Grievance Debate

State Labor Government

Mr SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:06): Character is important in politics, and today I want to talk about the emerging character of the new Labor government, a character that is quickly becoming characterised by arrogance. We saw it in their first week in parliament with the snickering and the sneering and the sledging from the benches opposite, the dismissive answers, the old guard not giving the new guard a go.

In the lead-up to the election, we saw the Premier firmly focused on the future, but I cannot help but note that we are seeing a huge amount of the past resurfacing very quickly. The old Labor way of doing things—playing the blame game, less transparency, jobs for the boys—just keeps on continuing. It is like where they left off in 2018.

I thought it was telling that in the first week of question time there was next to no mention of Labor's positive policies for the future, as the slogan said, but instead minister after minister rose and reflected on the previous four years of Liberal government. With $3.1 billion of promises—and it will probably end up being a lot more than that—you would have thought that the Premier and his team would have had something positive to talk about.

We saw the new government remove the 30-day time line for responding to questions with notice. What are they trying to hide is the question that we must ask. Over the past week, it has been revealed that long-term Labor staffers have once again been parachuted into public sector jobs. We should again be asking whether merit selection process been followed, or is it just straight in, conveyor belt to the top job, something that is tantamount to corruption in my view.

One appointment that raises some eyebrows is the 10-person Premier's Delivery Unit, which will cost taxpayers $2 million a year. The Premier still has not explained why we need that exorbitant price tag when it is the very job of ministers to be responsible for delivery in their portfolios.

Speaking of delivery, one project that this government seems hell-bent on actually delivering, is the on/off ramp for the expressway at Majors Road. As the local MP, and this has been highlighted many times by me and by others, this was something I was interested in. We engaged a feasibility study into this upon coming to government in 2018, and that feasibility said that you would not ever do this. I quote from the feasibility study:

With no Expressway interchange at Majors Road, travel patterns across the wider area may be less efficient than they might otherwise be. However, whilst an interchange may result in overall reductions in travel distance and time for a reasonably significant number of trips, these would not be sufficient to justify the cost of constructing it.

Put simply, the traffic gains are next to nothing. Without completing the north-south corridor first, on/off ramps at Majors Road could actually result in an increase in traffic in neighbouring roads, particularly Adams Road, through Sheidow Park and Trott Park. More importantly perhaps, there could be a significant increase in traffic flows down Brighton Road.

This does not take into account that the current proposed design will rip a highway right through Glenthorne National Park—a project those opposite never supported. They planned to build hundreds of houses there. We turned it into a national park. They want to run an asphalt highway right through the heart of it, marooning the recently opened Sam Willoughby BMX facility on a roundabout in the midst of a motorway and wiping out a couple of million dollars' worth of mountain biking tracks. Chasing a quick headline, what we saw from the Premier and the Minister for Transport was a plan that will see potentially thousands of trees removed from that site, precious habitat, the loss of green open space and the home for koalas, woodland birds, echidnas, kangaroos and a range of other species.

I was delighted on Saturday to be joined by members of my community, and this project is not popular in my community by any means. To have the Friends of O'Halloran Hill, the mountain biking trail maintenance members and the Friends of Glenthorne gather and show their shock and disdain for a project that will harm the natural environment was encouraging to me. I say to those volunteers in National Volunteer Week that I will stand right beside you in the face of an arrogant government that will not listen to independent expertise, will not listen to evidence and wants to arrogantly push ahead with a project that South Australians do not want.