Grievance Debate

State Liberal Government

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:25): Well, what another dreadful week for this government! Imagine being the first Liberal Premier in this state for 16 years and successfully turning every single industry association against your party. Imagine being in the situation where industry leaders and business leaders are ringing up members of the media to brief against the Liberal Premier of the day because they are sick and tired of the treatment they get from this Premier.

In the middle of a global pandemic, when there are legitimate questions to be answered about how much support this government is giving to the business community to get through this difficult period of COVID, the response they get is either a hung up phone call or, if it is answered, they have to hold the handset out here while they get screamed at by the Premier, and the allegations of obscene language used by the Premier in those phone calls are extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. This is the behaviour of a Liberal premier and, indeed, this is the behaviour of a Liberal government that has the most extraordinary sense of entitlement about it you could imagine.

Let's look at the events of this week. We started out with the parliament having to discipline the former Deputy Premier for lying to the parliament on three separate occasions because she could not bring herself to do the right thing, the conventional thing, the thing that has precedent here in this place, and resign after being found out for misleading the parliament.

Then we found out that the minister for environment and conservation, a minister more than happy to take up the extra $150,000 on top of his base salary in order to be a minister, is starting to get sick and tired of having to deal with his stakeholders, starting to get sick and tired of those people who are advocating on behalf of environmental causes. It is all getting too much for the minister for environment and conservation. This is the person who wanted to be the Deputy Premier, this is the person with such a sense of entitlement that he believed he could be a minister but not take all of the responsibilities of being minister.

It went on. He was complaining about the Greta Thunbergs of the world that he had to put up with. He started complaining about Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to Flinders Street. Extinction Rebellion? What about constitutional rebellion? What about the behaviour of the former Deputy Premier gluing herself to the cabinet table, refusing to leave, refusing to do the right thing and resign? Now we have this extraordinary situation where she still continues on as Attorney-General because the Premier yet again does not have the courage to exert any discipline over his party and sack those people who have been found out for doing the wrong thing. I am not surprised—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —that the member for Chaffey finds this so objectionable, because he should know the most, one of the three disgraced former ministers forced into resigning for rorts. This government has lost a deputy premier, three ministers, two backbenchers, a president of the Legislative Council and a government whip through scandal. They all had to resign in disgrace.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: And, worse than that, they lost more members of their caucus—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —including the Speaker, the member for Kavel—

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for Chaffey!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —and the Hon. John Dawkins, who left in disgust. They could not bear being Liberals anymore because there was such a hollow outfit running this place—absolutely extraordinary. In the middle of this mess is the member for Dunstan, the Premier, refusing to do what is right and exert any authority over his caucus.

The complaints from the business community are clear: he has left the field. He has abdicated his responsibility. He will not take their phone calls. He will not listen to their complaints. He will not represent those complaints and concerns to the Transition Committee because he has chosen not to be a part of it. So they do not have a line into government at the moment, with their complaints, in the middle of a pandemic.

It is exactly the same behaviour from this Premier abdicating the field when it comes to managing his own ministers. He refuses to sack them. On 24 July last year, six months after the country members' accommodation allowance scandal was being raised and whether the disgraced member for Chaffey and the disgraced member for Schubert should resign, what did the Premier tell the media? 'This doesn't meet the threshold for resignation.'

That was Friday. Sunday, two days later, the Premier is up there announcing that they had fallen on their own swords because the Premier did not have the courage or the gumption or the leadership to demonstrate what ministerial standards should be in this place.

The Hon. S.J.R. Patterson interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Morphett might think he is at a wedding, but this is a grievance debate, where we do have a discretion to keep talking.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: This government does not want to continue sitting—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: It's time, sir.

The SPEAKER: It is. I will give the speaker an additional 30 seconds.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —because it is terrified of scrutiny. It is terrified of scrutiny because they are led by a shallow Premier.