Grievance Debate

State Budget

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:13): I rise to speak in support of South Australian individuals and families who have had their household budgets cruelly raided by the budgeting of those opposite, a government who are both cruel and unfair and who do not understand or care about what it is like to struggle with the cost of living. They are a government who are clearly out of touch with the impact on the budgets of South Australians of their massive, unprecedented increases to fees, charges, hospital parking, public transport and rubbish collection.

They are a government who have utterly failed to deliver in this budget their phony election promise of lower costs and better services, a government who seem more focused on living it up with a mooch—buying packets of chips and alcohol with South Australian people's money and making sure that hardworking South Australian emergency services volunteers definitely do not get a free doughnut—than deeply caring about just how hard their budget will make people's lives.

This is a government so happy to burden South Australians with unprecedented debt of a staggering $21 billion, yet so reluctant to provide anything that gives people a bit of a break to keep massive debt from their own family budgets. State budgets always reflect the priorities of the government that delivers them. This budget clearly reflects that this government will not and has not prioritised the people of South Australia.

Every South Australian household has to deal with its own priorities in its budget. Those priorities often focus on putting food on the table, paying the rent or mortgage, getting to a hospital when you need to, paying your bills on time to keep your car running or your licence up to date, getting a Metrocard for the kids to get to school and elsewhere and getting your council rates paid, if you are a home owner. Most South Australians budget to try to do all that and to try to have a bit to do something nice: to go to the footy or a Fringe show or whatever else your family likes to do.

The ability for a family to balance their budget, to make ends meet and to deal with the cost of living, just got a whole lot harder. It got a whole lot harder because the Premier and the Treasurer do not understand just how hard it is, just how far a South Australian family's budget is already stretched. Families now face extraordinary increases to keep their car running, with the Treasurer grabbing more from people's pockets through rego fees and licence renewals.

If people decide that it is easier to catch the bus, they face a very difficult time: firstly, to find one at the right time, given the cruel slashing of routes and, secondly, because the government have smashed the two-section tickets and are slugging South Australians $5 just to buy a new Metrocard. Too bad if you have a loved one who is in hospital for a long time or if, like so many South Australians, you need to take your kids, your spouse, your parent or yourself for hospital treatment on a regular basis, because the Treasurer will be there at the entrance to the car park grabbing your $45 extra per week just to park there.

Everywhere you turn—to go to your car, to catch the bus, to visit a loved one in hospital, even when you wander outside in your dressing gown to put the rubbish out—the Treasurer is there with you, reaching into the pocket of your robe and taking what he can. If you decide that you want to try to pull some money together in the family budget once in a while to go to the footy, to Cleland Wildlife Park to a Fringe show—probably not to Carclew or to anything put on by Windmill, given the government's further cuts to the arts—if you can actually afford to get there, the Treasurer will be there, too, at the turnstile of the stadium, making sure that he takes the extra ticket price because of his appalling new police rent tax.

Hardworking South Australians who are doing what they can to make ends meet and to meet the cost of living have just been unfairly hurt by this government's budget. They have been hurt by a group of people who clearly just do not understand struggle and who just do not care about them—and for what? Record debt?

South Australian people deserve to be a priority in this government's budget. They deserve better than this ruthless disregard for matters in their lives, for measures that make things just a little easier. They deserve better than this family budget-raiding Treasurer, who will roar off into the sunset with a state debt that will not be paid in his lifetime and household debt that will get even harder to pay in the lifetime of most South Australian families.