Grievance Debate

Coronavirus

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:14): Today is 11 November. Not only is it an important day for all Australians, being Remembrance Day when we remember those who gave their lives during the Great War, the greatest conflict the world had seen, but it is also eight months since the government first announced its stimulus package to try to combat the economic impacts of the coronavirus.

There was $350 million announced, and two weeks later a further stimulus package was announced of $650 million. This was described as urgent, and the Premier told South Australians that this money needed to be rolled out to get South Australia through the next six months. You can imagine our surprise when, six months after that date, the Auditor-General reported and told South Australians that less than one-quarter of that $1 billion had actually been spent on economic stimulus funding.

Our state had already been shamed on the front page of The Weekend Australian as having the lowest economic stimulus package in the nation—worse than Tasmania, worse than the Northern Territory and the ACT. The Auditor-General also confirmed that it was not only the lowest but the slowest. In the meantime, we had thousands of small businesses crying out for support from the state government, particularly those in the hospitality industry who, to this day, still suffer crippling restrictions on their operations and struggle to maintain their businesses as viable.

Yesterday, the state budget was handed down. We had been promised that yesterday's budget would turn all this around, that running a $2.6 billion deficit in this financial year alone would stimulate the economy and get South Australians back to work. The only problem is that the same budget papers point out that the government itself expects no jobs to be grown over the course of this financial year—a $2.6 billion deficit for not one extra job.

We are also told, of course, that state government debt will now escalate to $33 billion—an extraordinary amount, a further $10 billion increase on the $10 billion increase we were told of last budget. Yes, that is right: in the last two budgets this government has forecast a $20 billion increase in the state's debt. No-one in this community begrudges this government the option of running budget deficits, taking on state debt in order to combat the economic impacts of the coronavirus. In fact, we here in the opposition, as well as everybody else in the community, have been actively encouraging the government to do that over the last eight months.

Finally it is great they have listened and, going forward, we have some stimulus measures that we are told will support the economy. Our complaint is that the last $10 billion in debt this government racked up has delivered nothing. No new projects have been completed and barely any projects have even been commenced; in the meantime, our state has suffered the slowest economic growth in the nation and the lowest jobs growth in the nation.

The Treasurer seemed giddy yesterday in handing down his state budget. He said, 'Now I know how Paris Hilton feels when she goes on a shopping spree.' Well, I guess as the saying goes, 'You're only as old as the pop culture reference you quote.' What an extraordinary thing to say. In the first budget, he was proud to have ice in his veins; now he is comparing himself to Paris Hilton. Of course, all this is cold comfort to those tens of thousands of South Australians who still find themselves out of work. There are 165,000 South Australians who are either unemployed or underemployed—the greatest number in our state's history.

This government says it is going to rack up $33 billion in debt to roll out projects to get South Australians back into work but, as we have just seen in question time, the Premier has not even fully funded the $9 billion north-south corridor upgrade he is promising, the circa $2 billion Women's and Children's Hospital project this government has been touting, even other major transport projects like the quarter of a billion dollars that is meant to be spent somehow—we do not know how—beyond the wit of the transport minister up in Hahndorf to create jobs, or the Main South Road duplication, which the transport minister just erroneously told the house contains tunnels.

This is a budget that needs to deliver jobs for South Australians right now: not in two years' time, not—helpfully—around the next state election, but right now, and this government's own budget papers say that this government has failed to do that.

Time expired.