Investment Attraction

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (14:23): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Has the Marshall Liberal government made South Australia an unattractive place to invest? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: In February 2017, the member for Dunstan, now the Premier, tweeted:

A very difficult day for Coke workers. Another blow to the SA economy. We need to make SA an attractive place to invest.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:24): What we have been doing since we came to government is unravel the mess that we inherited from the previous government that made us an unattractive place to invest. I was very pleased on Friday last week to be with the member for Stuart (the Minister for Energy and Mining in South Australia) when we were very proudly taken over two incredible sites which represented $670 million worth of investment into South Australia in renewable energy.

One of the critical things that they talked about that make those investments possible is our wonderful wind and solar resource here in South Australia, but also our ambition as a government to establish an interconnector with New South Wales. What we know is that this creates an incredible highway out of our state into the most populated state in the country: New South Wales.

This is something which is going to create hundreds and hundreds of jobs and generate billions of dollars' worth of continued investment in South Australia. More than that, we have invested in the redevelopment of Lot Fourteen, which we know has become a magnet for investment attraction into South Australia.

Those opposite had a plan to turn it into 1,300 apartments on the Parklands—on the Parklands! By contrast, we saw that there was a higher and better use for that incredible site, seven hectares in the centre of the city, to really become quite a magnet for attraction of future industries—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Lee!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —and that is precisely what we are seeing. That site now, of course, has the Australian Space Agency headquarters. We are building, at the moment, Mission Control and the Space Discovery Centre. The SmartSat CRC, the largest space-related research project in the history of Australia, is on North Terrace, in the centre of the city. What we already know is that this is bringing head offices to Adelaide and investment into Adelaide.

Only last month, I opened the new office for Leonardo in South Australia. These are bringing jobs to South Australia: the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, and the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre, which really represents the cutting edge of what is happening in one of the fastest growing sectors around the word.

That's what we are doing to make South Australia a more attractive place to invest in, and that's on top of our focus on reducing costs for business: energy, water and the emergency services levy here in South Australia. Land tax is going down massively in South Australia from the unaffordable level—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —that was presided over by the previous government—

Mr Malinauskas: No thanks to you.

The SPEAKER: Leader!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —where the top marginal rate here in South Australia was 3.7 per cent. We have now met the average of mainland states of 2.4 per cent, and we have provided further land tax relief to landowners during this very, very difficult COVID period. We are doing everything we possibly can to drive our economy in the right direction during an unprecedented difficult situation that we are facing at the moment.

There's some very bright news on the horizon. The most recent ABS Single Touch Payroll data shows that South Australia had the largest increase over the last survey period. In fact, our total wages in South Australia for those two weeks leading up to the 19 September cut-off period was actually higher than the payroll data for South Australia pre-COVID. There's still a huge amount of work to be done but South Australia is heading in the right direction, attracting investment dollars into South Australia and creating more jobs for the future generations.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Lee, I warn the member for Playford, I call to order the member for Reynell and I warn for a second time the member for Lee.