Bills

Supply Bill 2025

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 30 April 2025.)

Mr FULBROOK (Playford) (12:36): Before I was cut off, I was telling the story of Chris Bellamy. Up until that point, I had mentioned that Chris had organised and attended a fundraiser to support his illness. Sadly, the event did take a toll on him with him suffering sensory overstimulation which landed him in hospital for three days, but I am pleased to say that he got out soon after, as my diary shows me meeting Chris for the first time in late February back in 2023. I would love to say his plight was easy from that point on, but I do know otherwise.

Throughout this ordeal, the simple pleasure of waking up has given him good reason to be grateful for each and every day. The good thing is that Chris is still with us, back in the workforce, surrounded by his beautiful family and brightening the world with his chirpy smile. In situations like this, it is difficult to say what happens next, knowing the battle continues. But over lunch, just a few weeks back, Chris showed me images reflecting that the tumour had shrunk quite notably. As we ate, I reminded him that Hansard was a great way to preserve the memory of everything he has gone through. In reflecting on this, we agreed that it was the hardworking health professionals, many of whom work in the public system, who gave their all to ensure he is still with us.

Maybe it is stories like Chris's, or the extra smile commuters gain from seeing some beautiful artwork as they board their morning train, or the adjustments made to a single bus route to provide certainty and mobility to pensioners, that underlines the incredible value of the South Australian Public Service. I know there are many reasons, but in using these examples it is my pleasure to support this bill knowing full well that the funding used to keep our Public Service operating is indeed money well spent. We should never lose sight of this, knowing thousands of South Australians head to work each day for the sole purpose of making our state an even better place to live.

The Supply Bill is more than just legislation to keep the state running. Between its many lines, there are stories of hope, creativity and plain and simple hard work. With a new bill comes new opportunities to enhance South Australia, and I am excited for what a new Supply Bill will deliver. With this in mind, I express thanks to our exceptional public servants and I am pleased to commend this bill to the house.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:38): I rise to contribute to the debate on this necessary and important bill, providing as it does an opportunity to reflect on the priorities of the government when it comes to spending these scarce resources that are available to it in its stewardship of the public finances in government. This is necessarily now three years in to what is now proving to be a really tired and ill-performing government.

It is an opportunity to look at where the priorities are and where the actions have not come along to match the words in so many examples. We have seen that in the most serious way when, here we are in 2025, and this is a time for outcomes. We have gone beyond the time for election commitments and we have gone beyond the time for the announcements of the great things to come and we have come to a time for outcomes.

In only a few short months, let alone when it comes to the time to scrutinise the budget in just a few weeks' time, South Australians will make up for themselves a list of outcomes and then match them to the list of promises of Malinauskas Labor, and that will be a sobering exercise indeed for South Australians. They will see that back in about May 2021, before the election, the then Malinauskas-led opposition said, 'Elect us and we will deliver you this great new world of hydrogen power that's going to be wonderful for the people of the Upper Spencer Gulf,' those within the member for Giles' district.

They said, 'It will be wonderful for livelihoods and industry up there and, even if it doesn't do anything for household bills, it will chart a way forward and it will provide the necessary confidence that we are all needing in this state around energy infrastructure.' What have we seen as a result of these years that have now gone past? Well, 2025 was the year for outcome. That was the year for delivery. That was the year when this was all supposed to come to fruition.

But in what might be highlighted—others will have more to say; of course, the member for Schubert, the shadow minister health, will have more to say on the health side, and she says it along with all of us every day, and we will be pressing that point—as among the most disastrous of the compare and contrast of commitment, announcement and then disastrous black hole vacuum of nothing rather than outcome, we have seen the government walk away from the commitment.

While doing so, they have seen if they could shoehorn it into a completely unrelated topic, another disaster that has hit the poor old member for Giles and those wonderful people in Whyalla in particular with the trials and tribulations, yet again, of the steelworks. They have tried to somehow relate to the two.

Mr Hughes: Yes, it's about saving the steelworks—saving the steelworks, thousands of jobs.

Mr TEAGUE: With the hydrogen promise that has turned into a mirage, not only has it been stopped at the moment when it was supposed to come to fruition but it has sort of belled the cat on the absence of anything that went on in the period since the promise to the point when it was supposed to come along.

The member for Giles' interjection says that there are greater priorities that have intervened, and I am with the member for Giles on this point. There can be nothing more serious than what is befalling the people of Whyalla just now, and we are with them every single day. But for the government to hide the hydrogen farce behind that very serious issue really talks to a government that is not being fair dinkum with the people of South Australia.

In the period of 2021 to 2025, what we should have seen is this steady process towards building something, because we all knew something fairly serious needed to be built, and it was quite new so you needed experts to be employed to get that done. So, by 2025, if the government was going to walk away from something then we ought to have been able to look at something that was kind of more or less 100 per cent built.

But, no, what we have seen is this kind of tail between the legs, 'We are not doing it anymore,' and, 'Yes, there are a few parts that are kind of on the way,' and, 'We have been paying salaries for a whole lot of time to a bunch of people who are supposed to be delivering this sort of grand construction, but now, not only do we have nothing to show for it but we are going to sell it off for parts, if and when the parts arrive from somewhere else, and guess what: we will make sure that we get more or less, maybe, if we are lucky, what we paid for it.'

South Australians are going to be rapidly sick of seeing this sort of compare-contrast: what did bright and shiny Malinauskas Labor look like before and during and around the time of the election on hydrogen, and what happened in 2025? Well, we will let the people of South Australia be the judge.

I have referred to the member for Schubert and her dedication every day to holding the government to account on its failed headline health promise—and there is no running away from that. They had corflutes, when they were still permitted on the public infrastructure, shouting loud, with a smiling face of the then Leader of the Opposition, the now Premier Peter Malinauskas, saying 'We will fix the ramping crisis. We will fix the ramping crisis. We will fix ramping' because that is what people of South Australia have characterised this aspect of health management in this state as being focused on.

Of course, the contributing factors include all aspects of the admission and occupation of beds in the health system. We know the pressure that is there, driven by mental health issues. We know the pressure that is there, driven by the need for improved aged care. We know the pressure that is there, based on the provision and availability of sufficient GP capacity. That is a multifaceted challenge.

We all know that health and its delivery is a major primary responsibility of the state government, and Malinauskas Labor opposition, now Malinauskas Labor government, chose to tell South Australians, on every piece of public infrastructure they could find, it would fix ramping, and the complete opposite has occurred, of course, as is well known. The complete opposite has occurred.

We have gone tens of thousands of hours of ramping, sometimes five storeys high of ambulances literally parked up one against the other, literally storey after storey. We have seen bright and shiny ambulance station openings. We have seen commitments to these additional resources. I have attended them and they are wonderful people and it is a wonderful provision of service that the paramedic specialists and ambulances are able to provide, but the government has gone nowhere to fixing ramping. It has gone nowhere to even approach achieving an outcome that matched that shiny commitment. There are just two statewide.

Of course, within my own portfolio responsibilities, I have done what I can diligently each year to hold the government to account in relation to its responsibility for those most vulnerable in our state, those most vulnerable children in our state who require the commitment of resources and capacity in managing their vulnerability, short or long term, via the child protection provision in this state.

At the very outset, at the first occasion for a financial analysis, when the government applied what it called 'operating efficiencies' to just about every department, but with the exception of the Department for Child Protection—it allowed more resources to the Department for Child Protection—I said to the minister at the time, 'Is the provision of more money in this space a declaration of success or a declaration of failure?' Let that be a rhetorical question, because what needed to be seen was that those additional resources that were allowed, in contrast to the claimed operating efficiencies—by the way, they evaporated; the government blew out its budgets on all those departments as well.

Did it achieve something more for those additional resources? No. Unfortunately, we have seen failure after failure by this government on the child protection side, notwithstanding the additional resources that have been provided. Not only have the additional resources been budgeted but the government has blown the budget repeatedly, even to the extent that last year there had to be a budget revision to take away resources because it had just been so far exceeded. There has been nothing to show for it.

The area of child protection in this state has been now in crisis for a sustained period of time and it is well and truly on the record that the Premier needs to step in and dramatically change the way in which child protection is managed in the state. There are three highlighted examples of where we will be looking very closely indeed at what the budget provides for, and I know South Australians will be judging for themselves what announcement, on the one hand, looks like compared to the absence of outcome by contrast, on the other.

Locally the government has made clear its commitment, or lack thereof, to Heysen over this last year and more and we will continue to speak up for the interests of those in the Hills, my constituents in Heysen. To take as an example the tremendous effort of the community to retain the Stirling Hospital, that was a fight that took place over the better part of 2023 and I highlight there the stark contrast between the government's behaviour towards the Stirling Hospital, when good things were happening, compared to its hour of need in 2023.

In October 2022, Minister Picton was only too happy to come along to the Stirling Hospital and cut the ribbon on the opening of a new ward that was entirely funded by the generous donations and good management of the Stirling Hospital. The minister was only too happy to come along and cut the ribbon. But when it came to a moment of need when the hospital said, 'We are in real strife,' a few months later on, the minister was very quick to wash his hands of the hospital and to say, 'It's a private hospital and we won't have anything to do with it.'

The people of Stirling and surrounding districts, just like they were 100 years ago when it came to the challenge to establish the hospital, were moved to do all that was necessary to retain the hospital at Stirling, and it was a tremendous achievement that that outcome was achieved. The hospital's board made the commitment, contrary to what the initial indication had been to close and move elsewhere, to stay put and to stay in Stirling. That is a tremendous outcome and the work will continue, no thanks to the Malinauskas Labor government.

There are many other examples of need in the Hills that the government even gets as close as to promising to support the fulfilment of, but then you have to be very careful that they do not just back away from that. You have to hold them to the commitment. The Meadows intersection has long been in need of safety improvement by the provision at its centre of a roundabout and safety for pedestrians and those using the intersection on all sides. In January last year, the government went as far as advising the Mount Barker council, 'This will be done, and it's done out of the $150 million fund that is provided for Hills infrastructure upgrades.' But it got to the end of last year, and the government had the CE write to the council and say, 'Actually'—to put it in the vernacular, 'it's gone on the backburner. It's not funded.'

It is a travesty because the promise that the government made to do it was not just a kind of blue sky—'We will now work on what it might all end up costing.' That was a promise made in the full knowledge of developed plans done in November 2023, and it was done with all of that in front of the government. So that indication to Mount Barker council at the end of last year was unacceptable.

The local community knew that, and thank goodness, over the course of recent weeks and months in fighting for the restoration of that work, we have seen the government turn around and promise that it will be done actually, and it will be done sometime after the election. So it looks like it will be up to a state Liberal government to deliver on that, because Malinauskas Labor has just pushed it down the road. The Meadows community will stand strong in solidarity. I will be right there with them, and we will make sure that the actions match the words.

The Macclesfield school crossing is work that is sadly in need of completion. We call for that work to be done. We will be looking closely at the budget to see that that work is completed. There are so many small country primary schools spread throughout Heysen. Many of them battle on with the over-the-odds commitment of a small number of staff members.

I pay particular tribute to Principal Donna Lean at Kangarilla Primary School, a longstanding, dedicated principal of that small school. In order to make sure that it works for families in Kangarilla, Donna Lean runs at her own initiative a breakfast club and a homework club, and she is there from seven in the morning through to five or six in the evening. I want to say thanks to the Minister for Education and his office for their engagement with the particular needs of that school. We will be looking closely at the budget to see that there is provision for those needs of that small primary school at Kangarilla and others like it in the near vicinity.

Of course, the South Eastern Freeway remains a key piece of infrastructure for our whole state and indeed for the nation. It is very, very important that we see a federal Coalition government elected on the weekend so that we can see the state and federal Liberal and Coalition commitments to see the Truro freight route completed. Only a federal Coalition and state Liberal government will ensure that happens. The work to get Verdun completed is critically important, as is the work to ensure a bypass for Hahndorf is properly done. There is much more to be done, but only the state Liberals and federal Coalition will be able to serve the needs of those in the Hills. We will be watching the budget closely.

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (12:58): I rise today also in support of the Supply Bill 2025 and to speak about why the passage of this bill is so essential, not just for the continuation of government services but for the continued delivery of critical projects that are already shaping a stronger future for South Australians.

Of course, this bill is important because it is the mechanism that keeps the wheels of government turning. It is what ensures that hospitals can keep treating patients, that schools can keep teaching students, that roads can keep being built and that support services for the vulnerable can continue without disruption while parliament does the necessary job of debating and passing a full budget. Without the passage of the Supply Bill, the essential services that South Australians rely on, services that sustain our communities, support our economy and build our future would be at risk. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.