Grievance Debate

Business Confidence

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:09): If you ever wanted an indication as to why the most recent business confidence surveys by Business SA show that South Australia has the lowest business confidence on record, you only had to watch the Premier's performance just then in question time—an absolute head-in-the-sand approach from this government.

First of all, the Premier claims that actually business confidence is good. He cites the National Australia Bank survey on business confidence, saying, 'Well, that says that it's good, so there's nothing wrong here,' and of course ignoring that we have the other three of the big four saying the complete opposite: the ANZ/Property Council Survey, the CommSec State of the States survey and also the survey by the Westpac/St George Bank/BankSA group, which show that business confidence is crashing here in South Australia.

Then, of course, as the Premier realised that that argument was not holding water, it was time to change tack, like the true yachtsman he pretends to be. Then it was, 'It's not our fault. It's not our fault here in South Australia: we're facing headwinds. We're facing headwinds from a national or a global perspective.' The truth of the matter is that South Australia is facing a headwind: it is from the Premier and his Liberal government, and it is blowing hard into the face of the economic progress that South Australians are trying to make.

Twice now, in consecutive state budgets, he has handed down documents that damage economic growth, damage prosperity and hit households and businesses hard in their hip pockets, and now we are seeing the results: two consecutive quarters of state final demand figures are showing a reduction. Can you imagine what we can expect to see in the state's GSP figures to be released on Friday by the ABS? I bet we do not hit the Premier's target of 3 per cent growth. He will be lucky to hit 2 per cent after two consecutive quarters of negative data on state final demand.

Of course, we also know what the Premier has been hard at, and that is ramping up taxes, fees and charges for South Australians. In the most recent budget, there was $500 million in extra taxes, fees and charges. If you now have the misfortune of owning one of the 1.7 million motor vehicles in South Australia, you can expect to contribute to nearly $150 million extra in higher motor vehicle registration and administration charges over the next four years. If you now have the misfortune of being a home owner, you are going to be contributing to the extra $90 million to be raised in the solid waste levy.

If you have the misfortune, under this Liberal government, of being a nurse, a cleaner or even a doctor wanting to park at work at a hospital, there is an extra $30 million of higher hospital car parking fees imposed by this government. Even worse than all those taxes, fees and charges being increased is the shameful debacle of land tax. You only have to ask Business SA which key domestic policy lever in South Australia has been pulled to the absolute detriment of the business community: it is land tax policy.

Even yesterday, there was the sixth different iteration of land tax policy from those opposite—the sixth different iteration. Four iterations ago, we were told by the Treasurer that he will not bend over for the Property Council. Well, it only took another couple of weeks before the Liberal government was doing exactly that. Of course, it did not matter to the Liberal Party backbench: they had already been duped into supporting land tax version 3, despite versions 4, 5 and 6 consistently changing the goalposts for landowners in South Australia.

Mr Speaker, of course you would be familiar with all those in this place who voted to support these changes to land tax aggregation and who voted for the damage that it has done to the property development sector and the housing construction sector. Even more to the point is the damage it has done to this Liberal government. It has split the parliamentary party, and it has carved off a huge chunk of the Liberal support base to the point now where people seek out members of the Labor opposition and tell us that they are lifelong Liberal supporters and that they are done with this government.

That is the damage that this Premier and this government have wrought on this state. That is the damage that they are wreaking on their own party. Enough is enough. It is time that this government takes some responsibility and does something for the benefit of our economy.