treats question time with such disdain.

But it is not just the minister for corrections. This week was very instructive in terms of how the whole ministry treats question time. The Premier himself now likes to preface his answers to questions without notice by saying, 'Look, I'm not sure where the opposition is going with this.' Sixteen years they spent in opposition and they still do not know how question time works. It is like they take offence to not being given a heads-up about what questions are going to be asked. It is like they do not understand that the purpose of question time is not just for the opposition to hold the opposition to account by asking questions but that it is also a chance to test its aptitude, to see if South Australia's ministers are actually up to the job. Judging from Hansard from this past week, this government and these ministers are not up to the job.

In the past three days, 20 questions asked by the opposition were taken on notice or answered with vagaries like, 'I don't have that information,' 'I don't have a detailed answer,' 'I don't have a detailed explanation,' or, 'I don't have the scope of the work in front of me.' The Premier even had the audacity to tell the member for Kaurna to refer questions on health to the minister in the other place—this coming from a minister who, when he was the opposition leader, did everything in his power to make the election in March a referendum on health but who now cannot even stoop so low as to answer a question about it in this place.

The Liberal Party in South Australia is the party of platitudes. Content to climb atop the soapbox here in parliament and take credit for the work of community groups, non-government organisations, sporting clubs—you name it—it is the same old hands-off-the-wheel approach, and when those groups need assistance they are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps that is why this ministry is so uncomfortable in question time: they have nothing to say, they have no real agenda of their own and they are coasting on the fumes of the last government, proudly cutting ribbons left, right and centre for things they did not fund in the first place and things they will not fund again.

When it is all done, all we are going to be left with are pages and pages of unanswered questions in Hansard—and you can quote me on that.