Grievance Debate

State Economy

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (15:10): Today, I rise to share my deep concerns about the direction that our state is headed under this Labor government. This week, you only have to look at two highly regarded reports that have been released that are quite scathing of this government and the way it is handling the state economy. It shows that South Australia is headed backwards and affirms what has been a lacklustre record by this government on the South Australian economy.

Firstly, there was the CommSec State of the States report. Our Premier gets the cherry picker out from time to time and he sometimes waves it in front of many a crowd. However, this week it was a bit different because it showed that we have slipped to fourth in the nation overall, and South Australia has dropped to sixth in terms of real economic growth. In the past quarter, our growth has been very, very slow. Not only has the economy effectively stalled but the report shows that we are last in the nation when it comes to investment in new plant and equipment, and that has been happening for some time. So what does that mean?

Well, there is also another nationally regarded report and this one is by NAB. This was the NAB business confidence survey that was held for March, and it actually declared us as the state with the weakest business confidence in the country. So when your confidence in the economy is low, what happens? Amongst other things, businesses stop investing. I mean, can you blame small businesses facing these Labor governments, facing record high power prices, facing crippling issues like payroll tax and so forth—can you really blame them?

We know that businesses at the moment are paying around a whopping $1,685 more on their power bills since Labor came into office, not to mention the harsh payroll tax threshold that shows no sign of relief under this high-taxing Labor government. This is a government that cherrypicks data when it wants to try to create a pretty picture. The reality is that if you walk down any major shopping precinct at the moment, talk to any small business out there—a cafe, a restaurant, a small business—they will tell you the true state of the economy at the moment. How can this Premier be so arrogant to the needs of South Australian businesses? For a government that seems so determined to spend the money of South Australians and spiral our state debt out of control, how can they leave small businesses out in the lurch like this?

Then there was another report that came out only yesterday—this week—the Benchmarking Adelaide report. It basically shows that South Australia is also becoming less and less productive, more congested, and the state economy is sliding when you look at how we compare with our peers. One of the report's major metrics, in fact, points to the housing affordability crisis, which is one of the reasons why we are falling behind. We know that we are among the worst in the nation unfortunately for home ownership affordability—worse than London, Paris, Berlin—and worst in the nation for rental affordability as well.

What has this government's response been to solving this affordability crisis? Well, this week what happened? We saw in this place how this government knocked back our sensible plans to open up more land for housing under the EFPA Bill. So whilst we waited to get the detail, waited to get the maps, what we said is that not only would we support those maps but we would open it up for other areas.

This government talks about trying to solve the housing crisis but it just does not back it up with actions. They ignored sensible amendments that would have actually opened up more land for housing. This government has failed time and time again to help South Australians realise the dream of home ownership. Not only that, what else did the government do?

This week, what they have actually done is they hit control C and control V. For those unaware, what they have done is they blatantly copied our policy to fast-track apprentices, and the minister was embarrassed on morning radio about this. Members opposite can announce all the housing developments they like, but without the people to build them those plans are not worth the paper they are written on.

Labor have run out of ideas. When they run out of their own ideas they come after ours. We will keep doing our job as a successful opposition, making sure that we not only hold this government to account but continue to present a positive alternative to the people of South Australia.