Economic Stimulus Package

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (14:32): My question is to the Premier. How much of the government's announced stimulus spending is new money and not reallocated funding that was already budgeted over the forward estimates?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:32): I don't have that detailed breakdown but I am happy to bring that back. There are two tranches, if you like, of money that we have announced so far, and they total around $1 billion. The first tranche of $350 million focused on projects that we could bring forward, so some of those projects did exist in the forward estimates and so we did bring those forward and, of course, some of them were brand-new projects.

This was broadly in line with the advice that we received at national cabinet and before that at COAG from Dr Philip Lowe, who is the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He was very keen to emphasise that we shouldn't be at this point in time trying to bring down balanced budgets. We shouldn't be trying, if you like, to correct those automatic stabilisers that exist within our budgets. What we should be doing is making sure that we can provide economic stimulus during this time, rather than take away economic activity by cutting budgets to key capital projects in particular.

It is very difficult in some cases to bring forward major capital projects very quickly. That is why we looked at projects which are already within the forward estimates, things that we were ready to go with that we could bring forward, and that was exactly and precisely what we were encouraged to do. Secondly, we looked at maintenance-type projects where we could spend money very quickly. Again, you could argue that some of those did exist in forward estimates, and I think that most people would appreciate that was the very best quick response that we could put into place to create jobs and keep jobs during this critical period when we know that tens of thousands of South Australians have lost their jobs.

The second tranche of $650 million was, if you like, looking at the ability of our state to respond to some of the market failures. The vast majority of the $650 million in the second tranche was dedicated to two funds: an industry jobs rescue package and a community jobs rescue package. There was $300 million in the first and $250 million in the second. We put together a board that would make rapid decisions, and of course we have worked very diligently through those applications. We have received dozens and dozens of them and we have responded as quickly as we can.

One area where we were being inundated in the early days was from the small business sector. They were saying, 'We are really running out of cash very quickly. We now have accounts from February and from March which need to be paid. We don't have the ability to pay because our revenue has been turned off. We have been able to hibernate our business or recalibrate our business, but we are left with, if you like, this cash crunch.' That's one of the reasons why we announced our support package of $10,000 grants to small businesses in South Australia.

My understanding is that we have had close to 20,000 businesses in South Australia that may have registered for that so far. Of course, already money is flowing out to those businesses, and I think this is addressing one of those areas. I think we allocated $190 million to this in our estimate, and this is just one example of the way that we have been supporting businesses through this tough time. We were the first state in Australia to come out with our first rescue package and the first state in Australia to respond with a second stimulus and support package. I am very proud of the way that we have been able to get on the front foot during this very difficult time for business in South Australia.