City Deal Funding

Mr DULUK (Waite) (14:19): My question is also to the Premier.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Deputy Premier is called to order.

Mr DULUK: Can the Premier please update the house on how the government is working with the commonwealth to drive innovation and growth in South Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:20): It was a great pleasure today to have minister Alan Tudge with us. He is a person we have been working very closely with to sign the City Deal here for South Australia. This is one of the issues that I took up—

Mr Odenwalder interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Elizabeth is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —immediately on becoming the Premier of South Australia. It was very obvious to me that other cities, other states around Australia, had already pursued opportunities for a City Deal with the federal government. On coming to government, it was pretty disappointing to learn that no action had been taken by the previous government—they were sitting on their hands. Of course, you understand why this would have occurred. The relationship with the federal government—

Mr Szakacs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Cheltenham is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —had broken down, and what we have now is a grown-up, sensible government—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —putting the people of South Australia first. I was very pleased, on becoming the Premier of South Australia, to make this a key goal for us: to sign a City Deal. City Deals are struck between the federal government, the state government and, of course, a city council. We were very pleased to work with the Rt Hon. The Lord Mayor of Adelaide, Sandy Verschoor, and I think we have come up with an excellent project.

We have more than $550 million to transform our city. The centre point of this, of course, is Lot Fourteen. Those opposite, sir, as you would be more than aware, wanted to essentially flog it off for some housing development, which would have been competing directly with those—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —opposite in the private sector on the other side of North Terrace. We saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the most exciting urban redevelopment project in the history of our state and one of the most exciting projects—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee and the member for West Torrens are on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —in the entire country at the moment: an innovation centre to really drive jobs and opportunity into the future. Can I say that two years ago this was a functioning hospital. If you go down there now, it's a hive of activity. Today, we launched the implementation plan, which really sets out the responsibility at the federal government level—

Mr Szakacs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Cheltenham is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —at the state government level and, of course, at the local government level: who is paying, when it's going to be delivered and how it's going to be delivered, as well as an overarching governance structure for that project. I have to say that more than $100 million worth of contracts have already been let. The adaptive re-use of the heritage buildings is absolutely exciting. I encourage members to go down there.

I note that the Leader of the Opposition has finally decided he needs to go down and have a look at that, and we welcome that. It's a little bit late, but it is great that he is finally going to get himself down there. We welcome that, and we welcome everybody to go down and have a look at what is happening on Lot Fourteen.

Next month, of course, we open the Australian Space Agency. This is something that every single South Australian should be proud of. I know that when I am going out and speaking to schools about the great opportunity, it worries me slightly because nearly always when I ask the kids in the class, 'What would you like to do when you finish school?' they say, 'I want to be an astronaut.' So we are going to have to build bigger spaceships to take all these kids up to the moon because they are superexcited. The great thing about this is that they are very excited about studying the right subjects to lead into careers, whether it be in engineering, whether it be in space, defence, cyber or machine learning—some of these great industries that are presenting themselves going forward.

We are also absolutely delighted now that the incubator and accelerator is up and running. We are out to the market in regard to the innovation hub. The federal government is putting $20 million on the table for the innovation hub, which will be built directly behind the adaptive re-use of the heritage buildings. We continue to work very hard to finalise our plans for the establishment of a globally significant Aboriginal art and culture centre on this site. We couldn't be more excited and it is great to have the federal minister back here in Adelaide.