Bills

Appropriation Bill 2023

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

(Continued from 31 August 2023.)

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (11:01): I rise briefly to speak on this motion. The whole process of looking at the budget and getting into the detail is very important. Estimates is a wonderful way for the parliament to examine what is before it as far as the government's agenda goes and to look at the important things in the budget.

I say a big thank you not just to the two chairs of the two committees but to all the staff in particular for their efforts during budget estimates, whether it be in the chamber or whether it be in catering. All the staff have a pivotal role in making estimates work and making sure that the people of South Australia are able to examine what is being spent by the government of the day.

In my electorate, there are certainly things that I have concerns about the way we are progressing and that I want to make sure progress well. The upgrade of the emergency department at the South Coast District Hospital is an important investment in the region, where the commitment was made under the Marshall Liberal government with some federal government money from the Morrison government as well. It is important that we see that delivered as soon as possible and, pleasingly, it is my understanding that the works are not far away from starting, and it is important that we get on with them.

Another commitment by the Labor government was for a new ambulance station. I personally have concerns about its location—I have no concerns about a new ambulance station at all in Victor Harbor—particularly during peak periods. There are some traffic issues along the Victor Harbor Road as you come into Victor Harbor during holiday season, where the roundabouts clog up and the traffic moves at particularly low speeds. I have some concerns there and have been raising those with the minister.

Another important issue in my electorate that we need to look at is the roads and an investment in roads. Some of the state government regional roads in my electorate are in appalling condition. This year, we saw the Victor Harbor Road break up really badly in a couple of sections, where for a period of time a 40 km/h speed limit had to be introduced due to some damage in the road surface. People were blowing tyres in potholes, and more and more damage occurred through the lack of maintenance to this section.

An overtaking lane through Mount Jagged continues to be a problem, with significant potholes in urgent need of repair. We continue to see these develop every time there is a minor rain in this section. It is so bad that when I use the road I choose not to drive in that section of the overtaking lane anymore and drive in the other lane. It is in such poor condition.

Then we also have Goolwa Road. A section of the road, the first three or four kilometres of the Goolwa Road from the Victor Harbor Road, is very problematic. It is a section of road that I know well, as my family farm was on that road for many years until we sold it a couple of years ago. When I learned to drive, that was the first section of road I drove on as a 16 year old, so I certainly know it very well.

Over the years, I have had conversations about that piece of road with Highways Department workers, as they were then, particularly as they were upgrading the verges. I talked to one of the grader drivers and he made the comment that it was actually a lot safer to drive on the verges than it was on the centre of the road because of the investment that had occurred on the verges. They had put foundations under the road that were appropriate, whereas under the original road the foundations were very substandard, if there at all, so I very much encourage some investment in that piece of road.

Another piece of road in my electorate that I think is also highly problematic is Hindmarsh Tiers Road. That road is one of those roads where, back in November last year, there was a flash flood rain event that caused damage, particularly to the township of Middleton. It also caused damage at some of the river crossings and so on through the electorate, and one of those was on Hindmarsh Tiers Road.

That piece of infrastructure, unless it has been repaired very recently, still has not been repaired where the side railing was washed away. At the moment (or up until recently, if it has been done recently), there is just flagging there protecting people from the hole where the sidings were washed away. That is another piece of urgent work that has not been given the priority it needs.

It is very important for our communities that we maintain these assets going forward. The road network is so important, and certainly it is challenging through some of the high rainfall areas to maintain those roads during winter, but it is important that we do not let them deteriorate to the point that moisture can get through into the sublayers and rupture, causing potholes. It is much harder to fix the road once the potholes have been created.

It is also important that we keep investing in our regions. The Marshall Liberal government certainly had made a great amount of investment in my electorate during my time in government. In those four years, in the seat of Finniss we were very pleased to see investment of about $130 million either committed or spent. There was some great infrastructure, important pieces of infrastructure, and one of those was the new causeway. One of the greatest assets Victor Harbor has is the connection to Granite Island, and to have that rebuilt and renewed with the new causeway, giving it 100 years of life going forward, was important for the community of Victor Harbor and the surrounds as a key tourist opportunity.

Some of the other plans included work on a master plan for Granite Island and the Bluff. We very much need to see where that infrastructure investment is going to occur in those two important locations on the Fleurieu. It is important that we make sure that the investment and the commitment to those areas are relative to their importance to the state. They are high tourist areas and we need to make sure they continue to deliver for the people of South Australia by attracting people not just locally but from overseas and interstate. It is important that we do that.

With those few words, I think it is important that we keep investing in the regions and I very much encourage the government to consider everything outside the metropolitan area with their spends.

Mr BROWN (Florey) (11:10): I am glad to speak in support of the motion to note the reports from Estimates Committee A and Estimates Committee B. I enjoyed the experience of attending estimates committees again this year, now for the second time as a member of the Malinauskas Labor government.

I would like to offer the view that this year's estimates represented another successful outing, inasmuch as the ministers of this government once again answered questions readily and came across as informed, responsible and competent in exactly the way that the people of South Australia quite rightly deserve. The substance of the work of the estimates committees is, of course, to provide opportunities to examine in significant detail the way in which public funds are being spent. It is an important exercise in ensuring that probity and transparency are at the centre of all that we do in this place and in the other.

The policy initiatives that the figures examined through the estimates process represent and, very importantly, the outcomes for the South Australian community that will be the result of those initiatives are what I would like to draw attention to today. It is important to consider not only what money is being spent and how but what the estimates committees' reports tell us about the results that will be realised for our community out of that spending in the fullness of time.

The centrepieces of the budget—the initiatives that will produce tangible outcomes for the South Australian community that the people of my electorate and indeed the people right across our state have every reason to look forward to—are in the critically important policy areas of health, housing and cost-of-living relief. These are areas in which money must be spent to obtain a good result and they are appropriate areas of focus for the expenditure of public funds by the Malinauskas Labor government.

It is important to acknowledge that we have seen significant natural disaster events in 2022-23, which required a response across a range of government agencies to ensure the needs of the affected communities were met. These have made a substantial budget impact and quite rightly because in the event of natural disasters, be they fire, flood or otherwise, South Australians very reasonably depend on their government to respond appropriately to the circumstances by ensuring that the community's needs for disaster relief and recovery are met.

Responding to community need is exactly what the Malinauskas Labor government has worked to do, through a period that has seen significant flood events across River Murray communities. They were flood events that required active responses from multiple government agencies in order to support an ever-resilient part of the South Australian community in a moment of real need. The Malinauskas government is proud to support our people and our communities through such moments of difficulty and will continue to do so as circumstances demand, and as any good government ought to do and would do.

Few areas of policy are more important to our community in this moment of South Australia's history than health. This government continues to be keenly focused on making sure that we are not just working towards meeting the needs of our community today but anticipating those needs into the future. This is why we are investing an additional $2.3 billion into our health system over five years.

Getting it right, as we can see in the reports of the estimates committees, can require substantial spending, but getting it right could not be more important for our community. You cannot shortcut your way to success when your goal is to make meaningful and consequential improvements to a health system that has been under significant strain for some time.

The addition of $1.3 billion over five years to meet activity demand pressures in our hospitals, as well as to ensure our health system is appropriately resourced to deliver necessary services to South Australians now and into the future, is a reflection of the government's understanding that we were elected with a mandate to do this work and that whatever it takes to get it right is what our community deserves and it is what they will get from us.

We know that the pressures and challenges experienced in our hospitals that lead to bed block and ramping are complex and multifaceted. There is no single way to alleviate or eliminate these pressures, and that is why our government is working from multiple directions to address the factors that contribute to these phenomena.

One important element in the strategy represented in the budget is the emergency department avoidance hubs to be established in the western and northern suburbs at locations yet to be finalised. We see $2.1 million in 2023-24 to fit out these facilities that will be based on the existing hospital avoidance and supported discharge service in Sefton Park and the complex and restorative service in the southern suburbs.

As a member of parliament for a northern suburbs electorate in which our nearby emergency departments are often under significant pressure, this government's investment in emergency department avoidance hubs is a positive step towards giving people in our community the option of accessing urgent medical care locally without the need to present at a hospital. These facilities have the potential to provide an important health service offering that will help to address emergency department congestion. I look forward to the details being finalised and the initiative being rolled out for the benefit of my electorate and, indeed, people across the northern and north-eastern suburbs, as well as those in the western suburbs who will benefit from proximity to the clinic there.

The budget also allocates funding for some direct measures that offer strong potential to support the ability of our hospitals and their staff to address and alleviate hospital congestion. For example, we see $27.6 million over four years to increase medical staffing in major metropolitan hospitals on the weekends, with the intention to enable an increase in the weekend discharge of patients who are ready to leave hospital.

Discharge of long stay patients has also been addressed with $17.6 million over five years for individual patient in-home supports, such as short-term services, equipment hire and minor home modifications, in order to facilitate the discharge of long stay patients from our hospitals. Virtual care services are another avenue to easing pressures on our health system.

We see $67.8 million over five years to expand virtual care services for adults across South Australia, and $30.8 million over four years to permanently extend virtual urgent care services for children aged between six months and 18 years. The extension of these services will offer further healthcare service options for the South Australian community in a number of circumstances wherein people will benefit from the option of not having to present at hospital or at a general practice surgery.

It also offers potential as a useful and beneficial service offering for people living regionally and rurally, who might take advantage of virtual care services as a more frequent and more readily available alternative to having to travel some distance and, in many cases, having to travel quite a considerable distance to access necessary healthcare services.

I also welcome the $20 million over three years in additional funding to support the delivery of our four new ambulance stations at Norwood, Woodville, Golden Grove and Edwardstown, and the complete rebuild of four existing stations at Campbelltown, Mount Barker, Gawler and Victor Harbor. This brings the total project funding for ambulance stations to $70 million. I feel confident this investment will assist in getting ambulances to the South Australians who need them, in a quicker and more reliable time frame. Ambulance response times are a keen area of focus in our government's efforts within the health portfolio, and this investment supports that priority in a way that will provide benefit right across the metropolitan area.

Our investments in health represent our continued commitment to improving South Australia's health system, improving our hospitals and improving patient care outcomes at various points of contact with the system. We do this because those opposite, during the previous term of government, avoided that particular responsibility over four years and allowed our health system to experience stagnation and deterioration at a critical time in our history when, instead, health needed to be the greatest priority of policy and of public spending.

Another area in which South Australians are very acutely feeling the impacts of external systemic pressures is in housing. These pressures are certainly affecting the lives of residents in my electorate. Every South Australian deserves a safe and secure place to call home, whether as a private renter, a public housing tenant or a buyer on the private market. In relation to the latter, we do believe that the dream of owning your own home should not be out of reach for so many people in our South Australian community.

The stress that both renters and buyers are enduring in the current housing market is intense. The solution enacted by members opposite while in government, which was to do very little, did not work. The Malinauskas Labor government, by contrast, is taking decisive action for our community with a $474 million housing package. We are building 564 new homes and halting the sale of a further 580 public housing properties. This is the first significant increase in public housing in a generation. It is a regrettable fact that over the past 30 years only during a single year has South Australia's overall public housing stock increased, and that was in 2014-15 when the overall number of public homes increased by six.

Especially amid the current conditions in the housing market, more public housing properties are badly needed. That is why the government is taking this step towards getting more South Australians into the safe and secure homes they need and deserve. Public housing is a very relevant concern to people across my electorate, which is one reason why I welcome this government's investment in and commitment to public housing in South Australia.

We also see $1.7 million over four years to extend the Aspire homelessness program for a further 12 months to 31 December 2024, providing access for an additional 88 people who have experienced recurrent homelessness or are at risk of returning to homelessness. This is so important for some of the South Australians who are in the greatest need of assistance from a government that is prepared to do the work to support them.

Renters across South Australia are feeling the significant pressures in the rental market. That is why we are reforming residential tenancy laws; increasing the weekly rent threshold for six-week bonds from $250 to $800 per week; banning rent bidding, where prospective tenants are encouraged to offer above the advertised price; embedding better protections for tenants' rights and their personal information; and expanding eligibility for the Private Rental Assistance Program.

The budget also delivers substantial relief for first-time buyers on the private market, abolishing stamp duty for eligible first-home buyers looking to buy a new home valued at up to $650,000, with relief progressively phased out for properties valued up to $700,000. Stamp duty has also been abolished for the purchase of vacant land on which a new home will be built for land valued up to $400,000, with relief phasing out for land valued up to $450,000.

These measures are aimed at assisting over 3,800 South Australian first-home buyers each year, and perhaps this policy is already inspiring South Australians, because our state recorded the strongest new home sales growth in the nation for July, and not by a little—we recorded a 35 per cent increase, despite every other jurisdiction surveyed going down.

Our government is even making it easier for prospective first-home buyers to get finance. We are providing greater access to HomeStart's interest-free starter loan, increasing the annual income cap for the starter loan from $65,000 to $75,000 for singles, and from $90,000 to $100,000 for couples. HomeStart will also introduce a new home loan that enables eligible first-home buyers building a new home to take out a loan with a deposit of as little as 2 per cent, which represents an improvement on our election commitment of 3 per cent. These new HomeStart measures will help more South Australians achieve home ownership sooner, amid the challenging housing market conditions that we now see across our state and right across our nation.

Prospective first-home buyers may find it easier to take advantage of stamp duty relief and access to HomeStart's new home loan offerings, following the single largest residential land release in South Australia, with 25,000 new blocks of land being made available across Adelaide's northern and southern suburbs. This is good news for people in my electorate and for those across many parts of our state who are looking to achieve their aspirations of home ownership.

Cost of living is an issue that affects South Australian households and South Australian businesses profoundly. That is why there is significant action from the government to address the cost of living. In fact, we see $471.3 million in cost-of-living relief for our community. We are increasing concessions; we see $44 million over five years to increase existing concessions, along with higher inflation.

Government concessions, including the Cost of Living Concession, energy concession, medical heating and cooling concession, water concession and sewerage concession will all be indexed by 8.64 per cent in 2023-24, recognising the increase in the cost of living. This will bring much-needed relief to over 200,000 eligible South Australian households on low or fixed incomes, and there will be many such households in my electorate which I am sure will benefit from these measures.

We see $32.1 million over four years to increase carer payments for family-based carers from 1 July 2023 to assist carers with the day-to-day costs of caring for a child or young person. This will benefit more than 2,600 family-based carers across our state. We see $6.5 million over four years to expand the school breakfast programs in government schools, providing over one million additional breakfasts to students, as well as $12 million in 2023-24 to continue the $100 subsidy to materials and service charges for the 2024 school year, benefiting the parents and caregivers of 120,000 government school students across our state.

Importantly, we see additional funding for non-government organisations, with $57.2 million over four years to support organisations maintaining social services, community services, home care services, child protection, homelessness and disability services to vulnerable South Australians in the face of higher wage and inflation costs in 2023.

We also see $5 million over four years in additional support for food relief organisations, such as Foodbank, and for the delivery of financial counselling services to assist those in need. These spending projections represent our understanding of how important it is to support the non-government organisations that are on the ground doing the work to help South Australians in need. These organisations are essential partners to the work of government, and they, too, are significantly affected in their ability to operate and provide services to those who seek them by the cost-of-living pressures we are experiencing in South Australia.

In another cost-of-living measure that will benefit a great many South Australian households and businesses, we see $25.4 million over two years to go towards energy bill relief. More than 420,000 South Australian households are eligible to receive a rebate of up to $500 on 2023-24 electricity bills, and approximately 86,000 small businesses are eligible to receive a rebate of up to $650. Around twice the number of existing South Australian energy concession recipients are eligible for relief under the energy bill relief plan. This package will be delivered in partnership with the commonwealth, and we are fortunate at last to have the partnership of a commonwealth government that is in touch with the actual needs of the South Australian community.

Child protection is another very important area of policy, where we see a number of commitments represented in the reports of estimates committees. We see $216.6 million in child protection early intervention services, including an additional $109.5 million in response to the increasing number of children and young people in non-family-based care. Child protection is a salient issue for many residents of my electorate. We all want to see better outcomes for vulnerable young South Australians in this area of policy, and what we see in the report of the estimates committee demonstrates that the government is responding to the challenges in this area.

All over the sector, we see evidence of our commitment to improving child protection in South Australia. We see $35.7 million over five years to increase targeted intensive family support services for vulnerable families, prioritising those living in the northern metropolitan region, such as in my electorate. This investment will make a real difference. There is the Strong Start program, where we see $6.1 million over four years for family support services for at-risk first-time parents at the earliest opportunity and the earliest need, including connecting those South Australians facing parenting challenges to critical services.

To support better kinship care, we see $4 million over four years to intensify efforts in assessing and recruiting extended family to care for children and young people. This will assist to increase the number of people available to provide care for children and young people in a family-based environment, because we know that keeping children cared for within their own families where it is possible is a good thing. On the other side of that, we see $2.1 million over four years to increase the capacity for reunification services available to children and young people in care and their families, to get children back with their own immediate families when it is safe and in their best interest to do so.

There is $3.2 million over five years to establish a peak body for Aboriginal children and young people to partner with government to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal children and young people across the child protection system, including those in care. Because we must learn from instances where a child tragically comes to mortal harm, we see an across-government child death review model, with $1.3 million over five years to establish that model. Immediately following the death of a child, the review process will ensure that relevant agencies conduct real-time clinical reviews of service provision and response.

We do this because we must ensure that, where a child's death does occur, we heed the lessons that we are able to take from that incident and we support the system to work towards better preventing future such tragedies. I believe all this investment in child protection will be welcomed by my community and other communities in which we see vulnerable children, and where we know that better intervention, better services and better outcomes are all needed.

For residents in my electorate and others across our state who are interested in learning more about what the Malinauskas Labor government is doing to support job creation in South Australia, the reports of the estimates committees offer plenty of noteworthy content. There is $186 million to strengthen our economy, including $22 million in 2026-27 to increase the Economic Recovery Fund to a total of $122 million, which will support initiatives that promote job creation, build advanced manufacturing capability and increase productivity and economic development opportunities across South Australia.

Also in the industry and innovation area, we see $20 million over four years for the Research and Innovation Fund and that includes continued funding of the startup hub at Lot Fourteen. We see $6.5 million over four years to deliver the South Australian Small Business Strategy, which will increase the skills capability and capacity of small business owners, supporting them to grow their businesses, create jobs for South Australians and build our state's economy. Promisingly, we see $5.5 million over four years to support the implementation of the AUKUS submarine construction program. This is just the beginning of a journey that will bring many welcome benefits to the South Australian community and our economy.

All of these figures and the initiatives that I have discussed, along with a great many others represented in the reports of Estimates Committee A and Estimates Committee B, demonstrate the Malinauskas Labor government's keen understanding of the type of policy, the type of support, the type of action from government that will make a real difference to the lives of ordinary South Australians.

There is much more that I could expand upon, but I will seek other opportunities to speak about the excellent education and skills initiatives, more of the excellent job creation initiatives, the major events, sporting and arts initiatives, and so many others that have been highlighted in the estimates committees reports. This government is working hard to deliver results for the South Australian community and I look forward to the outcomes resulting from each of the initiatives I have mentioned today. I commend these reports to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Ms Clancy.